Dash Point State Park

Lots of wide variation in views on this SP. Here's my take after staying here for the whole 10 day limit while visiting Tacoma out of necessity. I had many days of observation to see every aspect of Dash Point SP, both good & bad.

Starting with the all important campsite, itself, it was well graveled and mostly level so no complaints. Electrical box was in fine shape. I only have a small 24' Class-C motorhome so booked a smaller back-in site. Didn't ever use the restrooms so I'll leave that for others. However, I did find it somewhat strange that this park makes it so hard to find the trashcans. Most parks have them everywhere so people use them. Only one I found in the main camping loop was hidden behind the restrooms, a single can! A bit strange, I thought.

As far as safety and fellow campers, yes, you will find some sketchy types at times in this campground. Some campers came in late at night in beat up looking vehicles and left early in the morning to avoid paying. One night on the weekend I saw two police cars and two ranger cars and a blocked off main camping loop road at a nearby campsite. Not sure what was going on but some trouble with one camper was clearly evident. A few days later I saw one camping family with an old beat up trailer that didn't even look road worthy come in and literal dump all their stuff around their site like it was a trash dump! Totally trashed out the site and their young kids where screaming monkeys that were totally out of control with no parental oversight (as was the case with their small, unleashed dog). One nearby camper eventually complained to the ranger about them. Glad I was farther away! There were definitely more old and worn out motorhomes and trailers and beat up vans camping here than normal, for sure! I didn't feel unsafe camping here but you have to realize this place is only 20 miles from Seattle so you are going to expect this type of atmosphere, I guess. Just keep your eyes open, your camper locked when away and use common sense. You should be fine. I also saw the campground aides (host) come around regularly with their golf cart in the morning and clean up the campsites so the campground is "monitored".

Now the good stuff... there are some really nice trails that meander through all the rain forest here. Never felt unsafe on the trails but you'll need to be careful of the occasional mountain bikers who also use the trails. The rain forest here is incredibly lush and beautiful. I was blown away at the beauty of this place outside of the campsites. Also, the trails are very well maintained and built to handle the dips and muddy terrain. Kudos to the trail maintainers here! The Dash Point Beach is only about a 20 minute walk from the campgrounds on a beautiful trail along Thames Creek. Note that the beach has a slow, mild slope near the water so the tidal flats are *huge* when the low tide appears. At high tide, there is almost no beach at all. Lots of sand dollars, clams and crabs but note that there are no rock pools here for the sea life. It is just a very wide sandy flat at low tide. Fun to explore!

Cell service being so close to Seattle was a disappointment. Moderate 2-bar strength and my cell booster brought that up to almost 5-bars for both Verizon and T-Mobile. However, the Verizon cell service was awful for data and very unreliable. I suspect the nearby Verizon tower just can't handle all the data traffic it is exposed to here. T-Mobile data was much, much better! If you use Verizon you will not be happy using the internet from this campground even with a cell booster. Also, no WiFi available (inc. no Xfinity hotspots nearby, etc). Again, I was very surprised by how poor the data service was out here so close to the big cities and residential areas that surround it. However, if you use T-Mobile and have a cell booster you'll have no complaints. You'll be able to surf the web and stream video without problems. Hopefully Verizon will fix or upgrade their cell towers out here in the future.

I would definitely stay here again, sketchy campers and all. The lush rain forest and the wonderful trails make it worthwhile. Really unexpected to find such a large, forested campground so close to a large metro area. It is the thing that makes Dash Point SP something special. However, you'll want to visit this park when then weather is cooler and the crowds are gone. On a weekday in the spring or fall when the temperature tops out at around 55 (maybe even with some light drizzle) the beach is a fine place. Many times you'll have the beach all to yourself. Once summer comes, the temperature rises over 75 degrees and the rowdy crowds appear on the beach you'll want to stay far away. Note that as the temperature rises in summer and the sun is more present, the beach begins to smell like a sewer because of the massive amounts of algae/seaweed and other sea life in the somewhat muddy beach that gives up its odor with warmer weather. Yuck! The large and somewhat rowdy crowds from the surrounding cities also make it an unattractive place to visit during the warmer months. Come when others don't during cooler/wetter weather and its charms are there for you.

UPDATE: Yet another police event late last night (sigh!). Saw police car rush in around 1am with lights flashing. Shortly thereafter had 3 police cars driving around the main campground. Heard that Tacoma has cleared out large homeless "village" under the 509 overpass near the Tacoma Port a few days ago and suspect some no paying "campers" now coming into this nearby park looking to relocate. Dash Point SP is only about 5 miles down the road from the cleared homeless site so that might explain some of the beefed up police activity of late.

I like this campground; it’s my go to spot for somewhere close to home. Nice trail down to the beach (about 3/4 mile). Just enough cell signal for AT&T hotspot; was able to work remotely from campground if my antenna was pointed South; just barely worked.

The campground is easy to find. I came in at night which was not a good idea; trying to back into a site in darkness with trees lining the road was nearly impossible. I chose a pull thru til the next day when I found and booked a better site more easily accessible. Not much privacy between sites. Mixed use area with tenters, car campers, big rigs, etc. Area was wet and lush with lots of bunnies. Restrooms were ok; showers take tokens only??? havent seen that before. Generally a nice park. Internet was barely usable even with WeBoost.

First, it was a very narrow road with large trees on both sides of the road, and you have to go through the entire park on these winding narrow roads to get to your site. For a 30 foot travel trailer, it was difficult.
Second, a lot of homeless people, not that I’m judging homeless people, but lots of furniture and trash everywhere, and one of the homeless men came up to us and asked if he could know our password to our wifi, because we had a strong signal. There was not one ranger to be found the entire time we were there. There was a very grumpy camp host, who was more worried about all the fall leaves on the ground than anything else. He would run his leaf blower everyday for what seemed a lifetime! It was FALL season in a wooded area! I have loved every Washington state park we’ve ever gone to until this one. We were scheduled for 20 days there, we left after 4 days, and will never go back.

The park is good, road is narrow. The camp host is friendly. Everything went smoothly and up to code.

My wife and I just bought a new to us camper and took it here for its maiden voyage! Very clean and loved the trails to the sound. Level spot with working electrical and water.

We were going to stay last minute to test out our new trailer for a one-night stay; however, both full hook-up sites that were showing available on-line and also posted at the ranger's station as being available, had very old, dilapidated rigs parked in the spots, without any park permits and no-one around.... We drove through the entire camping area that was open this time of year and sadly, it is filled with many old trailers, RV's, blue tarps and a lot of junk around the campsites... this is the first campground we have felt that was really unsafe. Many of the RV's did not seem road worthy and looked like they had not moved in years :-(... Hopefully the campground is better in the summertime, versus nonpeak season.

We will come back for a picnic at the day-use area in the future to enjoy the spectacular waterfront areas, but will skip the campground areas.

This park has two areas: The larger loop has no hookups at all and limited RV-size spaces, but you can run a generator during non-quiet hours so it's an option if that works for you. The second loop (RV loop) is a mix of full hookup sites (back-in and pull-through) that can handle bigger rigs and also offers cabins and tent sites. There are three camp hosts, two in the larger loop and one in the smaller loop. Sites are not tightly packed but not spacious either, so you will hear your neighbors. The smaller loop, especially the inner loop sites, are cheek by jowl with each other; my neighbor's picnic table was 4 feet from my window.

The park is close enough to Seattle that most people in the RV loop do not leave anything valuable out during the day if they are going to be away. When I asked a friend who lived nearby, she nodded and agreed that was probably a safe policy for that park. So be prepared to stow your grill or chain it to your RV, along with chairs, bikes, etc. every time you head out.

The beach is across the highway from the campground, and you can either drive to it or take a nice little 10 minute hike through the wooded trail to get there. At high tide it is one tiny beach; at low tide, it's amazingly big. Again, because it's close to Seattle, expect lots of people on summer weekends and on really hot days.

The best part of Dash Point was something I didn't figure out till halfway through my stay: trails not just to the beach but around the big trees and ferns and forest. I went for an hour's walk and barely hit the park boundary on one side. And the trails are beautifully maintained, with polite bikers who give much notice of their overtaking you and runners who do the same.

The park is somewhat close to SeaTac airport, so depending on the winds, planes will go overhead, but they are not loud enough to interrupt conversation.

We stayed here to be close when visiting my brother in Tacoma. So we were spending time with family and didn't spend much time on the beach or using the trails...maybe I would have felt it was worth more of the price if we used those.

Some of the turns in the loop were pretty tight for our truck and 35ft 5th wheel. We had a pull through space which was awkward to get into the way it was designed, but once in it was one of the more private spaces.

[Actual stay was 5/17/15]

Camped here for two nights at the end of summer while I visited Seattle. Due to proximity to city, some questionable activity was observed. Day 1, someone arrived late onto site next to ours without a reservation. Park ranger showed up early to kick them out. Turns out to be someone living out of their car. Day 2, a guy arrived after 2 AM to the site next to ours (again) and was banging on stuff all night, lit an illegal fire (fire ban in effect), and eventually got kicked out by the ranger next morning. Guy appeared to be on drugs. Even though a lot of sketchy stuff is going on, it appears the rangers are doing what they can to keep it under control.

Other than that, clean bathrooms, great PNW scenery with the usual creeks, forests, etc. Close to Seattle.