U.S. Forest Service · Mendocino National Forest · CA
Penny Pines Campground
4Heads up4 fires, nearest 26 mi
Wildfire
Rock fire · 26 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Rock 2 fire · 27 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Hill fire · 35 mi away · 2 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Cooley fire · 36 mi away · 40 acres · updated Oct 17, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 17, 2026
The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
3,690 ftElevation
2,903 ftWater · an unnamed stream
8.7 miN of Upper Lake, CA
48%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 466th darkest of 1,201 in CA
The place
the agency’s own description
In the agency’s own words
No Day Use Area or General Parking.
Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
Phone before you drive
recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.
Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Every line of the receipt · 3
What you actually pay
The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this
Getting there
the map and the coordinate
Where it is
Also near hereDeer Valley CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 3.5 miMiddle Creek CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 3.5 miBear Creek CampgroundBerryessa Snow Mountain National Monument · 5.0 mi
Pine Mountain LookoutMendocino National Forest · 6.7 miSunset CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 9.5 miFuller Grove Group CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 9.6 mi
Pine Mountain LookoutMendocino National Forest · 6.7 miSunset CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 9.5 miFuller Grove Group CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 9.6 miSource: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
The weather
the next four days
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
Overnight63°Clear
Saturday80°Sunny
Saturday Night57°Mostly Clear
Sunday73°Sunny
NWS forecast for Upper Lake, CA
Source: National Weather Service, EKA forecast office · Oct 17, 2026
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Penny Pines Campground is in California’s 4th congressional district. Its representative, Mike Thompson (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A. See every public-lands vote →
How we know
every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: U.S. Forest Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Tree cover: NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC), one 30 m cell at this coordinate · Sep 9, 2026
Cell signal: the Forest Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.