The road to get out there was washboard. There was an active construction site around the reservoir and parts of the road were closed. We saw a handful of other campers and the construction workers stretching in the morning. Tons of bugs. That said, sunset was pretty & there was a lot of space!
We were nervous about driving into the area that I think most people went to in these reviews, so we chose a bit easier route. I think it was to the right from the entrance. The road still wasn’t great, but we felt okay in a little rented campervan. The spot we ended up at had a fire pit, vault toilet, and a circle with several spots. There were a few friendly locals up there. Plenty more spots, but the spots were close together.
This was really just a big empty grass lot with plenty of space to spread out. There were two other people there overnight.
We’ve just begun our dispersed camping adventures but out of the places we’ve been, this has been the coolest! There was a good number of people out there in all sorts of rigs, but there was still plenty of space! We couldn’t see or hear anyone else. There were a lot of pull offs, which gives plenty of options to find a favorite spot. We turned left right before the dried up river bed & went down a bit from there.
We got there far later than we should have (10:30pm) but were able to find a little space. It was, of course, difficult to navigate in the dark. The entrance was sooner than GPS showed but not too difficult to find. Sadly, we only saw hoof prints. No cows.
Its super easy to get to if you take the route through Carlsbad. We arrived at 8:30pm on a Friday, and it was fairly full. There wasn’t an issue finding somewhere to stay though.