The drive from Ellensburg to the Washington coast was beautiful and interesting – taking us up and over the Cascades. There are some fairly steep grades, mostly downhill, when heading west. For some reason the GPS got me off the freeway at one major interchange near Seattle and we had a few miles of narrow road, winding through the country and up and down over several hills before we finely made it onto I5 and began the final leg of our journey.
Getting to Mt Vernon Thousand Trails at Bow, WA is a bit of a leap of faith. You exit I5 onto Bow Hill Road and make your way to the campground without a single road sign. Not only that, but you turn at what appears to be only the entrance to the Skagit Casino. The road is marked as the entrance to the casino, there’s a “dead end” sign, and you basically drive a road that is part of the casino parking lot. At the northern end of the parking lot, you continue down a road marked “no thru way.” It looks for the world as if you are headed for an overflow parking lot for the casino. Then, at the end of that road, low and behold, you’ve arrived at a large, “hidden,” campground.
The roads through the campground are wide, gravel roads that are in pretty good shape. Many of the campsites are both deep and wide, big enough for most any rig. Many are cut into the woods, providing a great deal of privacy (but making it nearly impossible to get a satellite TV signal). There are some sewer hookup sites on the western side of the campground. They are pretty popular but there’s a price to pay for using them: not only will it be a challenge to get satellite TV at most of them, they are also situated quite close to the busy and noisy Interstate.
The eastern side of the campground is quieter with no sewer connect but RVers in one section in particular (nicknamed “satellite row”) have a better than average chance of getting a satellite signal. Some of those sites are more crowded together than those in the rest of the campground. It’s quieter on the eastern side most of the time. The exception is Saturday evenings. Just below the campground is a raceway that’s in full swing on all but winter Saturday nights. The noise of the cars and announcers is very loud. Happily, this is just a Saturday night thing. We at least got to enjoy the fireworks they shot off on Memorial Day weekend!
The campground has a nice Activity Center and large, heated pool. These are out near the entrance – quite a walk from most of the campsites. We saw people swimming even when the outside temps were in the mid-50’s. We decided to let them enjoy it without our joining them!
We heard reports of people having low electrical voltage, in fact, we had the same problem our first night. Because of that, plus low water pressure and a failure to get a satellite signal, we moved to the “satellite row” area after our first night’s stay. After that, we had no water or electrical issues for the rest of the time we were there. I had a decent 4G cell data signal but it was having problems. It would work for a while and then throughput would just stop. The only way to get it back was to turn on “airplane mode” on the phone, then turn it back off. Things would work fine for a while and then I’d have to jump through that hoop yet again.
We like Mt Vernon Thousand Trails although the lack of sewer hookups might be a big enough deal for us to go elsewhere, or at least plan for a shorter stay, in the future.