We parked our rig and looked around and were speechless. Whitney Creek runs through the campground, and the Sierra Nevada mountains rise up all around it. For those hardy souls who want to hike up Mount Whitney, the highest point in the Sierra Nevada range, this is the place to start. For the rest of us, it was just an amazingly beautiful place to spend a couple of nights, do a little fishing and a little hiking. One caveat is that it is at 8,600 feet and the road up from Lone Pine is pretty scary.

Because they book so many people in the tent section, the toilets are overtaxed. This causes them to overflow. And because they have so few staffers, the problem is not resolved for many hours. This could be a nice place to stay if they weren't so interested in cramming people in. Instead we now go 18 miles up the road to the Bonita Campground, operated by the Coconino National Forest, which is cheaper, utterly clean, quiet and delightful.

We found Vista Linda almost by accident as a base for our visit to Valles Caldera. We lucked into a cul de sac site with great privacy, good enough solar, plenty of shade and the creek in our "yard." A delightful experience.

We've stopped several times at Rockhound, generally for just one night en route to or from someplace else. The bath house is wonderful if you don't have a bathroom in your rig. There are electrical hookups at many of the sites, if you want to run AC, but these are often booked up by reservation people. There's usually room in the non-hook up section. A major attraction for us is the night skies, which are absolutely spectacular. There's also a nice view of the Deming city lights from up on the hill. A nice clean campground.