(Note, there used to be 3 reviews of Campground 406 but Dyrt deleted them for some reason. Dunno why because totally appropriate). I tent-camped here once around 2010 when the lake was high with my then 10-year-old son. We enjoyed it and caught a yellow scorpion in a jar and waded in the lake atop the flooded spur 406. Night was dark and to be honest, I feared a mountain lion attack because my son was smaller then and there had been recent sightings nearby. Otherwise nice experience. That said, I scouted it out in July 2023 and decided not to camp there, partly because the lake was much farther away and the bank didn’t seem conducive to fishing. By then my son was grown and gone, and my dog had died, so I was solo. That said, it is a decent campground and could be a good waypoint enroute to Big Bend. Now, another deleted review complained of a lack of toilet paper in the block bathroom and gave it like 2-3 stars.

Note, this is my second review of San Pedro campground. My first review was based on good nostalgia from around 2010 when the lake was high. However, I tent camped here on July 5, 2023 and I was the lone camper. The place felt scorched abandoned. It was hot. There is almost zero shade apart from the metal shade structures. I stayed in site 10 or 12 where there is some evening shade from the mesquite or huisache trees. The closest lake water is a 2 mile drive down Spur 454, where the NPS has improvised a boat ramp and swimming area with parking. But man, San Pedro campground is now high and dry and hot. I hate to give it 2 stars because I love Amistad but times have changed. Maybe some day the lake will rise again but it’s been like 12 years already since the lake receded. I had planned to stay more nights but it just wasn’t wise. Not in July anyway.

We tent camped at Cherry Creek campground in late July 2023. We arrived about 4pm on a Saturday and there were like 2 sites available. First come, first serve, no fee, but a ranger told me that could change soon. Lots of nice tall pines. The creek was dry. Very scenic valley. There’s a short, informal trail at the north end of the campground past the bathroom. The trail goes about 0.25 miles out; so 0.5 mile round trip. A nice evening or morning stroll or both. But…there was a big group next to us that partied loud and late—with a generator that lit up their site, and ours. Oh well! At least they were enjoying the outdoors like we were, I think.

Nice campground with RVs, trailers and concrete cabins.  Good customer service. I stayed in regular cabin number 8 for $63 per night. Nice AC because it was blazing hot . No bathroom in the regular cabins but the bathhouse was nice. I would return.

I did not swim in the campground pool, because I swam at beautiful lake Amistad at scuba cove at Diablo east. 

I post photos of nearby beautiful Lake Amistad, because I did not take any photos of American Campground. 

My dad and I stayed at the lodge in NBSP in May 2023 after riding bicycles for 26 miles from West Union on the rail trail. We were exhausted from a hard but great ride and the lodge and its restaurant provided the perfect refuge to recharge overnight and bike back to West Union the next day. Quality accommodations with all amenities and excellent customer service. The lodge restaurant has a reputation for excellence, as I learned later, and it earned that reputation for me. Highly recommend the lodge and the rail trail.

I tent camped at Smokemont campground in May 2023. It was nice but I give it 4 stars because the sites were cramped with little privacy and the gatehouse was closed the afternoon I arrived and the next day. There are some nice trails around the campground and I went for an evening hike and saw some elk that reluctantly budged from the trail. I also saw turkeys and a family of wild hogs. Overall a nice place.

I tent camped here in April 2023. The staff was friendly and the office was still open at 6pm, when I arrived on a Saturday. I don’t know their normal hours. The weather was nice but it had just rained so my campsite was wet with a little mud. Plus it was a little uneven without much clear space for a tent but my tent fit because it is a 2-person tent. Other sites had wooden platforms but mine didn’t. I took an evening walk on the Discovery Trail and saw two deer. There are several other, longer trails. I didn’t explore the lake. The bathroom/shower house was clean. It was a little ways from I-20 but overall decent park.

We tent camped in mid September 2022 in the Lincoln National Forest south of Cloudcroft, NM off Forest Service Road 64. Over 9,400’ and it got cold at night. Saw one elk and heard more bugling. Plenty of wood to make a fire. Nice forest. We stayed at a spot on a meadow about 4-5 dispersed sites south of Sunspot Highway. Good times.

I tent camped at Meade State Park in July 2022. I was the only camper in the Larrabee campground. I picked site 143 because trees almost totally shade it. There was one travel trailer in the Sagebrush campground loop. There were more RVs on the northeast edge of the small lake. I arrived around 4pm and spread out my gear to dry after camping in the rain in Iowa the previous night. It was sunny and breezy and my stuff dried quickly. Then I walked 200 yards to the beach and swam in the lake. It was very refreshing in that summer heat. Afterwards I took a cold shower in the shower house that is connected to the visitor center, which was inexplicably closed on a Wednesday. There was a sign to run the shower until it heats up. Well, I didn’t wait and just took the cold shower, which was also refreshing. After I pitched my then dry tent, I walked the 2 miles around the whole lake. I didn’t want to just hang out at my camp site because there were biting flies that interestingly stopped biting around 7pm and I enjoyed the evening at my site after the swim, shower, and walk. It was a nice waypoint on my road trip.

I tent camped at “Mine Pond Campground” in Stephen’s State Forest in July 2022. I arrived about 8:15pm and had about 45 minutes of daylight to pitch camp. The campground feels deep in a vibrant Iowa forest surrounded by lush greenery. That said, mosquitoes swarmed me instantly. And “Mine Pond” is a small muddy pond without the most remote possibility of swimming. The pond kind of seems too small to fish but maybe. A storm blew in around dark and it rained much of the night. The frogs sang loudly deep into the night (see my video for the audio), which I enjoyed. A pair of barred owls hooted and laughed in the dark trees. I departed early while it was still dark. I don’t think I’ll return to this place.

We tent camped at Aguirre Spring campground over Father’s Day weekend in June 2022. I don’t know. Maybe it was too hot or I was too tired, or a combination of both with a causal connection. I love the outdoors but I can’t really think of anything good or bad to write about this campground.

It seemed like a nice place and the vault toilet bathroom was clean and extremely stocked with TP. There is a great trail called pine tree loop from which you can actually see real pine trees on the mountainside above the barren desert basin. We fell victim to the one-way road that other campers bemoaned too. The camp host’s phone is 575-644-9143 (as announced on the BLM’s voicemail greeting) and he was helpful when I called ahead and told me the campground was open (as of 6/22/2022, the Dyrt has an alert that the campground is closed for the season), that there was plenty of space, and that there was a fire ban.

We pitched our tent without the rain fly. Right when we layed down for the night, it started raining, so we scrambled to overlay the rain fly and then the rain stops. In the middle of a desert drought, if such a thing is a thing. The tent pad barely accommodated our 6-person tent and it seemed like all the sites suffered the same fate. We scouted the whole campground, mainly searching for shade and settled on a decent site with a giant boulder on the western side for some evening shade. The campground was maybe 1/3 full. Overall it was good to get outdoors for father’s day despite the fatigue.

We tent camped at Eagle Lake aka Eagle Creek campground on the Mescalero Apache Reservation over Memorial Day weekend 2022. The surrounding Lincoln National Forest was closed because of extreme fire risk, so there were very few places to camp in the Sacramento Mountains and escape the heat of El Paso. We used camp stoves because of a fire ban. We camped among the pine trees in the first tent area. There were clean porta-johns in that area. The showers and permanent bathroom were located up in the RV park about a 3-mile round trip walk on the road from the first tent area, so it’s more practical to drive to the showers. The permanent bathrooms and showers were clean.

Very pretty scenery, surrounded by mountain ridges and peaks and pine forest. There were two small lakes and a small creek flowing through the campground.

The campground format is kind of laissez faire because there aren’t assigned sites and it’s first come, first serve. The first tent area seemed about half full and we found a good site. We didn’t scout the second tent area because the host said there weren’t as many trees there. The first tent site was developed on a forested slope albeit they built flat rectangular-like terraces into the slope where you can pitch a tent(s) and park your vehicle(s).

Eagle Creek, near Ruidoso, had a similar feel to the Mescalero Nation’s Silver Lake campground near Cloudcroft, but Eagle Creek had a more quiet vibe. The main drawback was the 10:00 am checkout time, but we were still able to cook up some breakfast burritos as we broke camp. Good times.

Update 6/22/2022: At some point after my review, the Dyrt deleted the actual campground, which is where the road forks and moved my review to the nearby and similarly named RV resort, which is totally different. I love the Dyrt and I’m a pro ranger but sometimes c’mon man.

I tent-camped off of Carson NF Forest Service Road 578 in mid April 2022. FS 578 is south of Tres Piedras about 5 miles on the west side of Hwy 285. There are several dirt road turn offs but FS 578 is clearly marked with a brown NFS sign (see photo) and has no gate but there is a cattle guard/grate. Here is a NFS road use map that shows dispersed camping along FS 578 and many other NFS roads: https://www.fs.fed.us/r3/gis/mvum/Carson/CarsonTresPiedrasCanjilonElRito.pdf (see also screenshot). My Tacoma had no problem on the dirt road, which has ruts and might be tough for an RV. There were few clearings suitable for dispersed camping but I found a nice spot with a small fire circle in a small clearing on the south side of the road just past a fork in the road. I carried two black boulders over to serve as a table and chair. I didn’t see anyone else camping or driving by. The forest is a nice mix of sage, juniper, and pine trees. I saw two elk across a swath of sage. I could see the snow capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range on the eastern horizon when I walked farther up the road. It got cold at night, like 27 F. It was a nice waypoint on my trip between Gunnison CO and El Paso TX but it didn’t look like many people camped there. I had intended to drive to Taos the next day on Hwy 64, but didn’t.

My brother and I camped at the remote Tres Papalotes site in Big Bend Ranch State Park in March 2022. It was awesome.

My brother and I layed our sleeping bags under the big sky stars after an evening dip in the Rio Grande at the Lower Madera campground in March 2022. There are about 17 sites that you must reserve at one of the 3 visitor centers in the park. You cannot reserve a specific site in the campground—just a space generally and then you go select your site. We stayed at site 17–closest to the “boat ramp” but shielded by a sandy berm. The campground is on the US-Mexico border but it feels safe because there are cliffs on the Mexico side with no sign of people. The river was about waist high at the boat ramp when we visited but if you walk about 100 yards upstream, there is a grassy bank along gentle rapids with boulders. There is a bathroom at the entrance. Good times.

We tent-camped at Oliver Lee State Park on 8/14/2021. Overall good experience. We took a 2 mile hike down and around the riparian trail where there was water in the canyon that disappeared in the creek bed beyond the canyon. We didn’t attempt the steep trail to the ridge. Although we visited in August, it wasn’t too hot because of recent rains.

Caballo Lake State Park has several campgrounds that aren’t represented on the Dyrt app map. We tent camped at the Riverside campground below the dam over Easter 2014. See my screenshot of the park map. Google map has 100s of reviews of this campground. It was ok. Kind of crowded and the Rio Grande flowed shallow and muddy (unlike in Del Rio, Texas, from where we had recently moved, where the river is beautiful, above and below Amistad Dam). Alas, at least it was nice to be outdoors.

My family and dog tent-camped at Three Rivers campground on Labor Day weekend 2014. There were shaded spots. The water in the river was running and fresh. There were a couple nice bathing holes. We tried to hike up to the peak but we ascended halfway and turned back. In Aug. 2018, I climbed the trail to the peak but camped 2/3 up the mountain; so it took me 2 days to ascend and descend, which was harder. Pretty place with many conifer trees.

I didn’t camp here because when I called on 4/27/2021, the receptionist said they have RV sites and don’t have tent sites. I gave it 3 stars because there are over 100 reviews on Google maps and most are positive.

My son and I tent-camped at Macbride Nature Recreation Area (not nearby Lake Macbride State Park) several times circa 2005. Always a good time. You can walk through the forest to get to the injured raptor center with outdoor aviaries. I marked this campground as new to the Dyrt map but the Dyrt changed it to a review of the state park. Oh well!