Elk Country RV Resort & Campground — Hotel in McKinleyville

TLDR: For a place advertised as a "resort" it is far from it. Poor/gross housekeeping. Poor/lazy maintenance. Aside from the location, it isn't worth the money they charge.

I stayed here for three nights in February, so the off-season for sure. I camped in my RV van at a full hook up site.

Pros: Great location for the Redwood parks and shoreline I saw elk several times on the grounds, which was cool Site was level with a small amount of gravel/pebbles

Cons: I never saw an employee the entire time I was there. I arrived around 2:45pm and the store was listed to be open till 4pm on the door. It was closed. I never saw it open during my stay. The bathrooms are code locked, which I wasn't given the code on my paperwork. I had to ask a neighbor what it was, as I didn't have cell service to call anyone. Someone took a huge shit right outside the women's bathroom door. Guess they didn't get the door code either. It was there for three days! No one came to clean that OR the restrooms in that time. There were at least a dozen other RVs in the grounds during my stay. I know I wasn't the only one using the restrooms. And I couldn't call anyone to let them know about it either. There's a security camera right above the restroom door, so they must have seen the person who did it. Or even noticed it happened at all. Guess not! There was a light out in the bathroom. After dark, it is pretty dim in there. It doesn't take more than 10 minutes to change out a bulb. And one of the toilets was out of order, but there was no sign on the door. Just the lid of the tank sitting on the seat when you opened the stall door. For all the "NO" signs around the grounds, I would think they have one to spare. It isn't mentioned on their website, but the showers are coin-operated. I don't have a bathroom/shower in my van, so staying at places with showers is great. But it costs $0.25 per minute to use! On top of that, I paid $45 a night for a full hook up. There was NO other option of site type. All their tent sites look to be out for the season, but even the those sites were only $5 less per night without power and water. It feels like they are squeezing every penny they can. There is a laundry room, but it was out of service while I was there. Or that's what the sign on the door said. I walked by and could hear a dryer running. I had to drive 20 minutes into town to do my laundry. And if you don't have quarters for the shower, too bad. The only coin machine was in the laundry room. Which I didn't get a code for either. There are "Don't do this or that" signs everywhere. I understand they are covering their asses on liability for stupid people, but it looks pretty unfriendly with dozens of NO signs on every inch of the road edge. They charge for Wi-Fi too. I couldn't even access it but I saw from other reviews they charge after the first 30 minutes.

Realities (things the resort cannot do anything about) Where there are elk, there is elk poop. It was everywhere, on the road, on the site, on the grass, you get it. Walking around was a challenge to miss the piles. Granted, the elk get free range of the place, so it is to...

Overview: Good location, lots of elk to view. However, the staff is ridiculously rude, save for one guy who is totally creepy because he pays too much attention to kids and kids only. More details below.

The good: This campground has a good location in relation to fun hikes and other activities within the Redwoods and it certainly is neat to be able to walk to the open field adjacent to the RV sites to see the herd of elk grazing and resting. Tent sites are in a heavily treed area, so shade is sufficient and you actually feel like you have a bit of privacy and can enjoy some nature.

The bad: There are a lot of permanent trailers within the tent camping, which seemed really strange and didn't add much to the camping atmosphere. The bathrooms were atrocious. Like you go there thinking, yay there are running water toilets and showers, and realize most vaulted toilet bathrooms are less disgusting. The facilities are in need of repairs and/or updating, too. Like the ceilings in the showers are peeling horribly and this added to my disgust with the cleanliness a great deal.

Restocking was also an issue as both the men's and women's bathrooms ran out of toilet paper and paper towels multiple times during our stay (we stayed a little less than a week). When things were finally restocked, it wouldn't last long and wasn't always stocked properly. For instance, a roll of paper towels would just be setting on the counter next to the sinks, and I would put it in the dispenser myself.

As for the staff, they came upon our arrival just to rudely tell us we had too many cars. It went like this, "woah, waaaayyy too many cars guys." We knew this and were just trying to unload before going to park in overflow, but I feel like they could have made sure we were aware in a much friendlier way, maybe like starting with welcoming us to camp. The whole time we were there it seemed like they just continued driving around in their golf cart, while smoking, just to tell people they were doing things wrong. They always seemed really grumpy.

As for the one friendly staff member, he expressed far too much interest in the kids in our party and to the kids only, especially the girls. When my niece would be off on her own he would try to engage her in conversation and ask her numerous questions, and he remembered the names of kids that he learned but not that of adults. When I would be walking with my toddler daughters, he would try to talk to them and them only, generally ignoring that I was even there. I'm telling you, we had 6 adults in our party and we all had a bad feeling about the way he was acting.

Feel free to try this place out. Under better management it could be great, but I would never return here unless I knew for sure that there was different staff, especially as long as I have...

I reserved a spot a month in advance (can't pick it yourself it's a surprise when you get there) I called the same day to verify our reservation and was told what spot they gave us. We got to the campground and checked in and was directed were to go, we found our reserved spot and found someone parked in it. We head back to the office and she states "I hope it's not the campers that were supposed to check out, they wanted to stay longer". She sends her partner to inspect. He comes back and said no one was there so our spot was not avail right now and he had her put us in another spot near there, so we go and found that spot was taken as well. Now she is really stressed she re-checks her paperwork, they talk and they offer us to move to temporary spot and we could hook up if we wanted but when our original spot finally opened they would have us move. They offered us a couple of bundles of wood for our trouble. Trying to stay calm but totally frustrated on this 4th of July weekend, we declined and decided to hopefully find something else down the road. She apologized and gave us our money back.

Both the Mr and the Mrs were totally stressed out, had they checked their camp sites that were scheduled to leave (we were checking in about 5pm plenty of time in between check out and check in) this should not have happened. This tells me they don't clean/clear each spot when someone leaves. They had several spots open, but never offered a permanent spot only temporary. Moving around with a 32ft 5th wheel is not an easy thing to do this was not what we signed up for. The park grounds looked unkept, their road sign says "Under New Management" I think they need help managing it. Obviously it was too much for those 2 to keep track of all their camping spots and take care enough to clean and inspect each spot after checkout. We have drove past this camping area for years, it was a campground that we have always wanted to stay at, we almost did & We will never go back. Total disaster.

We went up the road to Camper Corral in Klamath and were treated so well, we were given a quiet and clean spot to camp all weekend even on a busy holiday weekend.

Bad management new or not they need to check their camp sites so when a new renter shows up, it's clear of debris, and cleared of late...