Brannan Island State Recreation Area — Attraction in Rio Vista

I am updating my good review I left a few weeks ago. I meant what I said about the park, I really enjoy coming here. I have been coming here regularly since April. My 1 star is very specific to the older female with glasses that works there. I bought a yearly pass in April after going numerous times and knew I would visit often. It made sense paying for the yearly instead of the $10 individual fee. Unfortunately on one of my visits, my pass feel into my dash and I couldn't retrieve it. I called and explained what happened, and they did nicely offer to replace it. Initially, the employee that I bought the pass from didn't have me sign the book for the pass, so I pulled up my bank transaction showing the date I payed for it. I get my new pass, great! A few months pass, I end up misplacing my second pass somewhere. I will note it is a small sticker that you can apply to your windows. The reason why I didn't apply it is because I have two vehicles, so I kept it with me. I usually come here in the evening, but a few times I did come during open hours. I explained to the workers what happened, no problem whatsoever. One worker was new, and she verified my name in the books my season pass after I was reissued my second one. She let me through. The gentleman that works there is very kind, same thing, he would let me through issuing a receipt for the day. I do admit I felt dumb misplacing the second pass, but I am human things happen. Here is where it goes south. My last visit here last week on Thursday, I drive up, the front booth is empty. I stop as it says, then start driving into the park. A lady who I have seen before who works there is driving out and stops her truck. I have my window down, she jumps out of her truck and yells can I help you? I told her we were just coming into the park like usual. She asked to see my pass, I explained that I misplaced it, but she can find me in the books. She goes in for a short amount of time, and said my name was not in the books. I know she is lying, but she already seemed hostile so I offered to show her my bank transaction to prove I had paid for a year pass. She yells that that isn't going to help, and if I don't produce my pass she isn't going to help me. Mind you, this is after hours when they are out of the front. I don't want to argue with her, she was being really rude. She said she could give me a 15 minute pass to see the park and that was it. I come here almost daily, so I tell her we know the park very well, so I know how the park looks. She said she will let me come in this last time, and that was it unless I can find my pass. I was ok with that, just taken aback by how hostile and rude she was. I don't expect anything free, so I would gladly pay for another pass. My kids who come here with me don't want to come back after that interaction. That's what upsets me the most. We loved coming here to walk, my son learned how to drive here after getting his permit, it was great while it lasted. I just wish she wouldn't have acted the way she did. FYI, I ended up finding my pass, although I won't be using it again. I hope this lady doesn't get used to treating...

Me and my family of 20 plus have been coming here for over 45 years. Over the last 10 years this place has slowly gone down hill. Firstly the gates lock at a certain time and there is no way in and out. That doesn’t seem safe in case of an emergency. If you need to leave you are locked in for the night. Secondly the staff is extremely rude. We have had several bad encounters with the workers over the last couple years. Last year had a bad encounter with one of the workers and we said we would write a bad review but then she apologized and begged us not to or she was going to get fired. Another encounter this weekend we had with another old lady worker was we came in late at night so there was no one there at the booth to pay. The next morning we went up there 3 different times after the park being opened and still no one to be seen in the booth. So we went back to our site and 2 hours later someone is pounding on our trailer door. The old rude lady working said she doesn’t have us in her books so we explained the situation and she said we needed to follow her to come pay and we said we would be up there in a minute and she yelled back and said NO COME NOW like we were little kids. We were so taken aback we didn’t respond to her then but we did call the park later and the same lady answered . We told her she did not have to treat us like that and there was a way to go about the situation and that was not it. She started yelling and said “you were just going to camp and leave without paying.” Mind you we are drive a 50k Chevy truck hauling a 45k trailer. We are not some transients or unhoused like she was treating us. After so many horrible altercations with these workers over the years I think this was the last straw where me and my family will not be returning sadly to say. Our family was actually pictured and had an article in the Oakley newspaper years back about us coming to this park with our family and all the memories it’s held. Sad it’s come to this after three generations of our family...

This review is for tent camping, as this facility has RV options.

We chose this place because it was the closest available camping for the weekend we were looking. We knew nothing about it (or even the area) beforehand. We thought a campground by the river would be fun.

We stayed in the Willow loop, spot 29.

There were a lot of campers. A lot of large groups. They were respectful, but i think the place draws large groups because of the boating and fishing options.

The campsites were huge. We appreciated that aspect.

We are accustomed to large boxes or similar to hold food and such during the day. There are none here. The picnic tables at the sites are not all created equal. Ours was falling apart and a bit questionable.

The ground is all hay. The hay gets mowed and then is just left there creating a very soft bed of dead grass/hay. It's very soft ground and we found that our stakes did not stay in the ground. The soft ground was nice for sleeping on. Not so much for staking.

It was windy. Very windy. I'm sure it's normal for the area. But the wind pulled the stakes out of our tents and our sun canopy. Our canopy went flying across the campsite at one point.

The fire pit was nice and clean and worked well.

The bathrooms were a mess. In our area, only 2 of the toilets were working, and 1 had a broken lock. There was TP all over the floors and just messy.

There are no dumpsters in the campground area. We had to drive our garbage bags to the day use area to dump our garbage in the overflowing dumpster.

The swim "beach" was not a beach but rather a wide spot in the riverbank that was grass instead of bushes/trees to walk down to the river. It was small and the river there was gross and not appealing. There were a bunch of people with tents and chairs in the walkway preventing us from walking through.

If you choose to stay here, be prepared for high winds. We left a day early because we didn't get any sleep and didn't want to deal with constantly...