Headquarters Campground — Hotel in Porterville

I honestly wish this review was a better outcome because my friends and family have been coming here for 10 years. We stayed from the 25 to 28 of july and this year has been the worst one yet. Apparently this campground got under new management and things changed. Let me just say it is the worst hosts ever and kept threatening that the ranger would be coming over to check on everyone if we didnt quiet down. We had not even been too loud and this happened on the last night we were staying. I know their job is to check around that no one is breaking rules but please, who needs to be circling and checking on everyone every 5 minutes. Not just that but the fact that she would bother about something or anything she could find. We felt as if this vacation was ruined because of these hosts. We had been asked to take stuff down because we couldnt be hanging anything off the trees but there were many people around who had more than one thing hanging which were hammocks. When it came to the rules’ curfew, it says that all music and things had to be turned off. While it was still 9:40, the host cane over to say we were making everyone miserable and that we were breaking rules by not turning it off. Let me remind you it was 9:40, not 10:00 so we still had a right to continue with our music and fun for 20 more minutes but she had assumed it was 10:00 already. She spoke to us very badly and didnt even let us explain ourselves and that we were not in the wrong. After all this, we all went to sleep and once laying to rest, we could hear people laughing very loud and blasting music at 2 in the morning. So many things were horrible and also the fact that were was no toilet paper in the bathrooms so we had to find something to use. After all this, Having to constantly abide by the rules which we were already doing, the host ruined our whole vacation. I hope management changes soon because it was not it. All other years were amazing and this one just happened to be the worst of them all. Worst management of this camp and hopefully they find somewhere else to bother...

Decent campsite. Went on President's Day/Valentine's weekend and it was the only open campsite on Reserve America. A month prior, most of the sites were booked. I picked Site 004. Site 004 sucks. It's hard to tell based on the Reserve America maps and photos, but the sites next to the highway are literally next to the highway. Imagine if a drunk driver drove into your camp! Plus all the constant noise. The highway side sites don't have food cupboards either.

Anyway, lucky for us, some people didn't show up and we moved to Site 33 the next day. It's across from the host, but he was cool. This site had a cupboard, fire ring, picnic table, tree cover, enough space for a large 8-person tent and a smaller 2-person tent. It wasn't buggy in February, but there is a pool of stagnant water behind it that, if it doesn't clear out by summer, might be bad for mosquitoes.

Vault toilets were kept pretty clean. The water in the pumps, while "potable," was very yellow and tasted awful. I used it for cleaning, but bought drinking water in town.

We drove north until the Johnsondale road closure. Trail of 100 Giants was closed, so that was a bummer. We scouted out a lot of the undeveloped campgrounds and they didn't have a lot of privacy, the rest of the developed campgrounds were gated off, so we couldn't check those out.

Headquarters isn't a bad choice, but you should really try to get a riverside site or at least one in the middle, but those have very little privacy. Still better than a...

We camped here on October 7th and 8th. The site host was very friendly. They don't have many sites that fit an RV. However, ours did fit perfectly. The total length with the car is about 30 feet, and we had no room to spare. I think something longer would not even be able to navigate the campsite road (tight narrowish turns). We were told there was other parking for the car if it didn't all fit. The website doesn't note generator hours, so I'll note here that the host told us we could use it outside of quiet hours (10pm-6am). This is mostly a tent campsite, and we were the only RV outside of the host. The campsite we used was 43, and the website was accurate about the back row of sites not having much shade. However, the sites were pretty large, which might make up for it. The back row of sites is also right off the road,however, headlights from cars going by while we were around the campfire was a little annoying. My only big complaint is that there weren't really any good places to even go down and look at the Kern River that we were able to find. Most entrance areas were out of someone else's campsite. I was pleasantly surprised that the mosquitoes were not bad at all. Overall, those were minor inconveniences, and we enjoyed our stay. This campsite was pricier than what I usually see, IMO, but that might be due to its closeness to Kernville. It's like an 8...