Best Family Camping Spots in Sonoma County

Camping offers many benefits for families. You can spend entire days hiking, swimming, paddling, and having adventures together, racking up wonderful memories. An added benefit here in Sonoma County? Our campgrounds are in beautiful locations with plenty of exciting things to do.

Here are a few excellent spots to camp with your family:

Spring Lake Regional Park

On the rustic edge of Santa Rosa, Spring Lake offers a perfect camping experience for families, thanks to a swimming lagoon with an inflatable water park, a seasonal café, a small boating lake, and hiking trails. The park’s Environmental Discovery Center, geared to kids and their families, is a natural science museum with hands-on displays, naturalist-led hikes, and other activities.

Spring Lake also adjoins Santa Rosa’s 152-acre Howarth Park, a kid-oriented amusement area featuring a miniature train ride, carousel, pony rides, and an animal farm.

Spring Lake offers 31 campsites for tent, trailer, and RV camping. Sites are nestled into oak trees not far from the lake and are available daily from May through September; on weekends and holidays from October through April.

Doran Regional Park

Boasting a beautiful, two-mile stretch of sand that rests between Bodega Harbor and the open ocean, Doran is a popular campground for families who love the sea.

The park has more than 120 tent, trailer, and RV campsites available year-round (RV hookups are not available). Campground restrooms contain electrical outlets, flush toilets, and coin-operated showers, and a free EV charging station is located in the Cypress day-use parking lot.

Protected by Bodega Bay, Doran is popular for splashing or launching a kayak or a speedboat from a jetty at the harbor’s mouth. Take a walk on dozens of trails (including the popular Bird Walk Coastal Access Trail), fly kites, build sandcastles, whale-watch at nearby Bodega Head, or visit the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory (Fridays only) to see the aquarium displays.

Petaluma KOA/San Francisco North

Consistently rated one of the nation’s best camping and RV parks, Petaluma KOA campground is situated on 70 rural acres and offers more than 300 pine-covered tent and RV sites, each with a fire ring and picnic table. The large pull-thru RV sites offer 30amp/50amp, full hookups, cable, and WiFi.

There is plenty for the whole family to do, with bike rentals, a hot tub/sauna, a swimming pool with cabanas, a waterslide, an off-leash dog park, a bocce ball court, horseshoe pits, a bounce pillow, rock wall climbing, ring toss, basketball courts, a petting farm, hayrides, outdoor movies, a farm-themed playground, and Friday karaoke! Guided tours to San Francisco and Wine Country are available for a fee.

Sugarloaf Ridge State Park

Nestled into the mountains, Sugarloaf Ridge holds the headwaters of Sonoma Creek, a seasonal waterfall, and majestic Bald Mountain. The nearly 4,000-acre park is known for fabulous hiking through tree-covered ridges and a redwood forest, and many trails also accommodate mountain bikers. For families, a big draw is the Robert Ferguson Observatory, which houses several big telescopes and is open to the public on weekends. The observatory also has an outdoor scale model of the solar system, allowing you to hike from planet to planet.

Sugarloaf has 47 family campsites in a large meadow. Sites can accommodate RVs up to 27 feet long and campers up to 23 feet. Each site has a table and a fire ring. Flush toilets and drinking water are nearby. A few fully furnished luxury canvas tents are also available to rent. A group campsite, capable of handling 50, is available.

Sonoma Coast State Park

The gorgeous Sonoma Coast State Park includes 17 miles of fabulous beaches, bluffs, and headlands that stretch from Bodega Head to four miles past Jenner. It has two campgrounds, Bodega Dunes, and Wright’s Beach, that make great family vacations.

Bodega Dunes offers 98 campsites with token-operated hot showers, flush toilets, and a trailer sanitation dump station. The maximum trailer length is 31 feet; no hookups are available. Campfire and Junior Ranger programs are held during the summer. The day-use area includes a disabled-accessible boardwalk out to a sandy beach.

Wright’s Beach has 27 campsites adjacent to the beach. Each site has a picnic table, a fire ring, and a paved parking spot. Running water and flush toilets are available, but there are no showers (registered campers can use the hot showers 5 miles south at Bodega Dunes Campground). The maximum trailer length is 27 feet; no hookups are available.

Liberty Glen Campground at Lake Sonoma

Liberty Glen has 96 campsites available for tent and RV camping (no electrical or water hookups). Each campsite contains a picnic table, fire ring, and lantern holder. Firewood is for sale during the summer months. Restrooms, showers, and potable water are available. Accessible sites are available.

Many activities await families at Lake Sonoma, including boating, fishing, and swimming. There’s an extensive trail system for hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians, plus an archery field, a visitor center with exhibits, and a salmon and steelhead fish hatchery. Kids are invited to special events that take place during the summer, like the campfire, Junior Ranger program, water safety demonstrations, and more.

Casini Ranch Family Campground

Stretching for one mile along the Russian River, where it’s nestled into gentle hills (and only four miles from the Pacific Ocean), Casini Ranch’s family-pleasing campground activities include free outdoor movies, beach bonfires, duck feedings, guided hikes, watercraft rentals, summer ice cream socials, a historic barn, and hayrides. The Moscow General Store is onsite and offers laundry facilities.

The 110-acre ranch is open year-round, offering 225 tent and RV sites with fire rings and picnic tables (a few cabins are also available). Many sites have spectacular views of the river; others are secluded in wooded pockets and clearings. Some are large enough for extended families to gather together. Restrooms with hot showers are located throughout the grounds. Tent sites have water nearby; sites with full hookups offer electricity up to 50 amps, with water, sewer, and 48 channels of CATV. WiFi is free in various locations throughout the park.

Wildhaven Sonoma Glamping

Wildhaven’s riverfront glamping provides clean comfort and warmth in the heart of Sonoma County’s great outdoors. Choose a safari-style canvas tent or a modern cabin with air conditioning. Both come with comfortable beds and fresh linens, electricity, heaters, and furnishings for a memorable family camping trip. Lodging can include two queen beds and a few options have two sets of bunk beds to sleep four kids. There is a store onsite, and each site includes an outdoor kitchen and shared bathrooms with showers.

Wildhaven is located just 10 minutes from charming Healdsburg, on the banks of the Russian River, where campers get private river access to river beaches, places to float, and scenic spots to set beach chairs right into the clear water. Just make sure to check out Sonoma County’s safety tips for water activities before heading out.

Together, we can protect and preserve the beauty and natural resources of Sonoma County for generations to come. Check out our page on Sustainable Travel, and look over the Leave No Trace Seven Principles.

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Written by Sonoma Insider Suzie Rodriguez