Dolly Varden

Got site 5 which is literally off the side of the road. Probably the trashiest site I've ever been to with tons of TP, bottle caps, and cigarette butts everywhere. There was a group hanging out at our site that graciously moved but they said they come most weekends so we felt awkward asking them to leave. This site has a little path to a beautiful stretch of creek but again, there was so much trash around it was hard to truly enjoy. We ended up not camping at all due to all these things on top of feeling very exposed to the road and cars.

Site 3 is tiny and slopes; we could use it. People at site 2 were there before us and creeped into part of our spots. Luckily my wife reserved site 1, which was good. Loads of day use folks trashing the beach on the creek. But the fishing was good.

Made reservations months in advance and showed up to a family of 4 large tents and close to a dozen people enjoying my site. I drove to the next campground and spoke to the host. Apparently they manage all 4 campgrounds on that road. He deeply apologized but we both knew even if we could get them to move (they did not seem friendly) it would have taken them all afternoon to pack up their tent city. The host invited me to drive further to Bedrock and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It was a massive improvement to Dolly Varden. Gorgeous veiws, quiet, and exceptional privacy of. Dolly did not off any of that. If you enjoy noise, road traffic, the smell of the dumpster, zero privacy, but direct access to the river then this is the campsite for you. Site 1 is farther from the road and arguably the best site of the 5.

there’s definitely pros and cons to this spot. the sites don’t really have much privacy but if you reserve site #1 i would say it’s the best one. you can’t really find many camping sites as affordable as this spot but like other people have said, it is also a day use area so there will be people coming in and out to swim right by the campsites. but overall the swimming are is gorgeous especially if you bring some water shoes and track down river just a little to the tiny waterfall. also the stars at night are hard to beat.

We reserved three sites that were described on the website as together. When we arrived two families were in the first come first serve site between two of our sites and the other was across the road. There were cars driving in and out of our camp all day and people parking all around us as it’s a day use area for the swimming hole as well. Not a great camp site. Not to mention filthy upon arrival. We had to haul a bunch of trash in order to really relax and appreciate the space.

We stayed at Dolly for the weekend we could only reserve #1 and # 3 we really wanted the #2 so someone was going to Stay there for the week but people were already there for the entire week and weekend so they were in between us for our whole weekend. It would have been nice if we could have reserved the site instead of having it first come first serve. Besides that the camp host did all she could to keep the bathroom clean and she made multiple visits to make our stay great. great host.