Barton Park

Pros:
* Closest campground to Portland.
* The camp hosts on duty for the duration of our stay, 9÷26÷2015 to 9÷28÷2015, were very friendly and welcoming.
* Some sites in the west campground are very private. Namely, those in the 30s and high 50s.
* Showers are free
Cons:
* the park rangers are one of incompetent, bad at communication, or rude. Every night of our stay we were harassed by rangers for not paying. We had, of course, paid: the rangers failed to update their logs accordingly. On our first night, we were harassed individually by two different rangers, both of whom demanded to see our payment receipts.
* some of the sites are terrible, utterly lacking privacy and literally involving camping in an open field.

Park is great, but watch out for the head honcho female warden who gets her rocks off by threatening to impound guests’ cars. Our keys were stolen in the parking lot and it took an unearthly struggle to get a locksmith out to help, and eventually a tow truck was required because after three hours, there was no way it was going to be fixed in time.
This woman was the most outright smug park employee I’ve ever encountered, and showed absolutely zero consideration for the situation. In fact, she quite obviously seemed to think it was funny, and was practically foaming at the mouth to get any remaining vehicle towed out of the parking lot by 10pm. Funnily enough, our tow truck driver ended up being the same one used by the park.
Look, I get it– the park closes at 10– but that doesn’t mean you have to be a discourteous windbag to people who are already in a stressful situation. The other park employee was perfectly kind to us, while this woman was quite obviously wallowing in schadenfreude.
Visiting was not worth paying this miserable twat’s wages. End of.

Beautiful camp ground! Close to the river loading area for floating, has awesome fishing spots! Loved it here!

Enjoyed trying out our little camper in this county park… Tent and camper options available. The tent options are of course more woodsy and camp like versus the paved, plumbed and powered RV options which is more wide open. We liked the oil through spot we selected which felt a little less open. Camp hosts were very cordial and welcoming. Nice spot to float on the Clackamas. The main park was quite busy the weekend we were there.

Close to Portland. Nice bathrooms and showers. Also very crowded with drunks and seemingly no enforcement of quiet hours.

Staff is drunk with power, don’t try to reason with them about anything. went in to drop off a car and go back up to McIver to put in and raft. they said you have to pay to come in and drop off a car even when your only staying 10 minutes. ridiculous. staff was super rude and unreasonable. i wont be going back anytime soon. beautiful park, but shitty experience with the employees.

Easy to find since it’s at the tail end of the road when you check into the park. Docking our Kayak was also fairly easy. We came on May 30^th so the park wasn’t really open and the air pumps were shut off, therefore it was not very busy at all.
It’s $ 5 to get into the park which isn’t too bad. Ended up kayaking all the way to Carver and had our car shuttled over there by a third party. It was the perfect route. Absolutely love it.
Keep in mind that parking is limited since the spots are double and usually make for one vehicle with a trailer for example.

SUPER friendly staff, cozy little campsite, not so wonderful showers. However, ya can’t be too picky w campground showers bc you’re really lucky to even get one in the first place.

Oh, so you want to go float the river huh? Here are a couple tips:
1) arrive early at Carver to park. if it’s a busy, hot saturday, get here by 11 and then head up to Barton and chill, have a sandwich and blow up the tubes.
2) just pay the $ 5 to park… I see the ranger write a ticket every time… it’s 5 bucks people
3) cans are better to take on the river than bottles… they are lighter… oh wait, i shouldn’t tell you that cause drinking is «prohibited» on the river
4) bring a small raft to float your cooler, sunscreen to protect your skin, and a paddle if you’re impatient.
5) your raft should have a cup holder
Follow those simple rules, and the 3 or so hour float will be a great way to spend your summer day.

Kyle basically got it right — EXCEPT for the 24-​pack of Coors beer! Bad Advice! We don’t need any more drunken louts on the Clackamas River, which last weekend resulted in a swimmer being paralyzed for life because a drunk dived in on top of him. And others die on the Clackamas every summer as a direct result of being drunk. So please leave the beer at home and bring soft drinks!

The Clackamas River rose 2ft overnight this weekend. I swear that water was running at 25mph. So fast and ice cold, my toesies were frosty after a wiggle.
The park has a boat launch, camping, fishing, picnic space, and it sets up you right close to the river and associated drunken bikini clad women, rockin their sag with hot abandon.
And, volleyball. In the sand. I’m was rockin my hot abandon while sucking at volleyball with 11 other people. I got sunburned, I got bruised. It was like Vegas all over again.
Check it out if you find yourself in the middle of the deepest SE you can imagine.
One star off for inaccessible bathrooms at the volleyball court, and almost falling over in the Honey Pot 100 yards away.