Tall Chief RV & Camping Resort

This was our first time at Tall Chief and overall loved it! It is very close to all the Seattle area and it’s beautiful landscapes. We stayed in site 73 (ADA) site, it was fully paved which meant Richard (our son) was able to play outside more and work with his walker.

Pros
• Great Staff with at shout-out to Ed and James
• Close to about every shop you can imagine
• Well maintained roads and sites
• Lots of big rig friendly sites
• Well kept up grounds.
• Nice pool (open seasonally) and newer playground
• Lots of grass fields to let the kids play in
• Great wildlife and nature learning opportunities
• Quiet at night

Cons
• Limited total number of sites
• Trails Collection so shorter stay limit
• In a high cost of living area so cost of goods, services and fuel is higher
• No Sewer hookups in the entire park

Local recommendations
• Lots to do in Issaquah
• Near Snoqualmie Falls
• Short drive to Seattle and Snoqualmie Pass (hiking, skiing and all things mountains have), Tiger

Mountain, Snoqualmie River (kayaking and rafting) and Remlinger Farm
• Food recommendations
o Scott’s Drive-in, North Bend, Wa
o El Caporal Mexican Restaurant, North Bend, Wa
o Raging River Café, Fall City, Wa
o The Roadhouse Restaurant and Inn, Fall City, Wa

The roads and majority of the sites within the campground are gravel. Most sites are 30 amp, but they do have some 50 amp sites.

Once arriving with reservations, sites are FCFS. I think all the sites were back in. The staff member, Danielle, I interacted with was one of the nicest campground employees I’ve ever met. Campground has a gate at the entrance. Park changes the gate code once a week.

Campground has restrooms, showers, laundry room, dog walking areas, a clubhouse, mini golf, a pool, sauna and a dump station with 2 dumps. The restrooms and showers that were near the laundry room seemed updated and were clean. The laundry room had 4 washers and 6 dryers (one was out of service). It was about $2.50 per load. You could use your phone or credit card to pay. Both times I used it, it was clean. It did open at 9:00 am, and closed sometime in the evening.

Most of the sites were in the trees. Some had trees on the sides and back, while others had a tree canopy over the top of the site too. Definitely a variety of site lengths and low hanging branches. Only a handful of sites seemed to be in the sun, if the sun was out. Site 99 was the closest site to the entrance station, but noise didn’t bother us one bit. Did need to use blocks to level the RV. Site was pretty secluded. There was a picnic table and fire ring.

Verizon signal was adequate enough to text, search the internet, and stream videos.

Travel nurse staying for a few months & this was the closest park with availability near Seattle hospitals
Great sites, it’s a find your own spot situation & if you’re lucky you can get a relatively secluded one. Park was pretty quiet during day & night.
Staff was great & super helpful, always very friendly
No sewer hookups but they do offer a honeypot service at $60/empty
Facilities & common areas were well kept & clean
Nice little dog park area
Laundry was a bit small with limited times so usually took mine up the road to the issaquah laundromat or Tolt laundry Co in carnation
Location: great in my opinion, 15 min drive to a lot of shops/groceries/whatever you need, great location for hikers as you don’t have to deal with all the Seattle traffic & a lot of great hikes are within an hour to two hour drive
However, getting to/working in downtown Seattle was a huge beast, about a 40 min commute, sometimes an hour with heavy traffic- this made it a little less fun to explore the city
All in all wonderful stay, price was expensive but worth it & compared to a lot of major cities now-a-days during their peak season, relatively comparable. -did do the monthly rates

Agree with some of the previous reviews. Very expensive for no sewage hookups. Also the laundry room isn’t 24hrs and closes at 7pm, which is extremely inconvenient. First come first serve sites are also inconvenient, just tell me where to park! Lastly, I don’t mind requiring proof of registration and insurance but I thoroughly read all my check in emails and saw no mention of this until I was informed by the guard at check in. I’ve been full time for a year and this is the first place that required it.

Oh, and staff are not friendly.

There are some pluses- this is a very shady park with mature, beautiful trees. Sites are lined with wild blackberries which made for a delicious cobbler. Park is mostly quiet and made for a good midpoint for us to visit all three Washington national parks. I wouldn’t steer people away from this place, I’m just not 100% satisfied.

We are on a 3 month trip, and this is the first time I’ve been disappointed with a campground. First - the good. It’s fairly quiet. It’s pretty far off the interstate and on a small road outside of town, so it feels peaceful. A good portion of the spaces feel fairly private due to mature trees, etc. Now the bad. It’s first come, first serve, so we did a LOT of driving around to get to a decent, available spot. Not sure if this is common in campgrounds around here but it isn’t something I’ve experienced before. When we checked in, we were required to show proof of insurance on our camper. We may have missed that in the fine print, but it was a hassle to dig that out of the glove box and show it to the check in person. Especially when they’re supposedly doing everything to be COVID safe (which I’m fully on board with!). But why not have this be something to upload prior to checking in? In the end, I didn’t have the policy expiration date available. Just the policy number. The guy said I could call to let them know it later. I did not ever do this. Also, no sewer hookups for $80? This seems high! There’s cigarette butts in the fire ring, and on the site. Gravel/dirt was spread on the picnic table, so we ate inside. Clearly no one is checking these sites when people leave. Also, we were supposed to report what space we chose when we got to it. We were literally chocking our rig when the guy drove by in a golf cart and called out our last name and the site number, and said we didn’t need to call. I didn’t feel like he was offering to do it in a helpful way. More like “It’s been far too long since they checked in. I MUST investigate”. I don’t know. I felt like he was being a little passive aggressive. For $80, I’m not loving it. Again, we didn’t have a huge choice where to stay in this area due to a change in itinerary, so I’m grateful they had a space for us. I just think it’s wayyyy overpriced.

Easy check-in and the ranger even let us know which sites were available. Pretty cool! We ended up in spacious and level back-in site #20. There was lots of shade so that was great. The lack of a sewer connection was a massive bummer though. We've stayed in over 100 campgrounds in 2 years of full-time RVing, and Tall Chief is the only one where all of the sites have no sewer connections. An outside contractor handles honeywagon service. They only come by once a week and it's $60.00 to sign up. Yikes! We used the campground restrooms & showers as much as possible to avoid filling up our tanks. Site also had poor electrical box wiring in that the 30 amp and 120 volt plugs are on the same circuit. This meant that our breaker kept tripping every time we tried to run 2 air conditioners in 90+ degree heat. Bad job folks! And they need to do some tree trimming! Lots of overhanging branches makes it hard to get into the site. Campground is close to Issaquah and Redmond so there are lots of nearby grocery and shopping options. My AT&T phone had 2 bars of very slow service and my wife's Verizon phone had 1 bar. Our cell phone hotspots were also slow. The free lodge wifi was fantastic. No optional wifi at site available for purchase.

Checkin was easy. The park is gated and a gate code is provided upon arrival. The rangers are really helpful and easy to find. The sites are a bit older, but well-maintained. Sites are first-come, first-served. No sewer available, but there are 2 dump stations on site. Our timing for our stay coincided with 10 straight days of rain. Much of it heavy. It caused some small power issues during storms with really strong winds. The issues were temporary and resolved fairly quickly.

Friendliness: Very nice to deal with the rangers.
Sites: Gravel and grass. Lots of space between sites. Wooded with tall trees. Site #175 is one of the 50 AMP sites and we were really happy with it. Lots of privacy.
Location: About 20 minutes from town for groceries, food, and gas. Redmond is about 30 minutes away for shopping and great restaurants.

What a beautiful campground! Even though it’s only 20-30 mins from Seattle, this park felt like you were camping up in the mountains.

The amenities would’ve been great to enjoy but unfortunately because of the COVID-19 we weren’t able to use them even though the pool was calling our name! There were basketball courts, pickleball courts, volleyball, miniature golf course and a disc golf basket.

I should mention that sites are only water and electric but they do have a dump site that’s easy access.

Sites are private and shady with a fire ring and a picnic table. We would definitely stay here again.