Trinity Lake KOA

After our crazy adventure getting there, we finally made it to Trinity Lake KOA in the tiny town of Trinity Center, CA. I somehow made a possibly significant mistake when I booked this place. To back up a bit, when we were planning this trip, we tried to make it so that the time spent on the road (or better yet, time in a cat carrier) was not super long (6 hours was our sweet spot), or we had planned that we could stop for an hour or so halfway through our longer drive. Well, when I tried to find a place that was in northern California that could accommodate our larger size rig and also have electricity (and of course, was available), it became fairly difficult. I eventually found this place on Reserve America and for some reason thought it was halfway between Anaheim and southern Oregon AND that it was only a short drive off of I-5. I was completely wrong on both counts. It turns out that it took us 16 hours of travel time to get there, and it was a good 2 or 2.5 hours off the freeway.

Trinity Lake KOA

If you ignore all of that, the campground was actually really nice. I could see spending a lot of time there. If you live in Redding, which is about 2 or so hours away, I would highly recommend camping here. It is on this nice lake, Trinity Lake, although the water was WAY down.

Trinity Lake

The lake used to go all the way to the tree line. You can see just how low it is right now!

You can rent these nice pontoon boats for a half or full day, which would be great if you had a large party (it was between $200-300 a day to rent). We did NOT rent a boat. Cause money and also because the weather was not that great for us.

One of the pontoon boats you can rent for the day.

The campground had a lot of nice features and amenities. They had a nice "Mini Kat" which is a take out restaurant that had items like hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizzas. 

The Mini Kat and picnic tables

They also had a putt putt golf course that looked like fun.

Putt Putt Golf

The pool area looked very nice as well.

The heated pool....although no hot tub! Boo!

And, best of all, they offered Umpqua Dairy ice cream in their store!!

Yummy!

Our spot was nice, although fairly close to our one neighbor.

Our spot in A4

This nice stand of trees keeps us nice and separated from our next campsite, although it remained open the entire time we were there. 

We are getting better (even in the pouring down rain) on positioning the fiver so that we are level and all of our slide outs and awning fit perfectly in the spot.

A view of our spot from the front

Overall, the campground is great, if you can overlook how far off the freeway it is (when you are looking for something close) and the price (it was about $50 a night). Our crazy story about how we got there on the little goat path laughingly called the East Side Road will become the stuff of legend among the employees there. They were already telling us about how they had told our story to their husbands and friends. So, it is lucky for me that the camp store had some alcohol. I got a bottle of chardonnay and a bottle of pinot gris from a local vineyard called Alpen Cellars. They were both very good. Also, it rained off and on the majority of the time we where there, which actually was great for us because it gave us an excuse to take a few moments to recharge after Disneyland and our amazing drive!

Alpen Cellars Pinot Gris. 

In the end, I thought that if we lived close to that campground, we would definitely go back - but as it is, I am not sure I would be willing to go through all that driving just to stay there again.