We found campo alto after a forced evacuation cut our yearly Big Sur trip short after 3 days this August.

We’d booked 9 days so we had a lot of time remaining and weren’t prepared to head back to San Diego just yet & trying to find a walk-in campground during COVID made it all the more challenging. After reading some reviews we drove the 4 hours with our fingers crossed hoping to find a spot. Thankfully we arrived around 8:30pm and found walk-on site 17!

We set up for the night using our headlights and awoke the next morning in awe at how HUGE many sites are (including ours) and the utterly breathtaking beauty and quiet that surrounded us!

•PROS•

There’s an old ski lodge at the entrance thats an unexpected find & its forgotten beauty is haunting…if you keep an eye out you’ll see ski life strapping still in many of the trees.

The surrounding forest allows for plenty of hiking opportunities either long or short depending on what you feel up to.

Town is just a 15 minute drive down the mountain & has a store with nearly anything you could need.

You may get 1-2 bars of cell service if needed. I struggled to keep a single bar no matter where I walked too & found it better to stop at one of the pull-off areas halfway down the mountain for full service.

•CONS•

-There’s a large fly & bee population.

Our dog had a healing injury on her back knee that was nearly impossible to keep a bandaged. This quickly became a nightmare…our only option was to re-wrap with new gauze & vet wrap every few hours and put puppy pajamas on her in the evening in attempt to keep wrap up.

I wasn’t too bothered by them but the Mr had a horrible time with them and the bees swarmed our dogs water & our hand water station. Leaving any uncovered water out for more than 2 minutes meant it was full of drowning bees.

-Lack of Shade: I highly recommend bringing a pop-up canopy & side walls for shade if going during the summer. Being hot and sticky with the large flies means you may be miserable sitting still.

-Trash: Its a full pack-out campground so you’ll need to keep trash packed up to take out with you.

Staying for a week meant we really needed to find a dumpster and spent an hour looking for something around town. Unfortunately due to the bear enclosures we didn’t have any luck.

Out of pure desperation we ended up using the dumpster found at the campground located at the bottom of the mountain road despite the surveillance warning signs :-/.

•OVERALL•

We not only found this campground to be peaceful and stunningly beautiful but loved that its half the length of time to get home compared to Big Sur. We‘ll definitely be back soon!

We've been camping here for during my August birthday for the past 8 years & its something I look forward to all year!

While we used to just head up & find a site- its become nearly impossible to "walk-in" during high season. Being one of the last campgrounds at the bottom of Big Sur we meet ppl every year hoping to find a spot after being turned away from every other campground on the way down.

•BOOKING• The great sites book out VERY quickly. If you want to score you'll need to plan:

1) Use the website, not the call center.

2) Booking windows open 6 months in advance, you’ll need to make your reservation then if you have specific dates & can’t wing it whenever something is available to book.

3) There’s a 14 days limit so ppl who booked before you mean a site may be unavailable On your planned check-in day. Research ahead of booking to see which sites are going to be available on the date you want to arrive.

*TIP: Booked site’s are only held through checkout the day following a planned arrival…so if your desperate & see a posted reservation thats passed the no-show deadline you MIGHT be able to kindly ask the on-site camp director if you can camp on it.

The camp directors diligently check reservation cards & drive around; you won't get away with trying to sneak onto a spot!

•SITES•

We've stayed on sites: -3B -18 -21 (Multiple times) -26 -29

*I’ve tried to book site 9 for YEARS but even with availability & hand on the mouse it seems impossible to get.

Site 21 is along the cliffside. The large beautiful tree between 21/22 shades the driveway not the site, so be sure to bring a cooling vest 4 fur babies in the summer.

The nature of this site allows for a lot of privacy if you’ve got a large vehicle in the drive. Its a short walk across a well beaten trail to the toilets & just down the curve and through the bike-in sites you’ll find a beautiful forest with plenty of look out spots.

Because of the tiered setup every site has ocean views and there are NO bad sites, so don't stress too much if you don't get your first choice, any site is sure to be wonderful!

After trying for a cliff site for days we had to book 18 this year (2020). Even though its on the inside bottom loop and a bit smaller than 21 we found it peaceful & would’ve enjoyed it had we not had to evacuate after 3 days due to an illegal fire causing catastrophic wild fire :(.

•NOISE•

Unlike a lot of other California campgrounds you won't be drown out by generator’s throughout your stay. The surrounding plants, ocean waves, and overall space btwn sites absorb noise very well. Unless your used to huge private camp sites, its easy to forget other people are around.

The upper sites do get more audible noise from cars driving along highway 1 but it's not excessive or distracting, just thought I should mention it.

•BATHROOMS•

The bathrooms are non-flush toilets but they’ve always been rather clean by campground standards. There’s the normal fly population of course but the camp directors work to keep it minimal & you shouldn't be in there much anyways.

I’ve upgraded our gear & bring a pump flush composting toilet + double room pop-up for basic bathroom and shower use which is nice to have on site.

No running water; bring plenty for washing, drinking, etc.

We use a 50 gallon container & find its perfect for a 8-9 day trip with 2 solar showers, lots of hand & dish washing, and dog water refills. We do freeze bottled water & keep it in the cooler for drinking.

•OVERALL•

There’s nothing that can compare to drifting off the sleep on the edge of the earth while gazing up at the milky-way, cut off from the rest of the world.

In the mornings you’ll wake to the sounds of the ocean and watch as the fog rolls in, lifting away from the ocean & surrounding hillsides until it seems heaven is kissing the earth.

It calms the soul in a way that only those who have been can understand…this place is PURE MAGIC!

*Note: You will be quite literally cut off from the world here. You won’t find any cell service so turn that phone off when u hit the main road in & enjoy the feeling that comes with uninterrupted connection with nature.

If you really NEED to check on things, wifi can be found by stopping for a beer at the pub connected to the Big Sur post office.