I used Yelp to find a place to camp, and this time it failed me.
The scoop:
View: 3 (4 from the main/day use area, from the camp sites, though, this is a 2 (Meh).)
Noise: 1 (Jesus Jones, I felt like I was at an airforce base inhabited by rowers, cocks, and children!)
Campsites: 2 (Not level, infested with brambles)
Bathrooms: 4 (Nice bathrooms, they flushed and even had a shower in one set of them)
Convenience: 4 (Oddly in a juxtaposition of an urban/rural/suburban island; a few miles away there is Winslow; super convenient on that end).
Alright, I must caveat my remarks here. If you are a camper, meaning someone who uses a tent and wood, this review is relevant to you. If your idea of camping is an RV, then this review is not for you.
Fay Bainbridge is an odd mix of stuff. The day use area, which is down by the water, has a panoramic view of the sound and the city across the sound. It is gorgeous, picturesque. And then the children start crying. And the boaters start blaring their loudspeakers.
The 10 campsites they have would be much better suited if you came as a group and took all of them. This place is weird in that you can't reserve anything, so it is first-come first-served. That said, I went on a weekend in August and it wasn't packed. The sites are situated in a basically common area, where you park in a lot and walk your gear in. The furthest spot away is only 50 meters or so, so it isn't a hike or anything. But the ground isn't level, so I ended up at the door of my tent in the morning, sliding all around all night; not a comfortable night's sleep.
Additionally, the whole island is infested with blackberries. In mid-to-late August, this means you can pick blackberries and have them accompany your breakfast (a real plus), but it also means that if you're taking down your tent and your pole passes the bounds of the site, you're in danger of losing it.
The camping area also has zero separation between campsites for noise, meaning that the annoying neighbours I ended up with (with 4 children, toys that made a lot of noise, screaming, a guitar player who insisted on pointing his crappy music at us, rather than away from us) annoyed us to no end. We had no recourse; we just had to suffer through it. Of course, annoying neighbours aren't the fault of the campground; but the set up is the fault of the campground. There's simply no noise barriers nor privacy, unless you wanted a very tiny site hedged by holly and blackberries (which make for an interesting stumble to the bathroom in the dark at night [scraaaaaape! CRAP!]).
In the evening, after the children went to bed, our neighbours talked so loudly that we thought they were in our camp. Oh, and did I mention the fireworks? Apparently, Poulsbo was having a World War II re-enactment, complete with fireworks and explosions.
The bathrooms are situated at the bottom of the steep hill for all the RVers (you know, people with toilets). Logistically, I don't know how else this could be done; it makes sense for the landscape. But that means that 3am pee gets weighed pretty heavily against taking it in the loo.
From the campground area, we were isolated from the view, so it was like any other site. The slight incline I thought wouldn't be much of a problem, but it was difficult to find a place to put up a tent. There was a cluster of ferns and blackberries in the middle of our site (#32) and all around us were ominous blackberries.
If I had better neighbours, I still would have been rudely awakened. There must be an airport near; all evening and even in the morning, propeller planes were flying overhead. At dawn, the roosters from a neighbouring house started crowing, competing in loudness for one another. It was terrible.
Since there is great boating in the day-use area, a team of rowers got to the Sound at about 8:30 or 9:00 am.... and then started with their bloody loudspeakers (stroke! stroke!). Between the children (not the fault of the camp), the roosters, the boaters, the EXPLOSIONS AND DYNAMITE, and the planes, there was no chance for sleeping in this place. Just plan to be up all night.
I would recommend that you visit this place, take your children and have them be loud on the jungle gym, annoy the campers out of it, bring your boats, use the day-use area for picnics with your Hawai'ian-shirt-wearing-Boomer-friends, or set up your RV on one of their fantastically tiny RV parking spots, be a loud, respectless asshole, play John Mellencamp at your neighbours, light off fireworks, but whatever you do, don't camp here and expect to get any rest.
It seems to me that those who use this area do not care about the campers, respect noise levels, or try in any way to see this as a nature preserve. It is definitely not the place to hang out, chill, have some beers with some friends, and meditate and be peaceful and commune with nature. It is noveau camping. read more