Seaquest State Park

We camped here in early August to visit Mount St Helens and to hike in the area. Across the street from the campground is a visitors center and museum, highly recommend this fascinating and informative museum. Our campsite was very private, spacious, and well shaded, water and trash containers were located nearby. Recently remodeled restrooms were very clean with free hot showers. Overall, a great camping experience.

We stayed here to access the various Mt. St. Helen's attractions and the location is very convenient, although distant from St. Helens itself. One of the National Park visitor centers is right across the street from this state park.

The area itself is lovely with lots of trees - there are some trails in the park itself as well as a wetlands trail in St. Helens' visitor center across the street. The site we had included water and electricity - there were a handful of full-hookup sites available. A dump station is available by the entrance.

This is not a place for big rigs. The roads are very narrow and winding with some places needing to squeeze between big trees. Depending on where your site is located, it can be a tight fit to navigate. Our 29ft class C made it through fine, but you must be aware of trees and obstacles on either side and go slowly.

The sites themselves are pretty average and fairly tightly packed. The park is in a heavily forested area, so in most spots, there is little, if any sunlight. This is great for cooler temperatures, but it does mean that it feels dark and we had to have the inside lights on in the RV all the time.

The area had a lot of mosquitos in mid-July, especially near sunset.

The staff was friendly and helpful.

Internet connectivity is very poor here. For people who need connectivity for work, we would not recommend this park. We had very weak coverage on all three cellular carriers, even with high-gain antennas and advanced gear, and the heavy trees meant no Starlink. Network congestion in the evenings made the internet on all three carriers useless, but we could get basic work done in the morning. We could not reliably make or receive phone calls. Some spots in the campground seemed to have slightly better connectivity, so micro-geography is a factor, but even then, connectivity is overall terrible. The park Wi-Fi didn't work at all for us.

Overall we probably wouldn't stay here again because of the poor connectivity (we work on the road), but otherwise, it's decent and conveniently located.

We were here March 31 and April 9, 2023, and it was like camping in a rain forest, with very few campers on the two rainy nights. Lots of beautiful huge trees, moss and ferns. Site 14 was a back-in, roomy enough for our 22' truck/camper, with a decent tent site. We stayed in site 15 on 4/9, a short pull-through which we managed to find a level spot in, but for a longer trailer it appeared very unlevel. There were many different types of sites in this park and most in our loop were close together with very little privacy. A little gravel to level the sites and prevent muddy pools of water would be nice, and there were a few potholes in the road here and there though nothing serious. Walking around the campground, we could see that some sites would accommodate larger trailers, some tent-only sites, sites with a little more privacy, and some double sites. Really, the best way to figure out which one is best for you is to use the online reservation system where you can read the details of each site. There is a nice pathway around the outer rim of the campground, fine for walking dogs. The best feature for us was the newer, or newly remodeled bathrooms, heated, very clean, and a nice shower using tokens. One dollar for 2 tokens, 3 minutes per token. In and out cell coverage with our US Cellular, no booster.

We booked a full service pull-thru in the T-sites. The layout of the pull-thru T-sites felt very un-Washington State Parks and was totally different from our previous experiences with camping in Washington State Parks. The numbered loop sites are very pretty, and very typical of most Washington State parks on the west side of the Cascades, with lots of natural vegetation separating sites. The T-sites, which have all the utilities, felt like a low budget RV park. There was no separation between sites with vegetation or any kind of natural barrier. You could see everything your fellow campers were doing in their sites, and the lack of tree canopy or vegetation meant that daytime sun came through hot and heavy during our early August stay, making this part of the campground unusually warm compared to the numbered loops. We had an overly friendly neighbor that invited themselves into our campsite to chat and whatnot every couple of hours, we figure this wouldn't have been the case if there had been some kind of wall of bushes between us and them.

One of the best parts of this campground is the access to the Mt. Saint Helens interpretive center, which is easily accessible through a pedestrian tunnel underneath hwy 504, which separates Seaquest on the north side of the highway from the visitor's center on the south side.

Lots of bugs, the mosquitos were very bad, probably the worst during our combined camping trip, which visited 3 different state parks in the northwest. Try to come prepared, but even with bug spray and candles and making a fire every night even though it was hot out, we were basically eaten alive.

Cell service was spotty at best. I marked that we had one bar of 4G LTE while there, you could pass a text message or two, but phone calls were difficult and data was not possible.

Restrooms and showers were typical for Washington State parks. Restroom with a single shower stall at the back end of the restroom. Washington state charges for showers. Something like 3 minutes for 50 cents, plus you have to exchange your cash for tokens. The restroom near the T sites had a cash exchange there, sometimes the cash/token exchange is only at the check-in station at the front of the park. Restrooms were almost always totally spotless and well stocked. The color pallet is fairly modern, bright, mostly light grays and whites, no earth tones. The shower stall was "self-contained', including a toilet and shower in one very large stall with a bench. While the combined shower and toilet stall makes for a nice routine if your mornings include a constitutional prior to your shower, the lack of multiple shower stalls for so many camp sites, both the pull-thru T sites and for neighboring numbered sites, means that a backup of people waiting for a shower could be possible. It certainly didn't seem like enough facilities for the number of sites in the vicinity of the shower house.

Utility provisions on the camp site were typical Washington State, with a nicely mounted and solid water faucet, a normal power pedestal in good working order, and a well placed and easily accessible flip cap sewer port. While the site may not have had much privacy, the utilities were in excellent working order and well designed.

We would come back again, but we might forgo having sewer on site and stay in the numbered loops with water and electric to have a more woodsy camping experience. The biggest improvement the state can do for the T sites is to get some native vegetation planted between camp sites to at least give the illusion of privacy.

I’ve never seen so many mosquitoes in my life!!! We left just as quickly as we arrived. We were surprised by the number of available sites but then we saw why… I literally got 6 bites in the 40 seconds it took me to tell me husband the site we pulled into was level… Awful! We ‘re back on the road to look for some place else for the night. It was pretty. Lots of sites. But goodness gracious!!!

Beautiful location with an amazing 7 miles of hiking trails surrounding the campsite. The tent sites are beautiful and nestled in woods making them feel private and remote, a truly immersive experience. The RV loops are the opposite of that, more like a glorified parking lot with no separation between neighboring vehicles, and views, well, of other RV's. My two trips (one tenting, one an RV loop stay) were very different. If you want to RV here I'd highly recommend boon docking and veering away from the RV loops. I saw some large campers fitting in to the non-loop sites.

When I go back, I will spend more time hiking those trails - we caught on to them a little late in the game so were only able to explore a couple of miles - make sure to check out the posted maps and get lost in the forest for a while, that's where it's at.

I used this campground as a convenient place to stay when exploring the west side of Mt St Helens. The campground was fine but nothing to get excited about. It was a long walk to the bathroom from my site. Luckily my site did seem a bit private because I didnt have immediate neighbors. Also the sites are mostly nestled into the greenery so at least you will have some visual screening from neighbors.
I could hear quite a bit of road noise but it didn't really bother me at night when sleeping.
Many of the sites are not level so keep that in mind.
I wouldnt go out of my way to visit this campground but there were lovely places nearby. The Mt St Helens visitor center/museum? ($5 fee) is a short walk across the road and there is a mile long trail around a wetland that is nice.
I very much enjoyed visiting the Johnson Observatory up on Mt St Helens (bring your National Parks pass) and the beautiful drive up the mountain. It takes about an hour to get there from the campsite. I stopped a few times for photos and walks. There is a short lake trail on the way (Clear Lake?) that is very nice. The drive was extremely foggy in the morning, so use caution.
It's a quick drive from the campground down to Castle Rock where I had cell service. I didnt have any at the campground or up the mountain.

We stayed in the RV loop area which is really a bit of a step up from a parking lot. A couple of the spots had decent shade but most were open and close to the trailer next to you. The site had all of the hookups which was very nice when our grey water tank for full midway through the trip. Park Location was not that bad though it was an hr at least to get to Mt St Helens. Also, there was supposed to be lake access but we had a hard time finding it, maybe it was just us. The other area of the campground had nicer spots but most might have been tight for a 27’ trailer. We would stay here again in the non-T section but if going to the area again we’d probably look for something closer to the mountain and other lakes. Either way, we still had a nice stay here. The hosts were really nice.

We mistakenly parked in the RV Loop the first night (T13 vs 13) and fortunately, the folks who had reserved that spot weren't arriving until the next day. We got it all straightened out the next morning, and our spot in the main campground was actually much prettier. We were glad we weren't in a larger rig, though, because the roads through the main campground are VERY tight, and we watched, cringing, as some big rigs made their way through the trees.

Although this is the nearest state park to Mount St. Helens, it is still 50 miles to the national park itself, and if you don't have a toad, it can be a bit inconvenient to travel between the two places. You will also need the appropriate parks pass for the national park or pay a daily fee to park in the lot.

Seaquest itself has a nice visitors center, gift shop, and a coffee/shave ice stand outside that operates seasonally and on weekends. There is a nice trail, approximately one mile, around Silver Lake through the marshlands. There is abundant wildlife in the marshes including Great Blue Herons, all variety of waterfowl, fish, frogs, etc. You can see the mountain in the distance from the trail.

In the park itself, there are trails through the woods and a partial forest service road connection. We used them for some trail running and encountered almost no other people while out and about in the woods.

Negatives: distance from the mountain, no doggie poo bags available, the swing set in the playground nearest to us desperately needed to be oiled!

Positives: pretty wooded trails, nice trail around the lake, good Visitors Center