Ventana Campground — Local services in Gonzales

Very interesting layout for the campgrounds, makes it both fabulous and very impractical. it depends on which site you get, so choose very carefully.

you can choose to be far away from other people, and the bathrooms by the way, better bring your pee Buddy ladies, or you can choose to Camp right next to the parking lot and/or the bathrooms, with a lot of foot traffic, headlights, and exhaust smell.

The setting is absolutely beautiful, it's clean, well-maintained, the bathrooms are in great shape. they charge you though, so bring tokens, they don't take coins, my friend found out the hard way.

Okay, you have to be lucky to get them to let you drive your things into and drop off at the campsite, because if you have to hike that much stuff in, oh, how miserable that would have been. We were allowed to drive our stuff in and drop it off at the campsite, and it made a world of difference, otherwise the 'hike in' campgrounds are really rough, steep road.

Which is kind of the point, a restful place in nature, the sites are staggered along the growing lines in nature which make them irregular and sometimes unexpected which adds to the ambiance, but also the impracticality, if you need to haul a bunch of gear in and out, but I think it was done very creatively. I applaud Ventana Campground. this place really delivers with forestry, and the trees are spectacular! and when you think about how ancient they are it's so humbling. Ventana campgrounds really is a beautiful, meditative place.

We found it difficult to get an actual level ground in some cases, so I recommend bringing small bean bags to put under table legs to level off, so things don't roll off the table and such.

Don't cheat with the firewood people; you must buy it from them; very important rule. I wish we'd brought charcoal to better cook the shrimp. It took too long with just firewood. Don't know if that's allowed.

the most unpleasant thing for me was the faint smell of exhaust, coming in regular waves the entire time; the freeway is adjacent, and I believe exhaust gets caught in the trees and it just hangs there, slowly dissipating. but maybe I just have a really sensitive nose, because no one else complained about that.

The drive along the alt Route 1, along the coast, is stunning! it is captivating! if you're driving on the way up, make sure you don't have to drive on the way back, so you can look at everything!

Notice how beautifully the repairs have been on the areas that got washed out. California takes care of its roads and it is in clear evidence: the Magnificent engineering that goes in to making these roads passable and safe, is part of the experience... don't miss it!!

once you hit the coast it is just stunning. go in the late spring, early summer for that drive: sparkling green and blue, turquoise; there are elephant seals playing on the shore, pasture land on the other side in certain seasons. it's really a sight for sore eyes, ones that need to be rejuvenated. I...

Stayed June 4-6, 2023 in one of the glamping tents (site 12). The tents are great, mostly comfortable bed (slight dip in center), nice linens, lamps, coat rack, space heater, fan, heated blankets, 2 towels and 2 hand towels. The site itself was well maintained ours looked out to the forest and had a beautiful brook beside it. The back of the tent was against some sort of tank which we would occasionally hear hum. The bathouse was clean and very pretty. The showers would randomly go cold for a few minutes then back to warm, much like showering in a RV. They are also little travel outhouses around the camp which are nice. There were no services or supplies available beside firewood and ice. No snack bar, no restaurant open, no access to the resort unless you wanted to pay an additional $250 a guest to use some services, which we didn't need. What we would've like to understand before coming was there are no extras like a bar of soap or washclothes at the campsite. We weren't prepared for that and it is on us for not reading more into the descriptions. We were traveling and thought this was going to be more of a luxury camping experience than it was, this was more camping than luxury. You need to bring Everything except bedding and a towel. We thought we would just eat at the smokehouse turns out it closed half the week, the entire time were there. Luckily the food nearby was good. Unfortunately it meant driving through the tight roads of the campground several times a day. I highly recommend the campground if you are prepared for camping and not thinking this is a glamping experience. We have stayed at others where services were still available on the grounds, there are NO additional services, they direct you to nearest market for everything. The website makes statements like "In addition, we are happy to announce a menu of enhancement packages that feature coolers, s'mores ingredients, and more!" The campground host said he had no idea what we were talking about and directed us to the local market. Very disappointed about the lack of enhancements. We wouldn't have stayed here had we known there was no food or options for getting food without a drive. With all that said it is a beautiful campground and the redwoods are amazing. It is a one and...

We stayed in one of the walk in site glamping tents. The campground is beautiful and the site had everything we needed. However, a few things were lacking. Mostly customer service. When we arrived to check in at the front gate the attendant gave us a map and told us we could pull up to unload and then pull back down to our designated parking spot. As we were unloading, a woman pulled up in a golf cart to tell us that out car wasn’t allowed to be where it was. We explained that we were under the impression it was okay to pull up to unload. She was at least polite about telling us this wasn’t okay. At the same time, while my husband was speaking to the female employee, I got a phone call from another employee telling me we needed to move our car. I explained that the front desk had said we could pull up to unload and he argued with me that we pulled up farther than was allowed etc. He told me there was a sign, there was a sign that said “authorized vehicles only” which we assumed we qualified for as we were staying in one of the tents. Later, we saw that they had put up another sign in the middle of the road that said “no vehicles beyond this point.” Obviously that sign was not there at the time of us pulling up, it was in the middle of the road and would have prevented us from driving to where we did. It was just a misunderstanding but my issue was the rudeness and argumentative attitude of the employee on the phone. Also sending an employee to speak with us in person and a phone call felt overbearing, especially since our car was parked in this spot for probably a grand total of 10 minutes. Our other issue was that we were given two bathroom keys, but only one of them worked. The lights in the bathrooms seemed to be on some sort of sensor and turned off on both me and my husband while showering. Overall, a beautiful campground but a few small issues and subpar...