Clear Lake Campground

Clear Lake Campground in Clearlake, California, is a classic waterfront camping retreat established in the 1950s on Cache Creek — the sole natural outlet of Clear Lake, the largest natural freshwater lake entirely within California — in the Lake County wine country and volcanic highlands of the inner North Coast ranges. The campground's vintage character along the Cache Creek waterway gives guests the specific old-California camping experience that the lakeside retreats of the mid-20th century established for the San Francisco Bay Area market and that Clear Lake's position 90 miles north of San Francisco on Highway 20 has sustained across multiple generations of returning Lake County visitors. The creek-side setting and the small-scale, intimate character of the campground give Clear Lake Campground its specific appeal in an era of large-volume resort campgrounds. Waterfront RV and tent camping on Cache Creek give guests the immediate freshwater access to Clear Lake's sole outlet — a waterway whose bass and catfish fishing, the migratory bird corridor that Clear Lake's National Wildlife Refuge concentrates during spring and fall migrations, and the blue-green algae-affected summer periods give the creek its variable seasonal character across the camping season. The campground's established 1950s identity reflects the continuity of the California lakeside camping culture that Clear Lake's proximity to the Bay Area has sustained through seven decades of Lake County visitor traffic. Pets are welcome. Clear Lake, the largest natural freshwater lake wholly within California at 43,800 acres in Lake County, sustains a warm-water bass fishery that has made it one of the premier largemouth bass lakes on the West Coast — a reputation built on the lake's shallow, warming water temperature, the tule reed habitat along the natural shoreline, and the bass population density that Clear Lake State Park's fishery management has sustained as a tournament-quality lake for the California bass fishing community. The lake's trophy largemouth bass reputation and the annual Konocti Bass tournament draw competitive anglers from across California to the Clear Lake basin in the spring tournament season. Mount Konocti, the 4,299-foot volcanic peak rising from the Clear Lake basin in southwestern Lake County, is the most geographically prominent and most volcanically significant landform in the inner Coast Ranges — a compound shield and cinder cone volcano last active approximately 10,000 years ago whose summit hiking trails give guests the panoramic Clear Lake basin viewshed from the volcanic peak's western lava dome. The Clear Lake Volcanic Field's ongoing geothermal activity sustains the hot springs, fumaroles, and the Sulphur Bank Mercury Mine's abandoned historic workings at Clear Lake State Park that make the lake basin one of California's most active geothermal landscapes. Clear Lake Campground serves guests through the California lake camping season from spring through fall, with the bass fishing tournament season from March through May and the summer lake recreation season from June through August representing the two peak demand windows for the Lake County campground market. The Lake County wine country, concentrated in the Red Hills and High Valley AVAs above the Clear Lake basin's western rim, produces Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc from volcanic basalt and obsidian soils that give the Lake County wines a mineral distinction from the Napa and Sonoma Valley AVAs to the south. Reserve sites ahead for the bass tournament weekends and the summer Lake County wine country touring season.