Grassy Flat Campground

Host and forest service in the area are extremely nice and helpful. Will be looking to return to this campsite in the future.

Very clean site and bathrooms

Nice camp area. I was there during mostly weekdays in early June and I was often the only one in the entire campsite. Close to the interstate though so the vehicle noise is quite loud. But when you can’t hear that you get to hear the river, which is lovely. One bummer is that they took my reservation card for my site down a day early by mistake, so I couldn’t stay in my reserved site on the last night.

This campground is located adjacent to a major route. The truck traffic at night kept us up. If you are looking for a peaceful camping experience this is not it. Not to the fault of the campground but we had a neighbor that was obnoxious, yelling and demeaning his kids constantly. There was a burn ban and he had tiki torches and a campfire burning every night. There needs to be more ranger activity in the campground to prevent this type of experience.

The site was clean and had a reservation tag on our spot. That’s nice to have to prevent having to ask anyone to leave.
The river is very close. Great for a little fishing and warm enough to swim in. Our visit was in July. Fishing was not good because of the warm water but still a great experience.

Pros:
- Spots feel relatively private
- Easy creek access
- Good location for redwoods
- Bathrooms were clean

Cons:
- Road noise
- No phone coverage
- No water

There was also a mixup with our reservation. We had reserved the site Friday through Monday. We have a rooftop tent so we have to pack up our whole camp to leave each day. We got back to camp on Sunday and now the reservation on our spot said someone else… we camped in a different first come first serve spot but it was still inconvenient. There is no onsite host, and we arrived late Friday and left for the day early Saturday, so I assume someone checked and assumed we missed the first night and cancelled our reservation. If you have a roof top tent, I’d recommend leaving a note or something when you leave.

We almost gave a 2 because the rocks on the ground anywhere you pitch your tent are huge and pointy. At one point my partner and I were underneath the tarp under our tent trying to dig them out so we could lay down our camping pads because even with them they were poking through. We were nervous it was going to cut our tent. We had issues with a noisy neighbor including them coming into our site to yell at us for asking them to turn their music down at 2:45am. So having a host would have been super nice. There’s no water so make sure you bring extra. I also didn’t see any firewood for sale so bring your own. There’s a market not too far away near Gasquet that sells some. There’s vault toilets so be prepared for that as well. No bear lockers at the sites but there’s bear proof trash cans and recycling. We stayed at site 13, VERY close to the road and you’ll hear traffic all day and night. However, it really just sounded like wind so it didn’t bother us too much. The campgrounds are clean and it’s super close to the Redwoods and the beaches in Crescent City.

The site was reserved when we arrived, it was spacious and nice. The bathrooms were clean and he neighbors respectful. There is a great swimming hole a short walk from the campsite. We did not spend much time in the campground other than the nights because we went hiking and swimming and exploring the surroundings.
Unfortunately there was no running water available at the campground. There had been a water line at some point in the past faucets but they were removed. True, there is the river, but is bit of a hike from the campsite. As we did not anticipate this problem, we did not have large enough containers and had to drive twice a day to another campsite for water.

Great experience, with access to the Smith River. Campground is close to the road however, so there is quite a bit of road noise, even at night

Lovely smaller campground that is a short walk down to the beautiful river. A few folks ran their generators on and off, but that’s surely not the campgrounds fault :-)