Cougar Rock Campground — Hotel in Graham

Motorcycle camping trip from Dallas, Texas. It took almost 4 full days of long riding to get there. But, it was to be an epic trip of a lifetime. I'd only seen Mount Rainier from the air and was very anxious to actually visit and camp there. ||OK about the campground: |We made our reservations as soon as they were open for reserving; I think 6 months in advance. I don't exactly remember. But snagging 5 campsites was easy. Much easier than other popular campground reservations. ||The forests are thick and dark. I've never seen forests like this before. They were also very quiet. I loved it. The sites seemed small, but plenty large for my 8 x 8 tent, the picnic table, the fire ring, and with ample room to lounge. The potty rooms were apparently plentiful. Mine was only about 200 feet away, tent to door. ||There are no showers in Mount Rainier National Park. So we had two nights of stinky. Our next night at Seacrest State Park at Mt St Helens had great showers and I made up for no shower for 2 nights at Rainier. ||The site was acceptably level. One of our group's site was in a gulley about 5 feet deep. However, they found room for their tent and just dealt with climbing in and out off the campsite to the road level. We wondered what would happen in a heavy rain. But the weather was perfect. ||The ground was hard-sandy, perfect for tent stakes. I was able to park my heavy motorcycle parallel between my tent and the road making an easy-in and easy-out. There was just enough room. ||I'll admit, we usually get lost trying to find our campsites; end up driving round and round before finally seeing the right loop and campsite sign. We found our sites first try at Cougar Rock. Easy peasy. ||Unfortunately, we only had two nights and one full day in the park scheduled before heading to Mt St Helens and then down the PCH. I could have used 3 full days. I like to hike. The sites were available when we reserved if we could have taken another day there. ||It was a glorious ride to Paradise! Don't let the "Parking Full" get in your way. It's always full; but not for motorcycles. The parking lot has specific Motorcycle-Only spaces and there were plenty of them. ||We had breakfast at the Paradise Inn. We won't do that again. At almost $50 each, it was a bit too steep. Packaged food from the grocery store would have sufficed at a fraction of the cost. So instead of a fine dinner at the Paradise, we bought food at the grocery and cooked over the campfire. Everything is expensive up there. Even a self-cooked meal cost about $14 each. Not horrible, just maybe 25 percent more than expected. We didn't tip ourselves so it was a wash. ||It was cool in July but not cold. The weather was perfect. Our camping experience was supreme. I want to go back. I'd stay in Cougar...

We stayed here for two nights this past week after camping for numerous days at Newhalem Campground up in the North Cascades. It wasn't long before pulling into our site that we were already missing our quiet, private site in Newhalem and dreading our site here.

This campground is close to Paradise, the most popular spot in Mount Rainier. It is also just uphill from Longmire which has a cute little general store and some basic necessities. If you were staying for more than a couple of days, this would obviously be very helpful.

The campground itself is pretty large, but they cram you into the sites like sardines. We stayed in what they claimed to be the "tent only" loop thinking that we would gain a bit more piece and quiet, but it turned out it wasn't tent only, it was just generator free. It was Loop E, Site E013. On recreation.gov, this site looked pretty private and off to itself, so we were more than surprised to find that we had three other tents less than ten feet from our own.

It was loud essentially 24/7. This is absolutely a weekend getaway campground for families with little kids, so if this pertains to you, it is probably up your ally. If you're looking for somewhere with peace and quiet, keep looking. We had kids running around and all of the surrounding sites screaming at all hours of the day, including until almost 11:30pm one night. We also had kids riding their scooters off rocks in our campsite while we were sitting there trying to enjoy our supper. Parents were never anywhere to be seen. It wasn't just the kids -- people had barking dogs, would stand in the middle of the road and yell over to the other sites at each other instead of just walking over there, and people were banging pots and pans around in the middle of the night as well. If there were quiet hours, they were never enforced.

The restrooms are generally always close by, but they are pretty old and could use a little bit of cleaning. This really didn't bother us much, but we didn't care for the fact that there was never any soap. Just make sure to bring your own.

If you are looking for somewhere close to Paradise and don't care about privacy or noise, this place is probably perfect as it has a great location. However, if you're like us and cherish the peace and quiet,...

Stayed at Cougar Campground for 3 nights and we appreciated the location since we made it our base camp to explore Mount Rainier National Park.

We travel in a 25-foot long motorhome and stayed in loop C on site 36. We could maneuver fairly easily with our rig but leveling it was a bit difficult. Not many rigs in this campground, more tents than anything else. No services and flushable washrooms were so so. Relatively clean but old. No showers and no washing dishes station.

First the pros, quite cheap 20$/night and just 20 mins from Jackson Visitor Center on the Paradise side of the park. That was the big plus b/c the parking up at the VC fills up very quickly. By 7:30 am the first two parking lots at the VC were full and we used the pic nic area about 10 mins from the VC. It was crazy to see many kilometers of cars waiting to park at the VC.

The campground is also close to the trail to get to Longmire, about 2 miles and to some falls close by.

It is a nice campground but don’t expect a view on Mount Rainier. Lots of threes and our site was quite large but some are super tiny, read the site details closely if you have a rig.

There were activities for junior rangers at the amphitheater which was fun.

The cons now, this is a noisy place. Not b/c of generators but it is a crowded place, very crowded. Don’t hope to site down and read in peace! We had loud neighbors but maybe we were also loud! There is a lot of traffic as well. Sites are a bit chaotic with a lot of downed threes...