Honest review of the Albion River Campground on California's Mendocino Coast
Once again we spent our Christmas holiday week at Albion River Campground along the Mendocino Coast in Northern California. Albion River Campground & Marina offers a unique camping and boating experience for both RV and tent campers. The campground is located south of Mendocino, California on the Albion Cove where the Redwood Forest meets the Pacific Ocean, with the Albion River flowing through it.
Albion river Campground is one of only two sites on the Mendocino Coast that provides both sheltered river moorage and ocean access.
The campground is an annual destination for dive clubs, bottom fishing and salmon fishing groups, crab lovers, and kayak & canoe enthusiasts. Rent kayaks or canoes to travel upstream through the magnificent Redwood trees.
In fact every year we go some of our group tries their hand at catching crabs from the campground’s long pier along Albion River and we can report that they tend to be successful. As I write this our friends Manya and Linda caught enough Dungeness crab that they each got one for dinner. I’m not a seafood person so it worked out perfectly.
The campground has a line of full hook-up sites along a steep bank of eucalyptus trees and then off-grid sites closer to the water. We have only ever been here in December and that’s the campground’s slow season so we often have to share the park with few others. We’re told in commercial crabbing season and in summer, when it gets hot inland, this place fills up.
There are also places to launch a boat and tie it up and Albion River flows right into the Pacific Ocean. In fact the tides are interesting here, to me, with the river’s flow changing based on the tides. This also affects your crabbing, if that’s your thing.
The surrounding landscape of the campground is beautiful, to me, and I don’t think I could take a lousy picture. We also have an article about the geology of the Mendocino Coast. It’s an incredible place indeed.
