Point Reyes National Seashore Campground

I have a few comments about things that could be improved, but I first want to say what a wonderful experience this was for me and my family. The ability to take my kids on their first backpacking trip, but still have a toilet and water nearby made it a wonderful first step. The stars were unlike anything my kids have seen before, the cool weather (when it was 110 in the valley) was so welcomed, and it was a memorable experience for all with the kids already talking about doing it again next year.

For the improvements:
We had poison oak in our camp. Not just along a path somewhere which you can’t control, but actually within arms reach of our tent spot. I think the park service could do better here. Luckily we identified it and avoided it, but I’m quite sure others staying in this campsite would not have been so lucky. Our site #005 on Coast was nice and secluded, but our tent area smelled of urine. I guess when your site is nice and secluded people don’t bother walking to the bathroom.
The stinging nettles were unavoidable on the trails with all of us being stung many times. Again I assume nettles off the path, but I would expect the park to be better about clearing the actual trail of these.
Finally the overgrowth of the trail in general was a bit much. We were already cautious of ticks and wanted to avoid wading through grass, but parts of the trail were so overgrown that the grass was above our heads and we were pushing through it. Kids joked about needing a machete. I’m just happy no one had any ticks. We had to check several times to be sure.

Again, big picture was a wonderful and memorable experience. We will be back. I just think there a few things that should have been better maintained.

We hiked from the Bear Valley Visitor’s center to the Sky Campground via the Meadow Trail. The Meadow trail was overgrown and clearly not being maintained, in many places the trail was barely visible. I was scared we would all have ticks. My husband and I both got a little bit of stinging nettle, we hadn’t known what it looked like previously, and we were careful to avoid it later.
The following day we decided to move our car to the Sky trail head parking lot, we hiked down using the horse trail. Again, the trail was over grown, not maintained, and barely visible at times. Again, I was scared of the occurrence of ticks. On the horse trail we had to be more vigilant to avoid the poison oak and stinging nettle, there was more on this trail than on the Meadow Trail.
We had hoped to hike down to the beach, but all of the trails seemed too dangerous due to lack of maintenance.
We had our two sons with us and we are trying to teach them how to appreciate and respect the outdoors and public parks. If we can’t be assured of a reasonable degree of safety when hiking, we will have to go places where we feel safer.

Beautiful site with amenities and walkable to the beach

Great views from the campsite, easy hike to the campsite from Sky Trailhead.

A large group that had not reserved space came in with 15 to 18 people. They ran a generator all night left lights on all night and were up shouting from their boat at six in the morning. During the day they were loud and obnoxious

We were celebrating my brothers 40th birthday so it kind of put a damper on things

Great views from campsite 4 out of sky camp. No shade during the day so a hike down to the beach was necessary to stay cool! We did see lots of wildlife including our friend Garret, who is quite tall.

Excellent weather, beautiful campsite. Our three girls really enjoyed the experience.

Beautiful trail. In some parts is overgrown but doable.
I don’t recommend hiking poles and hiking boots are not necessary.
The campground is very nice and the bathrooms are clean and don’t smell it all.

Good

Glen campground is not right on the coast, so it's not quite as popular (i.e. sells out in 5 seconds instead of .1 second). But it's a lovely campground! It's in the forest, so from most sites none of the other sites are visible (the exception is Site 10 - right next to the bathroom and in the middle of everything). We were in Site 7 and we really enjoyed our time there. We hiked from Bear Valley, dumped our packs and set up our tents, then hiked to Wildcat to have some time at the beach. The trail from Bear Valley to Glen Campground got a little overgrown at the end, but there was no poison oak and I did fine in shorts. Overall a great first backpacking trip for some in our group!