As in Henry Coe State Park, the largest state park in Northern California, covering over 87,000 acres. Supported by the non-profit Pine Ridge Association, the park has a huge number of hiking trails and a varied terrain.

We had hiked here before but never camped there. The campground has 19 sites but only about half can take a trailer, and the limit is a maximum of 20 ft (RV motorhomes can be 22 ft). Sites can be booked through Reserve California. There are no hookups and no dump station, but there is water at every site and clean bathrooms nearby (which we did not use). We were in site 17 but could not use the full length of the site because of some tree branches that the very friendly ranger seemed incapable of doing anything about (when we returned home we immediately placed pruning shears and a small hand saw in the trailer for future use).

Some hiking friends camped near us in their truck camper, and we had a fabulous 11-mile, 2,300 ft hike following the trail to Frog Lake, then up to the Middle Ridge trail and down to Poverty flat, where we had two very cool and refreshing stream crossings!

While there weren’t a lot of wildflowers, the weather was perfect and the views were wonderful. We plan on returning for another visit in late fall or spring (summers are too warm there for us).