Westside Regional Park and Campground — Attraction in Guerneville

TLDR: this is, at best, a "just passing through" camp. Day use seems nice though.

There seems to be 2 different groups here: vans and RVs that are stopping for a night or two to explore the surrounding area or pass through, and young SF residents who think this is real camping.

This is, for the most part, a parking lot with a bathroom and shower attached to it. This is not a "hanging out" campground. That being said, you will have running water, a fire pit, and bathrooms. They won't be well-maintained, but they are maintained nonetheless (bathroom cleaning happens daily around 9 AM, in which someone literally takes a garden hose to the whole thing and squeegees the excess water down a drain). Bathrooms seem to be well-stocked with soap and TP however. Showers have hot water and will run you $2.75 for 8 minutes. You can get quarters from the very sweet and kind camp hosts near the entrance.

Accessibility seems to be limited for those who may have difficulty walking. There are accessible restroom stalls, and the showers have an accessible bench, but I'd recommend getting a site as close as possible to the rest area as there are no accessible reserved sites available, and it can be a bit of a hike from the middle of the campground.

One thing that bothered me when making reservations for this spot was the severe lack of actual campground pictures. I mostly saw glamour shots of RVs and bay views (on a nice day), but that was it. I'm not sure if our timing was wrong, but it was grey, cold, and damp here during our entire stay. If you head about 10 minutes inland, the temp goes up about 40 degrees, and it's quite sunny and beautiful.

The firewood (also sold by camp hosts) was $12/bundle and well-seasoned. The logs were a decent size for the price. The fire pits weren't really worth using however. The sides rose so high that you'd have to stand incredibly close to feel any amount of heat coming from it. This is probably to prevent fires from getting out of control, which could be demonstrated by the campground across the bay from us as Rangers attempted to put out about 3 brush fires.

Generator hours are 8A-8P, and people will be running them as soon as they're able to do so.

Check-in was interesting. You'll receive an email that you need to be at your site by 2 PM or risk forfeiting it, but no one is posted at the entrance station and the rangers don't actually show up until about 6 or 7 PM to verify everyone's paperwork. The whole process had a kind of refugee camp vibe, and took about an hour or longer, depending on how full the campground was. The rangers were incredibly warm and friendly however!

All in all, you will have a place to stay for the night, as the camp meets the bare minimum requirements for a campground. We stayed here for 2 nights to check out the area and head into Sonoma/Napa. I could see why there were more openings here vs. nearby campgrounds. It was a solid hub for having a place to sleep at...

Our first time camping at Westside Regional. It’s clean and we love having flush toilets and hot showers. It’s also close to many small beaches and hiking trails in Bodega Bay. Westside campsite is small and very close to each other(picture for reference) and most as in 90-95% are RV campers. It’s okay for tent. Some of the RV campers made it feel like the campsite is mostly suited for RV campers who are there for the window view from their RV. So in short, like a retirement campsite for seniors.

I think Westside would be better if they have sections for tents only and RV only. So if you would like to try out Westside it’s better to get the front sites in direct view of the water.

The Day use picnic areas is beautiful and has more legroom. It is definitely family friendly just not so much the campground. We have the kids go to the day use area so they can run around a bit more during our down time.

We spent most of our time visiting surrounding beaches and hiking trails.

Side note: The demographics of this campsite won’t suit you if you have small children as it was mostly old couples with no kids while we were there. Some are friendly old couples and some are NOT.

Being transparent for families: I would not recommend for family with little ones like us. The unfriendly old couples made it uncomfortable as they had their eyes like hawk on our kids as if they were going to touch or destroyed their stuff even though our kids were in our campsites and the common areas only. It’s the “Stay off our lawn” (shaking cane in air) vibe. There are other campgrounds we enjoyed more around Bodega Bay that is better suited for families. We will probably only go back to Westside if it’s just the adults but what’s camping without the kids so….

Disclaimer: I would like to give it 5 star review rating for the campsite, amenities, and location. But the people who frequent it will most likely be the same all around. You may experience better camp neighbors...

We have been coming here a long time. Last year we were harrassed by the park rangers if the wheels of our trucks where just touch the dirt weeded areas.They hunted down one person in our group and was told to move his truck 2 inching or he would get cited. Along with the fact generators need to be off at 8 pm when it had been a more reasonable 10 pm Trees have been removed and the wind is so bad now. This year our group of 5 sites has been repeatedly picked on for kids with no helmets,when all you see is multiple other campers riding bikes, and scooters with no helmets. Generators on maybe 10 mins over the allowed time and many other things. The picture attach shows a site across from ours with multiple tents when there is suspose to be one tent per site , car's parked on the dirty weeded grass area and kids with no helmets riding around. So, rules only apply to one group while the others can do as they please. Isn't the camp host suposed to patrol more than twice a day. It has been a...