Nehalem Bay State Park RV & Campground Guide

Nehalem Bay State Park is a popular place to fish for salmon, dig for clams, and catch crabs. You can fish from shore or in a seaworthy boat. Chinook salmon travel to Nehalem Bay in small numbers, beginning in the first week of July and peaking in early August. The fall Chinook run begins in early September and peaks in early October, and the fish are easiest to catch at daybreak. You can also fish for Coho salmon, cutthroat trout, black rockfish, sturgeon, lingcod, and many kinds of perch at the park.

Nehalem Bay State Park has a few geocaching opportunities for your enjoyment. The Nehalem Bay Night Cache is a family-friendly cache along a paved trail that takes about a half-hour to complete. This hunt must be done in darkness. Bring a flashlight, then find and follow the reflective trail markers, which will lead you to the ammo can that holds the treasure.

Nehalem Bay State Park is a wonderful place to experience nature by the bay or at the beach. The park rests on a peninsula at the southern base of Neahkahnie Mountain, where you can look out for wildlife, explore the dunes to the beach, and watch the sunset as you listen to ocean waves. You may spot deer, elk, and coyotes near your campground, and you're also likely to see a variety of birds at the estuary.

The campsites at the park are dark enough for stargazing. You'll get a good view of the skies, even as the trees protect you from the strong ocean winds.

Nehalem Bay State Park State features grasses, trees, and Scotch broom that were planted in the 1940s and 1950s to stabilize the sand. Today, you will find a variety of vegetation, like lodgepole pines, spruces, beach strawberries, evergreen huckleberries, Pacific wax myrtles, and European hollies. The park's beautiful wildflowers include purple foxgloves, twinberry honeysuckles, Oregon irises, ghost pipes, and red claws. As you hike along the spit, you may see brush rabbits, mule deer, elk, and coyotes. The bay and the ocean also provide habitats for seals, newts, great-horned owls, sandpipers, red phalaropes, gulls, plovers, and many more seabirds.

Hikers will enjoy the easy to moderately challenging trails and beach walks at Nehalem Bay State Park. The Nehalem Bay Trail Loop is an easy, paved trail. It's open all year and pet-friendly. For a longer stroll, enjoy the 8.6-mile Sunset and Nehalem Beach Walk, which runs along the Manzanita section of the Oregon Coast to Nehalem Bay.

Nehalem Bay is a popular destination for sailing, canoeing, and kayaking throughout the year, although the main boat dock that provides access to the bay is only open from mid-May through September. The bay waters are fairly calm most of the time. You can bring your own kayak or boat or rent one from the nearby marina. You can also sign up for a paddle boat tour that will take you through the park's grassland estuary.

Nehalem Bay State Park has a horse camp, and over ten miles of beach and trails are available to riders. The main day-use area has a warm-up corral, and you can also reserve a ride at the horse concession during the summer months.

If you love to bird-watch, you will want to visit the park's east side and the western ocean shore. The beach is a good place to find snowy plovers, shorebirds, and snow buntings. You may also encounter pelicans, sandpipers, cormorants, loons, geese, ducks, kingfishers, egrets, and many more avifauna.

Many of the trails and roads at Nehalem Bay State Park are bike-friendly. The wide, level Nehalem Jetty Trail follows the narrow peninsula between the beach and Nehalem Bay for about two miles.