Kern River's Edge Campground Retreat

Camp site is in a great spot right by the river - it's about 3 miles from the M&RA shop in town - which they neglect to tell you.. so if you turn up when the shop is shut - good luck finding it (FWIW - drive out of town - cross the river - at the T-junction, turn left and head up past the Brewery for about 2 miles)

We stayed here as part of a large YMCA group event -- so I'm not exactly certain what a site costs. The place seems to specialize in group events, particularly revolving around rafting. The sites were OK. The facilities were OK. There were seasonal employees living in a small tent "city" across a drainage culvert from the campground. Not the best look.

This group site is the only site I would recommend otherwise you’re so close to other campsites it’s miserable. They told us when we booked there would be two hook ups for electricity but there wasn’t. The camp host who was a woman harassed us the entire time. She yelled at the kids for riding their bikes through leaves, she harassed us for the 15 year old dog not being on a leash even though he was laying by my side. She yelled at one of the moms for walking through an empty site on the way to the bathroom. She yelled at us for using an extension cord for electricity etc etc . The water at the site kept going off. They planned a wedding there which meant that on Saturday at 5 pm we couldn’t use the access to the river at our site. They didn’t make any accommodations or even let us know until that time then they shooed the children out of the river wet in their suits. All of these things combined put a damper on the weekend.

Unfortunately, our experience was not great. It begin with alot of confusion about the campsite we had booked. One one of the attendees insisted that we were in the wrong site. After going back and forth, he checked the reservation and realized he was wrong. So our day began with an unpleasant vibe. They also hassle you to buy firewood and ice. Lastly, we made sure we left the site free of any garbage. We left it the way we found it. They charged us a fee of $54 for leaving a "MESSY" site. The woman in charge came by when we where leaving, she could have reminded us of the fee if she was honest and believed that we had left the site messy. I feel that they are very dishonest! I would not camp here again.

We were booked upstream 1/2 mile at the Forest Service HQ campground. I needed to catch up with the outside world after two nights with no connectivity. We lost connecting just short of our planned destination. We went anyway, could barely get our 25’ Airstream through the park and would have had to unhitch to land in direct sun on a 95 degree afternoon. No thanks.

We stopped at another campground in town. It was clearly residential, not frequented by RV travelers. We tried Mountain and River Adventures next. Bingo!

This is a “no frills” campground but owned and run by nice folks and in a great location. I was greeted by a guy running mountain biking class for 10 year olds. Turns out he’s the owner, runs the guide service there and built the campground using a backhoe to move each boulder. He got us handed off to staff who got us a suitable spot (#8... but said we could take #10 if we liked it better which we did). The campground is dirt simple... literally... dirt and rocks. There are some natural trees if you need shade, some trees on irrigation and some direct riverfront sites. We fit our entire rig in #10 without unhitching. That’s 49’ nose to tail. Our site backed to the river although the water level was low and we could hear but not see the water in May, 2021.

Our neighbors were quiet and respectful. Some RVers, some tenters ready for kayaking. No hookups, so some generator noise but everyone (including us) shutdown before bedtime. It sounds like hookups may be a future enhancement. The facilities were clean. The campground hosts were a young couple. They were helpful and attentive.

This business caters to river rats and outdoors folks. They welcomed RV travelers like us, too.

We tried to go to Headquarters Camp ("next door") only to find it full midweek in April! It was also kind of a dump, so we tried this place.

I could justify almost any rating of this park. It all comes down to expectations and your experience.

The sites are rather close together and maybe half of them will accommodate a small RV. It's really more of a tent or camper place. They do have three narrow, but super-deep sites that are super easy to access and can accommodate the longest RVs - but they have no hook-ups (anywhere) and these "RV" spaces are actually marketed as group tent sites. We had the place almost to ourselves the first night, then on Friday the two sites next to ours turned into group sites with 9 tents just a few feet from our rig. Fortunately, they were fairly quiet. The roads are not paved, but they are compacted river sand - that, mixed with the string lights and permanent umbrellas give it a kind of tropical feel, which is nice.

A BEAUTIFUL stretch of river is just steps away from several of the sites. This is the biggest selling point. There's also a VERY cool amphitheater and a neat "beach" group site.

The bathrooms are pretty good and the shower (25c per minute) are really good and very welcomed. The park is VERY clean and it's obvious the staff takes good care of it.

I like the place when it's mostly empty, but not so much when it's full. When we were staying there was a biker group in a bunch of the sites, but they were old guys and pretty quiet. As I mentioned, the sites next to ours became ridiculously crowded on the second day. The large group in the group site was well behaved, but no one stopped them from playing their radio way too loud. Boy Scouts also took over one strip of sites, but they were no problem. I guess I only say this to point out that it seems to be popular with groups... so there's the potential for it to be overcrowded for its size.

The staff, especially Rhonda (?) in the office and Curtis (the camp host) were awesome. We got a chance to visit with them during that first, slow day and they were friendly and very helpful. I am also very thankful that when they couldn't find me an open site that I was comfortable getting my RV into, she gave me their one unoccupied double site for the price of a single since there were only two of us in the "group" site. I'd have been horrified to pay $120 a night for a no-hook-up trailer site.

In summary - great river location, clean, pretty, great staff. No hook-ups or dump station and not really catered towards RVs. Good for tents and groups, but sites aren't very big. A nice vibe and really nice when it's not crowded. Camp entry is controlled by a coded gate. Usually they make the campers where wristbands to identify them. I'd definitely stay again if I knew it wasn't going to be full, but personally, I would avoid it when it's full - but that's just me.

No cell service. Town has several nice shops, a GREAT museum, several really good restaurants, and the cheapest gas in the region just a short drive down the road. There are some nice little hikes in the area.

In rating "Access" below, access to the park is easy. Access to some of the sites is not (for RVs anyway).
"Site Quality" - big range. Nothing bad, all clean, but many are small.
"Noise" - although next to the road, it was fairly quiet. As for the guests, that's going to depend. When we were there, no one was rowdy, but several played their radios outdoors which I personally find very annoying... but that's tent-oriented campgrounds for you.