Setting the stage. We’d planned a camping trip for the upcoming weekend and waited till the last minute to make a reservation. We had several FCFS options, but I didn’t want to have to think and be stressed about fighting over spots. By the time I got around to looking for places to stay, our options we few… then we spotted Riffles RV Park on the River.

Let me quote a few of the selling points that caught my eye…

“Paddling. Numerous places on the Feather River, we have a boat ramp on the property.”

“Swimming. We have a boat ramp into the river on our property.”

“River, stream, or creek. The Feather River is our property line to the West.”

“Swimming hole. Feather River with our boat ramp.”

We were blown away to see that they had ZERO other reserved dry camping spots for the nights we were staying. Water access, good prices, nice photos, we reserved the spot and on the road. *We should have read other reviews first.*

Our first impression-AMAZING. We received a welcoming text with details from the property owner with the access code and directions to access our campsite. So far, so good!

We arrived and followed the instructions that we’d received, advising us to head up the hill, enter the code at the gate to access our camp site. We were chased down by a crazy lady on a motorized cart, aka the property manager, demanding to know what we were doing there and yelling at us for disturbing the area that had been booked for a wedding. The area that we had paid to book was “in-use” for a wedding the next day. She directed us to pick any camping spot in the midst of the RV campers.

Instead of the camping spot that we’d paid for… the one that was less than 200 feet from the water, with boat deck & river access… we were told to pick any spot we wanted from a very empty, very weedy RV lot, with very broken picnic tables. We settled on a place that we thought was out of the way and would be the least disruptive to the RVers that were clearly long-term tenants.

Well once we settled on a spot, the manager came chasing us down again, demanding to know if our dogs are friendly… further explaining that they have a cat colony living on the property and the spot we had selected was right near where they tend to prowl. We elected to stay in the spot, figuring it wouldn’t be that big of a deal…

We didn’t know that the manager would drive her cart back and forth for 20 minutes at feeding time - trying to LURE THE CATS ACROSS OUR CAMP SITE. Yes…. She was on her cart on the road, driving back and forth and calling to the kitties that it was dinner time, while our dogs were tied up but visibly reacting to both her and the chaos she was creating with the cats. This cat colony was NO JOKE… these cats prowled around our camp for 2 days, super creepy staring at our every move during the dark hours.

As far as river access, when we asked… She LAUGHED AT US and announced NO river AT ALL until Sunday (We arrived Friday, to leave early Sunday)…… So much for those selling points, eh?

Throughout our stay, the local tenants were friendly, explained that they provide the toilet paper & soap because the manager doesn’t.

The sprinklers were running 24/7, and the manager manually moved the hosed sprinkler around the property. It was AWFUL to have them running almost directly next to our camp site ALL NIGHT LONG.

In the end, we had a bathroom and a shower. NO POTABLE WATER access as promised. We were kind of worried that we would be harassed more if we asked. We had brought our own, so it wasn’t a big deal.

This property has a LOT of potential. It’s beautiful. We saw the river access and it would have been perfect for what we had hoped to use it for.

Failure to supply river access on a property that advertises it so heavily, failure to supply potable water, and rely on it’s long-term tenants to supply toilet paper & bar soap in the restroom, definitely would not recommend.

We camped, we experienced, we left, we reviewed.