Sourdough Campground & Cafe

My wife and I stayed there for two nights last week. The campsite is older but the staff and owner make up for the short fall on amenities. They have full and partial hook up and a free dump station. They have a laundry and showers which we used the laundry. Clean machines and a fair price.

They are famous for there cafe which serves all day and great portions and prices. The highlight for us was the nightly sourdough pancake toss. The owner makes it fun and if you win it’s a 10 dollars off breakfast the next morning. Great way to meet people and win a prize. Highly recommend it if you are passing through Tok Alaska.

In short this is a campground that I am sure was wonderful in 2019 when it won all its awards, but that time is past. As for us we are full-time RVers that move every week or two for the past 4 years.

Starting with the good:

There is very easy access to the campground and all of the sites are well maintained as to getting in and out of the sites and cutting back the trees for width and height clearances. We have a very big 5th wheel and had no trouble navigating in the park.

There is a FREE car/trailer wash. This is significant and what made the 60/night worth it. Our big rig had lots of road dirt on it from the Alaskan Highway and it took a good 45 minutes at the wash to clean it and the truck.

They got free wifi that, according to the website, reaches only some of the sites. Ours worked fine. 3mb down when we got here, 15mb down when we are leaving. The campground was not too full either.

Now the bad:

Only one open air car wash station is open. I guess the other next to it is broken? Even the big wood letters spelling car wash is broken. The letters are nothing really, but they do typify what is wrong with the park...it needs some attention.

The dump station hole for the sewer was under water. The hole is surrounded by concrete and it had rained hours earlier, but it left me questioning if the dump station even works. I needs some maintenance?

The roads are filled with dips that collect a lot of water. They need to be re-graded and have some more gravel dumped on them. Again, needs some attention.

The open air museum is kind of interesting, but again, it needs updating. About 50% of the many signs and pictures behind glass need to be replaced. About a 1/4 of them are so sun bleached that they are now completely blank. Again attention.

We were looking forward to the pancake toss that they advertised and was even in our email confirmation. Turns out the cafe isn't open till Memorial Day. Also some equipment in the cafe needs fixing according to the front desk person. We arrived the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, so I am not sure it will be open Monday. No big nightly campfire like advertised either.

I appreciate that they might not be fully ready for the season yet, but that didn't stop them from charging me the full rate.

So in short, what this place needs is a face lift. I hope they can recapture what they had in 2019.

I can see how a few years ago this camp site was probably epic. However In 2020 much has changed. The campsites were nice and clean but everything else was broke down/closed or in disrepair. To be fair though 2020 covid-19 has probably made a lot of places like this forced to make hard choices.
We were also bummed about not being able to have a fire in our own site. There is only one fire ring and it’s a community ring. The wifi was also not working so paying 50 dollars for a place to sleep/dump tanks was a little steep.

During our travels we have only stayed at two RV parks, both in Alaska, and both with the feeling of a Campground. We showed up in September of 2017, with the request of a dry spot, which they had many of. We were given a back in spot, which took a little work getting into, but was comfortable after in place. Some of the pull through full hook up spots are huge and can accommodate the largest of rigs. Our main purpose of staying here, was that we wanted to do Laundry and their laundry room was adequate, and after unhooking it is a short drive over to Wolf Hawk Gun shipping, if your needing to transfer a handgun back to the lower 48. Although were not into RV parks, and I know of free areas to camp within an hour of Tok, I would stay here again if needed. If your in the area I recommend eating at Fast Eddies, which we had to do for breakfast since the kitchen was down during our stay at Sourdough RV for renovations. Wifi was iffy at best in our spot, and I do not remember how well our Cell service was, just that we did have some Verizon.