Olema Campground

Because our family that we were visiting fails at making decisions we ended up really only being here for sleeping with bring in wine country before and the city after. However the park is nice with lots of grass and set up in little pods that make it easy to be friendly with your neighbors or keep to yourself.

The camp store has a lot of items and the bathrooms and laundry facilities seemed nice. It is also very close to a lot of area activities. We will be back when we have more time to explore!

The reason to stay at this campground is the proximity to Point Reyes, which is a large and sprawling park. This campground is centrally located to the various sections of the park, as well as being just a few miles from the charming town of Point Reyes Station, where there is gas, several good restaurants (try the local oysters at Café Reyes), and the marvelous Cowgirl Creamery (cheese heaven).

Our off-season stay meant we had few if any other campers in the campground during the week, though it got busier on the weekend. The sites are open, with grass and some trees in between, but although this provides little privacy, the sites are spaced quite far apart for a private park. This is definitely not your typical parking lot setup, and we were much more comfortable than we expected for a private park, even when other campers arrived for the weekend. The water/electric sites have better separation – full hookup sites are definitely squashed closer together, though not terrible.

Our site was gravel, very long, and level. Utilities worked fine. There was campground wifi but we didn’t use it since we had completely adequate service on AT&T with our MyFi (1 bar LTE, but a solid signal). The bathhouse was a little dated, and the shower changing areas were a little lacking in privacy (both showers share one changing area), but they were acceptably clean and park staff was visible on the property.

When we booked our stay online, we didn’t see a way to claim the Good Sam discount, but management happily refunded our 10% discount when we arrived and presented our Good Sam card.

We selected this park as an alternative to the nearby Samuel P. Taylor State Park, where sites are heavily wooded and there is virtually no opportunity for solar generation. For us, the extra $10/night was worth it to have electricity, water, and a dump station on the way out.

We came here in early/mid March after a couple of months of heavy rains and flooding in the area. We called in advance to pick a spot that best fit our needs and they kindly let us know it was rather muddy. We we were expecting the worse, but when we arrived it wasn’t so bad and they were diligently working to get rid of the mud and puddles after all the heavy rains.

We stayed in one of the back spots near the creek with partial hookups (water and electric) and the spot was rather spacious and beautiful. We recommend going with partial hookups and using the dump station for the nicer spots.

Great campground near Point Reyes and Hog Island Oysters (a must-do while in the area).

Easy access to dump station
Showers weren’t glamorous but they were nice and hot
Spacious spots and campground was quiet in general, tho I imagine it gets rather busy in Summer.
Driving to get to Olema is a bit hairy but once there, it’s so worth it

We’ll be back!

Very rustic sites if not in full hook-up section, with not much tree cover for shade. We asked not to be in the "campfire" section in the entry (essentially a parking lot) & they did not read our notes & put us in site #2 int he campfire area wedged between the office & the parking lot where you enter the park. We asked to be moved to another site in back because we did not care about full hook ups. After much deliberation, they did accommodate us.

Party every night. Our site was in a middle of large group that shouted over and walked over our site all day and night. They did get quieter during the quiet hours though (10pm-),

We live in a city and when we go camping we want peace and quiet. Otherwise we could just go to a bar. We will not be back.

If it’s raining this is not where you want to be unless you’re into mud :) That said, the sites away from the one full hook up loop in front are the sunny nice spots, fairly level and quiet with water and 30amp. The bathrooms are all meh pretty clean not the best. During the day the ppl that work here do loops in a pick up truck all day long, which was a little disruptive as we were working from the site.
The location is great with easy access to the National Sea shore beaches and town has everything you might need.

The rain we encountered was not Olema Campground’s fault - the mud was. Weak wifi and no trash receptacle rounded out our stay. Our dogs loved the dog run which was nearly the only non-muddy area in the park.

Even the drive to the campground is worth the experience. Leaving the town of San Marin on Point Reyes/Petaluma Road you are entering an area that is completely undeveloped. Rolling hills, in spring they are vibrant green, and these are interspersed with wooded hillsides having a mix of tall cedar and pine and live oak and coastal greenery. The campground is simple and sweet. Sites are spacious, no frills, but good, flat, gravel sites most with electric and water and some with full hook ups. The campground is not huge, but there are plenty of trees and there are miles of open space land outside of the borders of the campground so you feel a great sense of spaciousness. There is a sweet creek running behind many sites. It rained while we were there, and some of the sites were in puddles. Being winter, which is just about the only time it rains in CA, the hosts had been careful to park any visitors in sites that did not have water issues. There are nice restaurants and a great little market a few miles away. On site there is a laundry, showers and a Post Office. I imagine in the summer the campground is quite crowded as there are two fields with lots of tent sites. But there would still be decent space between RV camp sites even if the park were full at capacity with RV spots. When we were there it was only at most a quarter full with RV's, so plenty of room and we saw a couple good size motorhome rigs fitting nicely into some of the spots. Some of the sites would be too short for anything over 30 feet, so ask before you reserve. All visitors at the time we visited had nice rigs and were definitely recreational visitors. Samuel P. Taylor state park is nearby and is stunning, as are multiple trails in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Between Memorial Day and Labor day, these trails are well used and parking runs out fast, so be aware of that and be ready to use the trails early in the morning if you want to get a parking spot. If you love to feel surrounded by nature, but still like hook ups and easy in/easy out, this place is for you. We got good wifi on our T-Mobile phone hot spots - enough to watch videos and do work.

We only booked our stay here on the weekend because of a group rally gathering of 37 tiny tear drop Tab trailers.
This a busy and large family campground. Busy because its so close to everything in the Bay Area/ North Bay area... We camped Friday to Monday. The place fills up on Friday and clears our Sunday morning. So I would suggest a weekday stay for a more peaceful time.

If you look at the map of this place its huge with many loops and 2 huge fields for tents only. Numerous sites are electric/water only. One central dump station for all black tank disposal. Numerous of the RV sites are quite uneven and have little foliage for privacy. There's a big variety of sites so ask a lot of questions when you make a reservation. There is one section of permanent residents near the office...

The Wifi was just ok for our tablets as there are a lot of people pulling off of it and little Verizon cell coverage.
The quirky/hippy town of Point Reyes Station is just a 10 minute drive to the north for supplies. $56 nightly for 2 people, 2 pets and 1 vehicle. Everything else will cost an extra $5 here and there.

This is a great jumping off point for the national seashore, point Reyes Station, or day trips to San Francisco or Napa Valley. The campground itself is a little rundown, but they had all the amenities you needed and it did the job just fine.