Best Campgrounds near Santa Barbara, CA

Stopped here on a trip up the coast. Some of the sites were pretty muddy after a big rain. But I pretty much had the whole lower loop to myself on a weekday in March. I chose a spot with no hook ups. 

It was quiet and peaceful. Great bird watching.

We have been camping this site every Spring for about 6 years. We do a family style tent camping. 15-40 ppl. Young kids to elderly adults. Everyone always loves it! Facilities are clean and well maintained, the area is safe, electricity on light poles, running water, use of massive fireplace, lots of shade, plenty of tables, climbing trees, space for horse shoes and other games, trees for slack line. A bit hard to book but highly recommend. No in and outs. Scheduled entry and departure: Ranger leads caravan in and out

Goleta, CA. Spacious sites. Very clean. Nicely wooded. Pool, jacuzzi, laundry-all well maintained. Hiking and biking trails. Short hike down to very nice beach at the El Capitan State Park.

This was a an amazing find! What a gem! Easy hook up with clean restrooms and showers! Loved the view out my back deck!

The night ranger Ron is awesome 👌 totally let me shower in the middle of night when the shower was closed, even gave me a few bucks for shower tokens very kind man!!! Just don't be late getting out of there at checkout time they don't like it and definitely threatened to call police wich kinda killed the whole good vibe of the place.

Rude and not pleasant employee no compassion, whatsoever noisy, and a lot more never coming back

First, I imagine this place was so cool in the 80’s. You can see the bones that it was built around. It’s just a touch run down. That said, the bathrooms were really clean. The showers were quarter showers, but seemed fine. For December it was pretty quiet. The spaces are different, some shade some not. I wouldn’t suggest for really large campers. But for a van, we had power, water, bathrooms and off season prices.

Ditto what others say…clean, great noise, pricey $142/night for Sprinter, laundry is being remodeled right now

Not a bad campground, but driving in, the owner has large political flags flying. In these highly divisive times, I don't want to stay at places that divide our country, I want to get away from that. Not recommended.

This is a wonderful campground if you're looking to escape the crowds elsewhere. We were in spot 4 which was right next to the check in board. Despite the close proximity to the road the site was very big and had plenty of trees to throw our hammocks up and relax. Next time we would likely pick spots 6-8 or 13-17 as they were a little further into the campground and away from the main road.

There is plenty of firewood to gather but I may suggest a small hatchet.

The vault toilets were clean enough for vault toilets.

My husband and I stayed Saturday to Monday and found that only a few hunters were left Sunday night and Monday morning and we enjoyed walking through the campground and checking out all the small viewpoints through the trees to the valleys below. The group sites looked spacious and awesome as well!

Pine Mountain Club was close, quaint, and the people we met were friendly.

We are keeping this spot in our back pockets for the next time we want to escape the busy city life!

This is a nicely maintained municipal water reservoir with a very large lake. No swimming allowed, but boating is. Go figure.

There are campgrounds with hookups that are only available for RVs. There is one Campground -Indian- that has a mixture of tent and RV sites with hookups available but it was under maintenance when I was here this weekend. So all the rest of the areas that do have hookups do not accommodate my truck and tent rig. And there are no 110V or 30a outlets available for people who are traveling light -with solar and a minimum amount of panels, where you might need to plug in once in awhile- they can't cover you here. Too bad no one thought of that when they were designing this place, because it's an awfully big place with a lot of sites.

So we're leaving today to find another place to weekend.

But two nights next to the lake, in the campground called Mallard was lovely as can be. Next time I'll come out with more panels to keep my pair of EcoFlow RiverPro solar generators topped up.

We loved camping here. The whole area has a really peaceful and mellow vibe. We reserved site #49 which was plenty big enough for our 26ft class c, but the drive through the campground to get to the site was a little narrow and tight, wouldn't recommend for larger RVs. This end of the campground is right next to the emergency exit, too, but they keep that gate locked, otherwise it would be an easy swoop in. Camp host was really nice, campground was huge, nice that there's a creek running through it which comes in handy in the hot summer months. You have to drive over some creek runoff at parts, no problem.

There's zero cell reception in this entire area, the roads leading up to the campground as well.

Fees are $35 or $37 for weekends/holidays. Pricey for what you get and for what we're used to paying for a forest service campground.

This is such a nice and small campground, it's low key and seems to be overlooked because there always seems to be sites available.

We stayed in site #13, which is a weird "pull in" site, which in all the traveling we've done, we've never stayed in one before. So you pull in forward (not back in), because  all your hookups are to the left of the site, on the driver's side.  Which is fine, except that unless you have a long sewer hose, your hose won't reach from the back of your RV to the sewer connection. Luckily there were vacant spots when we left, so we backed into a vacant spot with a  traditional setup and dumped on our way out.

The best part of this campground is the creek that runs behind it. It's so nice and refreshing on a hot day, and safe for little kids to splash around in. There's also a park, day use area, playground, and some sort of meeting spot adjacent to this campground. The showers were nice (coin operated) and as a full timer I always love to see laundry machines at campgrounds.

Pricey, but that's just the norm now.  I think our one night was about $50.  Great little place.

I'm giving this place 5 stars, because even though it's cramped and packed and awkward to maneuver through, it's got the casual and fun beach vibe that we love about this area.

You're right on the beach, with easy access to the beach via stairs. This campground is very close to Rincon, but the setup is totally different. Rincon is basically just a parking space on the road, while Faria is a regular campground. The drive down from the main road is pretty steep with a sharp turn, I'm surprised more RVs don't scrape and cause damage on the way down.

The sites here are very close together, but it doesn't matter. Everyone is friendly and happy and in a good mood. The cafe is fun and seems to be a hangout for bikers riding along Hwy 1. We love it here.