Tobacco River Campground

The place has definitely go down hill. The tweakers, Meth heads and the long term trailer storage people have definitely found this area. This season it’s got tweaker crack trailers and Meth RV repair in full swing. Not to mention the, it’s saving my place people. You know. The rig that just sits there for months that only get used on a weekend. See pictures.

Plan A was to stay at the Riverside Park in Eureka, but it's clearly signed for tents only - no RVs overnight. We followed the directions to this forest service area left by other reviewers and found a great site right along the river Well, great for our Jeep/Pod combo and there were only a couple muddy spots. Lots of activity on a Friday night, but it was the perfect spot we needed before heading to Canada the next day.

We stayed only one night due to the temps running near 100 degrees, but it is a great campground with tons of space between sites.
With our 40' motorhome home, driving down the access road is challenging but doable. I would hate to meet a vehicle coming the other way since part of the road is steep and narrow.
Of the sites in the upper area, some are heavily treed, and some are out in the sun. There seems to be some "Claiming" of sites by leaving gear or a truck. Yes, they may have been out exploring for an extended period, but I'm guessing it is mostly locals who love specific sites and want them for the weekend. My wife found the site dusty, but I did not.
T-Mobile worked barely, but our Starlink worked well.

Turn at the "fishing access" sign not far past the bridge over the Tobacco River. Don't follow Google Maps. If you miss it, you can turn around across from the gravel yard that's not too much further on, before the pay campground. The first part of the road is a little steep but in good condition. When you get to the sign, I'd say park it and go pick a spot. The spots to the right are above the river in the trees, nice and flat but no view. The spots down the hill to the left have good river access and views but the road is terrible due to the wet early summer. It's dry at this point but kudos to the trailers that got down in there. Mostly, I wouldn't like going up and down that road. Access to the rail trail to Eureka is from the upper end of the flat camping area. It's almost quicker to go to town on your bike than drive. The section of the rail trail through the camping area is pretty much of a joke, especially where it goes up the hill into the private neighborhood. Yes, that is the trail. It becomes very nice again after that and through the pay campground to the commercial marina. There's a vault toilet, but we didn't check it out. You can barely hear the highway. We also floated the river from the town park to our campsite in our inflatable kayak. There's lots of trees in the river, but nothing we couldn't get around. The laundromat was the worst we've been in. T-Mobile was 32/6.3. The other trailers were polite with their open frame generator use. We found a spot with a.m. sun and afternoon shade. It was 90 when we were here.

I had problems finding it with Google maps. Best directions are travel about 4 miles on Highway 37 west of Eureka. Look for a small "Fishing Access" sign on the right. Take the nice gravel road down to a road fork. The nice sites for large rvs are to the right. No facilities except for rock rings. The narrow and rough road to the left is better suited for smaller units and tenters. Those sites were all filled when we arrived early in a Tuesday. This is on the Kootenai National Forest with a 16 day stay limit.

Stop at the big sign board!
If you are towing a trailer stop at the sign board!
This is where you need to make a decision.
If you keep right / forward you will have a nice easy place to get around the loop. There’s several places you can get and some that are just grassy areas.
If you want to go left and down to the lake then you should drop the trailer and pre run the road and scout out sites. If you go left and don’t pre run the area you might get stuck.
There’s also a road that goes left after going over what was a rail road track that is a dead end and may be flooded. DO NOT GO DOWN THAT ROAD!
There’s noise during the day from a rock quarry across the river and noise from the highway.
You may also have bear come through your camp depending on the time of your. The Salmon run will bring the bears so be careful.

This is a nice free dispersed camping area. It has vault toilets and a camp host when we visited. There are two areas: one by the lake and one near the river. Access is off of highway 37 and you will see a sign pointing to "fishing access." Once you get down the hill, if you continue straight, you will get to the sites near the river (though few are directly on it). If you take the first road to the left, you will get to the lake sites. There is a vault toilet at each location and a few picnic tables at the lake site (which I think is nicer). If you are interested in the sites on the lake I would recommend parking at the fork in the road and walking down to see the condition of the road and availability. It was deeply rutted when we were there and you may not want to take a lower clearance vehicle there. The number of sites in this area depends on the lake level. Earlier reviews appear to be from when the lake level was low and there is a wide area along the lake that is available and easy to turn around in. The lake levels were high during our visit and the lower area was underwater. There were still some nice spots, but fewer of them. Rather than going to the lake side, larger RVs may want to consider the river side of the camping area. Roads are wide and there are some spacious areas.

One nice amenity of this location is that there is a bike trail (gravel) that goes 4.5 miles into the town of Eureka. It's a nice ride though watch out for bears. While Verizon cell coverage was decent, we found the AT&T service was spotty even with a booster. You will find that reception varies by location and may be better at the sites along the river. There is no garbage, potable water, or dump here. However there is a nice dump station ($5) at the Rexford Bench Campground just a few miles south on the highway.

We arrived here mid Friday afternoon, nabbing one of the last spots by the lake. The road in is quite rough & would be a bear in the wet season, plus is a bit overgrown in places; but it is so worth it, just go slow and it'll be fine. The weekend was busy with locals coming to fish, swim or just paddle, but by Sunday afternoon it had cleared out. Once you drive off the highway you come to the Forest Service sign, go straight & you have very nice wooded sites. Or take a left & there are several sites next to the river, lake & a few on the hillside with a view of both.

Now for the good part, we witnessed a spectacular big bird show. It was the Bald Eagles VS the Golden Eagles plus Osprey. We had 1 Bald Eagle in the tree behind the camper every morning & the last day the mating pair were within feet of each other, peering out over their lake. The cool part is that if a pair of Golden or Osprey caught one Bald Eagle alone they would buzz the loner & usually give chase if it flew away. 4 or 5 times the Bald eagles did barrel rolls, showing the other birds it's talons in a super cool aerial combat maneuvers.

Great kayaking, hiking trails around & with a Rails to Trail Mt bike trail from the Rexford campground all the way back to Eureka, passing through the Tobacco River GC.

This area has many dispersed sites to choose from, some along the river, and others tucked into the woods. The road can be rough in some spots but if you go slow you'll make it.

We loved that it was quiet and we were right on the river. Spots are spread out so you have space between other campers. We were there during the week and it looked like an area that would get busy on the weekends.