I’ve fallen a little behind on writing up my reviews of the places we stopped on the Columbia River on our way down to Astoria last month. Sorry about that but I’ll be trying to catch up soon!

This review is of the guest dock at the Port of Kalama in Kalama Washington from our stay there in May of 2019. There is 30amp shore power available, seemingly included in your dockage fee. We paid $14/night for our 40-foot sailboat. If I remember correctly, we had decent cell signal on our T-Mobile phones and Brenden was able to work off his Verizon jetpack hotspot. My AT&T data pack didn’t have enough signal to work so I used the hotspot on my phone.

We had a hard time finding information on the guest docks online but found a simple PDF via a google search that had just the information below. Spot the typo?

I also found this little bit of information in an old marina handbook. *NOTE: There IS power available now at the Kalama Guest Docks.

In search of better, and more current information, I asked around in a local Facebook group and was able to rustle up some great information.

I posted this picture and was informed, correctly, that the guest dock is at the southern end of the marina (noted by the long red arrow). The smaller arrow shows the nice pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks which leads you to an underpass for I5 and through to the town proper. One of the days, we walked this route and up to the little Kalama Shopping Center which had everything we needed for our small provisioning stop.

Here’s our 40-foot sailboat tied to the guest dock at the Port of Kalama. You can see that really only one side of the guest dock is usable due to all the floating debris on the shore-side. However, for the 3 days that we were there, we were the only boat that stayed overnight and only a few other smaller powerboats even tied up to the guest dock during our stay.

The location of the Port of Kalama marina and guest dock is favorable for walking to town for groceries and also is directly adjacent to the McMenamin’s Kalama Lodge with a truly excellent waterfront walking path and park just a short walk south along the river.

Above, you can see the Port of Kalama Administrative Building where you can pay your marina fees. Directly beyond this building, is the McMenamin’s Kalama Lodge with excellent restaurants and bars and great entertainment for the kids in finding their secret rooms! Evan still talks about how much fun we had exploring the grounds.

Here’s the view looking to the Northwest: you can see the Kalama Lodge, outdoor amphitheater, and directly behind me standing here there was a large kid’s playground and park area with a great play structure and covered picnic area. We spent several hours at the park over the couple days that we were here.

There were decent public bathrooms in a building near the playground. I believe there were 4 bathrooms, one of which also had a shower but it was not functioning when we were there- perhaps a seasonal issue?

Thanks for reading. I hope this post helps anybody looking for information on the Port of Kalama Guest Docks in Kalama Washington on the Columbia River. If you’re interested in any of the other reviews I’ve written on the places we’ve stayed, check them out here. Cheers! ~Rachel, SV Mosaic