Great place for camping

My wife and I recently spent a few days camped at Susitna Landing (mile 82.5, Parks Highway) in our small motorhome with our four little dogs. The peace and quiet, along with the privacy, was refreshing and the weather, for the most part, wasn’t too bad. We originally went up to fish for coho using our riverboat but, due to some “complications,” we never actually fished. Bank fishing was a possibility but we decided to just enjoy the trip as a camping adventure.

Over the last three or four years, we’ve used the motorhome as a mobile base for fishing around Southcentral Alaska. We’ve been to Valdez, Seward, Ninilchik, and Susitna Landing. We’ve stayed in RV campgrounds ranging from basic public use to so-called premiere private facilities.

To be honest, Susitna Landing has them all beat, hands down!

One “premiere” site was little more than a large, flat gravel pad with a couple of buildings housing restroom, shower, and washer/dryer facilities. With a little creative maneuvering, one might be able to lower the side awning and not be bumping the unit parked next door. Another site didn’t have well defined parking slots and I could stand with one hand on my RV and be touching the unit parked beside us. The third site had short hedgerows separating sites, but units were generally still quite close together. Parking a trailer required it be dropped and parked several hundred feet away at a separate location.

By comparison, Susitna Landing is an approximately 60-acre site with a developed boat launch, office/small store, boat parking lagoon, several handicapped-accessible campsites, vault toilets, a shower building, a covered day-use area, your choice of electrical or non-electrical campsites located along the Kashwitna River or back in the mixed birch/spruce forest off two separate road loops. There are fewer than 80 developed campsites on this acrerage, so you can expect to have a fairly nice and expansive area around your specific site.

Porta-potties are located on developed pads around the campground and if you choose to buy a season pass and park your RV or trailer for the summer, the company servicing the porta-potties can be hired to empty your unit’s septic holding tanks as well.

We like to stay in one of the campsites located on the loop road with electrical service back in the trees. The sites are fairly flat and generally don’t require a lot of leveling for the RV. The mosquitoes back in the trees can be irritating at times, but that’s why they make bug repellant!

We’re usually towing either the riverboat or a small covered utility trailer and have never had a problem parking the trailer beside the RV at our site. There’s plenty of room to lower the awning and the grassy area around the site is large enough to give the dogs a walk. There’s a large steel fire pit and picnic table placed at each campsite.

To be fair, I’ll state that I was the project manager for Susitna Landing back in the 1990’s. My association with the site began when it was little more than a marginal boat launch with a limited river-silt-covered parking area. Over the course of time, I was able to get boating access projects written and funded to replace both the crumbling office/store and the rotting housing unit, build the covered day-use area, and improve the boat launch. The campsite improvement project was the last project I wrote before retiring. I have had nothing to do with the management of the site since I retired in 1999 and have only been a public user since that date.

Susitna Landing is owned by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and is operated by a private concessionaire. The facility is well maintained and has a friendly and helpful staff. The site was developed to cater to boat anglers but has ample space for bank fishers as well. With the past few years of poor salmon fishing, use of the site has fallen off significantly.

If you’re looking for a place to fish (learn the various species’ run timings) or just a quiet place to camp and enjoy the outdoors, keep Susitna Landing in mind. We’re planning another trip back for a few days later this fall just to enjoy the fall colors of the mixed birch/spruce forest surrounding the site and along the river.

The wild rainbow trout fishing should be good then too! Maybe we’ll see you there!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.