San Francisco North / Petaluma KOA RV Camping Resort — Hotel in Petaluma

I'm totally new to camping as an adult. I've camped alot as a kid but now that I have kids, they have discovered YouTube and want to go camping and this new generation is nowhere near wanting to rough it like I did back in the day.

So I researched options on where to camp and I live in an area where this was an hour away and the Yogi Bear camp was an hour away. As I delve deep into what was available and we were going in the off-season time I realized the KOA had basically the same that the Yogi Bear camp offered, for half the price literally.

Okay so anyway, let me get into this review. We booked one of the cabins without a bathroom because it was more than a third of the price with the bathroom and I figured the camping aspect of roughing it for my toddler would be not having a bathroom close by. Thankfully we got a cabin right within walking distance of the store, the pool and the showers. The pool is heated!!!!! We were not prepared for a heated pool so we did not have swimsuits but we still made use of the facilities and we're in the pool and hot tub. The pool is massive and the seating area is huge nobody ever felt really rushed or cramped.

The showers and bathrooms are very clean and totally renovated they even had to shower heads and one shower stall! My toddler I thought it was pretty cool to take a shower with the shower head either spraying on top of you or to the side of you. I did bring water shoes and sandals because there's no way in hell I'm going to be walking barefoot even though it looks clean and new and renovated.

They had a laundry and it was about $4 to wash and a $1.50 to dry. They close early though at 7:00 so it was a bit of a rush to get all of our stuff cleaned after the pool because again we didn't have swimsuits so we swam in the next day clothes.

There is a huge playground that the photos do not do justice online. Online it looks like an average playground you would see at an apartment complex but this thing is huge with an even smaller setup for toddlers. There is a petting zoo in the animals are very friendly and will try to approach you. Everyone is biking and so it felt safe because there was so many kids being active, everyone had eyes on all their kids. A lot of people bring their dogs here and I was debating bringing my dog here because of the dog park but I'm glad I didn't because there was a lot of little dogs that did not seem social (you can tell when the dog is yapping or tugging on the leash when they're being walked).

The staff was super friendly and very welcoming and we're not condescending at all about all my questions. I'll be real I'm here 3 days and we've been the only person of color here. We did not feel unwelcomed.

The cabin itself is small but we did not spend a lot of time in the room we were busy outside the entire day but this room is enough for sleeping and lounging. There is a bunk bed in here but it helped with holding all of our stuff since there is no shelves. The Wi-Fi is a good signal, outlets work efficiently, and the lighting is fair.

I would like to come back here in the summer because I think it would be a lot more fun when...

We stayed here overnight. You can tell as soon as you pull up in front of the office that this is a “destination” KOA: there were crowds of kids at the pool, on the jump pillow, and at the small petting zoo. Other campground amenities include a small rock wall (for climbing, I assume, I didn’t see it myself) a large playground, a bocce ball court, the typical enclosed KOA dog park, a convenience store, and a recreation hall with a large tented patio that served as a movie theater at night. And we were given a sheet of daily activities at check-in along with paper wristbands to wear if we wanted to participate. So if you have kids or simply want some entertainment out of your campground, this place fits the bill.

We like to pick KOAs for overnight stops when we can because usually KOAs, even the fancier ones, are easy to get into and out of. That wasn’t the case for us at this park. We picked our site (P211) online knowing only that it was long enough and had full hookups. But the interior roads we needed to take to get into our site were a bit narrow, and we had to be careful with maneuvering our 37-foot fifth wheel around the turns so we didn’t swipe any parked vehicles. Our site was in the “Vineyard Terrace” section, where (true to its name) the sites are terraced and our driver’s side neighbor site was four feet higher than ours on the other side of the fence. We had no trouble pulling into the site, but we made sure we positioned ourselves so we had enough room to open our slides. The site exited onto a single lane road, and right across the road was a deluxe cabin with a parking spot facing the road. The truck in that parking spot was out of the road, but its position would have made it hard to get out: fortunately we met the owner and he moved the truck out of the way before we left. Even so, we came close to hitting the fence of our down-slope neighbor with the RV on the way out.

Our second challenge getting out was avoiding the dump station, which sits in-between the two exit lanes. The designated exit road would have forced us to make a right turn into those exit lanes, and there was a real question about whether we could make that turn, so we went the wrong way down a (two lane wide) one way road that allowed for a straight approach to the exit. It seems like a bad design: anyone using that dump station ends up blocking one of those exit lanes, and I can’t imagine what happens when there’s a line to use that station.

All that said, we managed to get out without a scratch, and there were other large rigs in neighboring sites, so it’s just a matter of deciding if you’re up for the challenge or if you’d rather pick a different spot.

In terms of cell service, the best speed I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna during our stay was about18Mbps down and 15Mbps up, and we had no problem surfing the web or watching streaming video the next morning. The best speed I got with my AT&T phone showed 13Mbps...

EDIT This is MY genuine and original review, I’m not sure why there is another account who clealry copied/pasted mine and changed just a few things in it but having it match exactly otherwise. Adding to my edit, the campground had replied thanking me for it and welcoming us back for future stays, however apparently updating my original review removed the campground’s original response and changed it to look like I just now reviewed them instead of two months ago? So I likely won’t update again from here in case they respond again

Fairly easy to locate, although the sign is hidden from view a bit and the entrance driveway is a bit narrow when two vehicles need to go opposite directions. Besides that though the staff were fantastic including an older semi-retired gentleman who spoke of his prior military service. They upgraded us to a pull-through site at no charge and let us check in an hour early. Grounds were clean and well maintained with nice facilities. A little pricey at near $100/night however there were plenty of amenities and again the staff and grounds exceeded my expectations.

I absolutely would recommend it and would return!

However, if you are driving a large class A or pulling a long travel trailer/fifth wheel, you will need to watch some of the turns/corners to get down the rows, especially when going to exit. It was no issue for me to do but I did need to circle around and find the row that lead straight to the exit gate as coming from any other direction I would not have been able to easily make the tight turn to exit the gate with my 37’ Class A rig towing our Jeep behind it despite all my experience in driving/maneuvering such large vehicles/equipment. That was about the only thing I’d be able to remotely complain about and even then it was a simple solution of knowing my rig and its abilities along with my own abilities to know that turn was next to impossible and I just needed to circle around and use a different row to access the exit gate.

I absolutely would return again though! Thanks for a great camping experience and being helpful upon our arrival!!!

Unrelated to the campground but relevant to nearby:

We visited San Francisco and although the campground felt very safe, use caution in the city! We had bicycles on the back of our jeep that were locked to it and when we came back from an Alcatraz Tour the locks/cables had been cut and one of our two expensive bikes had been stolen in under 3 hours. This is unrelated to the campground but wanted to add it for other visitors just in case they planned to see the city, keep any valuables locked at/in your RV and not in the city! We learned the hard way and lost a $1200 bike because I didn’t think I had time to spare to remove our bike rack and leave it...