Bluebill Campground

Spent 14 days here in July. Escaping the heat from the desert southwest.

The good. Nice access near Coos Bay. The campground has sites that are spread out quite well. Very quiet. Bluebill lake close (100 yards) and has many yellow perch. Showers about a mile up the road. Threaded water spigot. About a half mile from the beach with good parking and excellent beach access.

The not as good. Mosquitos at night. Tormented some tent campers. I would not come here in a tent without a screen enclosure. Pit toilets. Most campgrounds with pit toilets charge less. Can hear OHV's , especially on weekends - but this goes with the territory on Oregon Dune beaches.

Easy access to all service at Coos bay.

On Recreation.gov it appeared that we would have no problem getting our big rig into one of Bluebill's extra-long sites. Unfortunately the narrow campground road isn't wide enough to allow for the necessary jack knife of rig-truck AND our walk-up site (16) was lined with those blasted concrete bollards. A key bollard had been taken out by a previous camper or we could not have gotten in. As it was, the lug nuts on the truck's front drivers side tire literally scraped the concrete of the bollard while the entire right side of our fifth wheel scraped the high hedge just to the side of the driveway. And the drive was on the "wrong" side of the site for a back-in; our door and windows faced a tall hedge and we had to walk around the rig to access the concrete pad and picnic table.

That said, once we got settled, we loved this little campground. We were here for seven days in mid-September. The 1.25 mile Bluebill Lake trail is immediately accessible from the campground with lovely views of the lake, dunes, and forest. Horsfall Beach is about 1.5 miles farther down the road with a nice big parking lot. (There is dry camping right at the beach to the left and rear of the parking lot, but it is mainly used by OHVers.) We watched the sunset at the beach one evening and then walked up to the parking lot and the large wooden observation deck to watch the moon rise from the east. The town of Coos Bay is just a few miles away with all the services you could need. Verizon signal is decent with 12.8 mps download, 0.47 mps upload.

I imagine mosquitos could be bad in the summer because of the high water/swamp that surrounds the campground but it was not an issue in September. There is a threaded water spigot around the bend from the camp host; no dump. We could definitely hear OHVs from Bluebill and OHVs are allowed on the beach from Hosefall Beach and going north.

I should start off by saying that not all the sites here are equal. Site 11 is the best by miles. The parking pad was long enough for our 25' trailer + truck, the angle easy to back into, and the yard was large and grassy. There was also plenty of open sky for solar power, which is good because this campground has no hook-ups. The only possible downside to site 11 is that the very popular Bluebill Lake trail travels past and is visible from the site. Not a big deal for us, but if you want more privacy I would go with another site. But it won't be as good! Most of the other sites are long and very narrow with a small grassy area behind the parking pad. Some have almost no grassy area. The other best sites were 1, 18 & 8.

As another reviewer mentioned, this campground is not really suitable for larger RVs. There are some longer sites, but they are situated around a tight loop which could make backing into them difficult. Also, if you have an RV with slides, some of the narrow sites could be problematic. Another thing to note is that this campground (along with all the CGs inside the Oregon Dunes National Rec Area) switched to reservation only last summer, and so far there is no sign that they will go back to FCFS. The good thing is that you can make same-day reservations so if you show up and find an open site, you can simply hop on the website and make a reservation. Fortunately, both AT&T and Verizon work here (slowly, but just enough to use Zoom for work).

Aside from all the practical stuff, this is a gem of a campground. We enjoyed the Bluebill Lake trail, hiking around the dunes, and walking on nearby Horsfall Beach. We stayed for a week in mid-May and it was very, very quiet with few campers during the week. On Friday night the campground filled and we could hear a constant buzz from the noise spewing machines people like to ride around the dunes, but that's unavoidable in this area.

One final thing - drive slowly on the access road to the campground. It is very, very bumpy!

It's dry camping here, but the sites are large and green. Right by Bluebill Lake with a nice hiking trail around it. It's close to the sand dunes, but there's another campground closer to the ocean for the folks who like that. Great, friendly camp hosts. A few mosquitoes, but otherwise a great experience. Be prepared to be unplugged--we couldn't get our satellite to work, the over-the-air TV is spotty, and cell reception is almost non-existent. Location was close to North Bend and Coos Bay, great base camp to visit the southern Oregon coast.

The spots have enough room in between with trees to make it feel pretty secluded. The horse camp ground down the street was empty and is another possibility. Bike or drive to the beach and in the end of summer there are plenty of blackberries everywhere.

Beautiful lakeside area. The trail around the lake is spectacular, so green. Our campsite backed up to the lake and trail. Fair amount of hikers came through. Fair privacy for most sites.
So not to scare anyone, but our campsite had some trash and while I cleaned it up I found some drug paraphernalia. I noticed some trash at another campsite as well. Sad because there is a big dumpster right there to use. It’s off-season and I don’t think there was a host.
We loved this area. The ocean beach down the street is a must. It’s a bit too far to walk to for most, I didn’t see a trail to it. You could bike or drive. Lots of beach for dogs to play. Will never forget this experience.