Hiking

Boulder Creek RV Resort

68 RV Sites, 3 Cabins

Boulder Creek RV Resort in Lone Pine, California, offers 68 full-hookup RV sites and three cabins at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, with 30 and 50-amp service, cable TV, ADA-accessible sites, and rigs accepted to 60 feet. Back-in and pull-through 30/50-amp categories join a pool, hot tub, spa, recreation center, and library beneath Mount Whitney. Sixty-eight sites run in back-in 30/50-amp and pull-thru 30/50-amp categories, both carrying water, sewer, and electric with cable TV and site WiFi, sized to 60 feet, with fire pits and picnic tables. Accessible sites are available. Three cabins round out the lodging. A general store, laundry, propane fills, dump station, restrooms, showers, and RV storage handle the practical side. An outdoor pool and hot tub, sauna, and spa anchor the property, with a recreation center, clubhouse, library, playground, dog park, and walking trails filling the grounds. A lake and creek support fishing, hiking runs in every direction, and planned activities run through the season. Pets are welcome. The setting is among the most visually spectacular of any campground in California. Mount Whitney rises to 14,505 feet — the highest peak in the contiguous United States — directly above the Alabama Hills, whose rounded granite formations have served as the backdrop for hundreds of films. Lone Pine sits in the Owens Valley between the Sierra's eastern escarpment and the White Mountains, with Death Valley to the east. Spring and fall are most comfortable in the Owens Valley, with summer bringing Whitney permit-holders and hikers. Reserve well ahead for the climbing season.

from $45/night

Sequoia Resort & RV Park

22 RV Sites, 4 Houses, 1 Apartment

Sequoia Resort & RV Park stretches across 377 acres of Sierra Nevada hillside in Badger, California, sitting at the gateway to both Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in one of the most scenically dramatic corners of the American West. As the closest full-service RV resort to the North Entrance of Kings Canyon, Sequoia Resort is the natural basecamp for exploring two of the most awe-inspiring national parks in the country in a single trip. Thirty-three full hookup RV spaces are designed with privacy walls between sites, providing a degree of separation and intimacy unusual in campground layouts. Each space includes 30 or 50-amp electrical, water, and sewer connections, and ADA-accessible facilities throughout the resort ensure the property welcomes guests of all abilities. Cabin-style vacation rental homes complement the RV sites for groups with mixed lodging preferences. A private lake on the property offers small boat use, and bikes are available for rent — making it easy to explore the resort's expansive acreage without a vehicle. Pets are welcome. The Sierra Nevada foothill setting surrounds Sequoia Resort & RV Park with the sounds and scenery of the mountain forest at every turn — granite formations, canyon oak and pine canopy, and the clean high-altitude air that makes even a simple walk around the grounds feel restorative. The elevation keeps temperatures noticeably cooler than the valley floor below while keeping the national park entrances accessible year-round. Kings Canyon National Park's North Entrance is roughly 35 minutes from the resort, with General Grant Grove — home to the third-largest tree on Earth and one of the most ancient living organisms anywhere on the planet — reachable as an easy morning excursion. Sequoia National Park's famous General Sherman Tree, the world's largest tree by volume, is approximately an hour from camp. The Hume Lake recreation area within Kings Canyon National Forest adds swimming, fishing, and canoeing to the activity roster for guests wanting a water destination closer than the valley floor. Sequoia resort & RV park is accessible year-round, with spring and fall providing the most comfortable temperatures for national park hiking and exploration. Summer is peak season for both parks, and early-morning visits to the most popular sequoia groves are strongly advisable to avoid afternoon crowds. Reservations for peak summer weekends book quickly — secure your site early and plan to arrive with a well-stocked cooler, as the resort's rural mountain position puts the nearest significant town a scenic but meaningful drive away.

from $38/night

Lemon Cove Village RV Park

47 RV Sites, 10 Tent Sites

Lemon Cove Village RV Park in Lemon Cove, California, provides the most convenient RV park gateway to Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park in Tulare County's foothills community at the edge of the Sierra Nevada, positioning guests at the Kaweah River corridor where CA-198's approach to the giant sequoia groves begins and the transition from the San Joaquin Valley's citrus agriculture to the Sierra's granite and conifer world unfolds across the drive from the park to the park entrance. Lemon Cove's gold panning access on the Kaweah River and the boutique shop's local products reflect the foothill character of a community whose Sierra Nevada proximity creates the full range of national park experiences—from the General Sherman Tree's 52,500 cubic feet of wood volume to the Kings Canyon's 8,000-foot granite walls—within a 45-minute drive. The park's facility serves the Sequoia and Kings Canyon gateway visitor with practical camping infrastructure and the unique recreation opportunity of gold panning in the Kaweah River's placer gold deposits: a river and stream nearby for the gold panning activity, an outdoor pool, volleyball, horseshoes, sports courts, RV storage and boat storage for extended equipment needs, boutique shop with local products and souvenirs, open year-round operations for all seasons of national park visitation, boating access nearby, pet-friendly policies, showers, bathrooms, laundry, propane fills, dump station, and Wi-Fi collectively provide the services that Sequoia-bound visitors require from a foothill base camp. The swimming access in the Kaweah River's pools during summer provides natural alternative to pool swimming. Sequoia National Park's General Sherman Tree—a giant sequoia measuring 52,500 cubic feet and estimated at 2,100 years old, the largest living tree on Earth by volume—is the anchor attraction of a park that protects the largest remaining groves of giant sequoias in existence in a landscape of sublime Sierra Nevada scale. The Sherman Tree's 36-foot diameter base, the Congress Trail's loop through the Giant Forest's sequoia grove, and the Moro Rock granite dome's panoramic Sierra Nevada views create the Sequoia experience that draws over a million visitors annually to the Tulare County park. The park's Lodgepole and Dorst Creek campgrounds provide the in-park camping alternative for guests whose itinerary includes multiple nights at elevation. Kings Canyon National Park's Kings Canyon—the deepest canyon in North America at 8,200 feet from Spanish Mountain's summit to the Kings River—provides the geological superlative that makes the adjoining national park system's dual-park designation the most impressive combined wilderness in California. The Cedar Grove area at the canyon's floor provides the most accessible deep canyon experience in California's national park system, with the Roaring River Falls and the Zumwalt Meadow trail delivering concentrated natural beauty in the canyon's innermost accessible section. The John Muir Trail's northern terminus at the Mt. Whitney trailhead connects the park to the 211-mile wilderness trail that ends at California's highest peak. Lemon Cove Village RV Park operates year-round in Tulare County's foothill climate, with the spring wildflower season on the Kaweah River corridor from March through May preceding the summer Sequoia visitor peak by weeks in a timing that creates the most uncrowded and comfortable early season national park access from the Lemon Cove base. The summer Sequoia season from June through September coincides with the park's maximum visitor volume and the California heat that makes the Sierra Nevada's cool elevation a primary appeal for San Joaquin Valley residents seeking relief, and the fall season's golden oak color in the park's mixed forest and the reduced crowds that September and October bring create the most rewarding conditions for unhurried giant sequoia exploration.

from $57/night

Camp Ikigai Animal Sanctuaruy 501c3

20 RV Sites, 3 Cabins, 100 Tent Sites, 1 Glamping Site, 1 Yurt

On 72 off-grid acres in Yokuts Valley in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Fresno County, Camp Ikigai Animal Sanctuary offers an entirely different kind of RV and camping destination—a 501(c)(3) nonprofit farm sanctuary where horses, sheep, dogs, and cats roam freely through the property and guests stay in tent sites, RV and van spots, hammock camping areas, or a tiny cabin on a private deck with sweeping valley views. At 40580 Ruth Hill Road, approximately 30 minutes from the entrances to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and 90 minutes from Yosemite Valley, the sanctuary provides an off-grid, animal-centered retreat that makes the Sierra Nevada's greatest parks accessible from a setting that's genuinely unlike any other campground in the region. Sites are primitive and the experience is intentionally off-grid—Camp Ikigai functions as a working animal sanctuary first and a campground second, and the accommodation reflects that priority. RV, van, car, skoolie, and tent sites are available alongside hammock camping and the small cabin, with each option providing a different relationship to the farm's natural and animal-centered environment. The private deck and valley views available from the cabin offer a sunset and sunrise experience that rewards those who plan ahead. Water and fire safety practices appropriate to the Sierra Nevada foothill environment apply throughout the property, and guests should arrive prepared for primitive conditions in a genuinely remote setting. Yokuts Valley sits in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada at elevations that transition between the valley floor's agricultural character and the higher-elevation conifer forest that begins above 4,000 feet. The property's 72 acres encompass oak woodland, chaparral-covered hillsides, and the private valley terrain that creates the views from the upper portion of the property. The sanctuary's animals—horses with established individual personalities, sheep, and a resident dog and cat community—move through the space freely, creating unexpected encounters and the kind of interspecies observation that's simply not available in any conventional camping environment. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, jointly administered and together encompassing more than 1,300 square miles, protect the world's largest trees by volume—the giant sequoias of the western Sierra Nevada—alongside the deepest canyon in North America, the High Sierra's most dramatic alpine terrain, and the headwaters of the Kings and Kaweah Rivers. General Sherman Tree, the world's largest living thing by volume, stands in Giant Forest. Kings Canyon's Canyon View Trail descends into one of North America's most spectacular river canyons. The parks receive far fewer visitors than Yosemite despite matching its scenic grandeur, making the experience measurably less crowded during peak summer season. Camp Ikigai operates year-round, with the foothill location providing milder winter temperatures than the high Sierra and a spring wildflower display on the hillsides that makes March and April particularly rewarding. Summer days are warm in the foothills but the higher elevation provides meaningful relief from the Central Valley heat. Advance reservations are required for all site types, and the nonprofit nature of the operation means that booking directly supports the animal sanctuary's ongoing work. Reserve your site at Camp Ikigai and let the Sierra Nevada foothills, the resident animals, and the valley views create a camping experience that no conventional RV park can approximate.

from $21/night

Lakeshore Resort

22 RV Sites, 7 Cabins

At the eastern end of Huntington Lake in the Sierra Nevada at 7,000 feet elevation—a mountain reservoir in Sierra National Forest where the John Muir Wilderness begins on the opposite shore and the High Sierra backcountry opens in all directions from the lake's edges—Lakeshore Resort has been receiving campers, anglers, boaters, and High Sierra explorers since the 1920s. The resort's combination of RV sites, cabin rentals, restaurant, saloon, general store, and marina creates the self-contained mountain lake community that the Sierra Nevada's remote elevation campgrounds can rarely sustain, and the high-country landscape of Huntington Lake provides the visual and recreational context that makes the resort worth the drive up Highway 168. This is California mountain camping at its most complete. RV sites with full hookups, 30-amp electric, campfire rings, and picnic tables accommodate rigs up to 40 feet in length—meaningful at a mountain destination where the size restriction would otherwise eliminate many larger rigs from consideration. Cabin rentals provide the fully enclosed alternative for guests who want the mountain lake experience without a camping setup, and the resort's laundry, showers, and bathrooms serve both RV and cabin guests across the property's full occupancy range. The restaurant and saloon provide on-site dining and the evening social gathering space that mountain resort guests across California's elevation campground history have come to associate with Lakeshore specifically—a dining room with the character and history of a century-old Sierra resort. The general store handles provisioning, and the marina with boat docks provides watercraft access, rental boats, and the infrastructure that makes Huntington Lake's 1,500 acres of 7,000-foot elevation water genuinely navigable for guests without their own boats. A walking trail from the campsites along the creek and down to the lake connects the camping area to the water directly. Huntington Lake's high-elevation character provides a natural environment of specific appeal. At 7,000 feet, the lake sits in a landscape dominated by red fir, lodgepole pine, and the granite that defines the Sierra Nevada's geological identity—a combination that produces the cool summer temperatures, afternoon thunderstorm pattern, and crystalline air quality that the Central Valley's summer heat drives visitors upward to seek. Kokanee salmon, brown trout, rainbow trout, and catfish populate the lake, making fishing from the dock, from a rental boat, or from the resort's waterfront among the most reliable high-elevation angling experiences in the central Sierra. The John Muir Wilderness, accessible directly from Huntington Lake's trailheads, provides the High Sierra backcountry experience that the resort's position at the wilderness edge makes possible with zero additional driving. The Kaiser Wilderness, accessible from the north shore, provides a second wilderness area with its own trail system and high-country lakes accessible for day hikes from the resort's elevation base. The combination of resort-level comfort—restaurant, saloon, store, marina—and immediate wilderness access is specific to Huntington Lake's position and is not replicated at most Sierra Nevada campgrounds, which offer one or the other but rarely both. Lakeshore Resort is open from late April through October, weather and snowpack permitting, with the full season running from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The high elevation makes July and August the most reliable months for full-access recreation. Reserve the full hookup site early for summer, bring the fishing rods and the hiking boots, and let the 1920s Huntington Lake resort tradition earn its hundred-year reputation.

from $114/night

Riverbend RV Park

52 RV Sites

Riverbend RV Park in Blossvale, New York, offers 139 full-hookup RV sites on the southwestern shore of Oneida Lake, with 30 and 50-amp service and rigs accepted to 55 feet, open year-round including winter. Basic and deluxe River East categories join boat docks, a boat ramp, beach, and recreation center on the largest lake entirely within New York State. One hundred thirty-nine back-in sites run in River East basic and River East deluxe categories, both carrying water, sewer, and electric on 30 and 50-amp with site WiFi, sized to 55 feet, with fire pits and picnic tables. Cabins round out the lodging. A general store, laundry, dump station, restrooms, and showers handle the practical side. The park operates year-round and winter camping is permitted — check current pricing and availability. The lake carries the recreation. Boat docks and a boat ramp give direct access for boating, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, and swimming, with a beach on the property. A recreation center, game room, craft room, clubhouse, walking trails, biking, a playground, dog park, and on-site dining fill the grounds, with live music, planned activities, and productive birding along the shoreline. Pets are welcome. Oneida Lake anchors central New York's inland lake recreation, and Sylvan Beach sits close by. Year-round operation makes this viable well outside the summer window, including ice fishing season. Summer boating is the peak — reserve well ahead for July and August weekends.

from $75/night

Grey Squirrel Resorts

19 Cottages

Grey Squirrel Resort in Fawnskin, California, has welcomed families, couples, and group retreats since the 1950s, bringing more than seven decades of mountain hospitality to a collection of 19 private cabins spread across three wooded acres on the quiet north shore of Big Bear Lake. Tucked in the small mountain community of Fawnskin—across the lake from the busier Big Bear Lake resort corridor—the resort provides an intimate and unhurried alternative to the high-traffic south shore lodging scene, giving guests direct access to San Bernardino County's premier mountain resort while preserving the peaceful forest character that defines the north shore experience. The 19 private cabins accommodate a range of group sizes and comfort preferences, offering more privacy and enclosed space than hotel rooms while maintaining the forest-immersed setting that draws visitors to Big Bear Lake in every season. On-site amenities include a pond, spa, walking trails, and wedding venue capabilities that make the property versatile for romantic retreats, family reunions, and celebration events alongside standard vacation stays. Pet-friendly policies, a general store, and Wi-Fi support extended stays, while the resort's access to golf, hiking, and mountain biking from the property ensures guests can build active itineraries without driving across the lake to the south shore infrastructure. The Fawnskin area's forest setting—ponderosa pine, white fir, and black oak woodland at approximately 7,000 feet elevation in the San Bernardino Mountains—provides a true mountain environment that contrasts sharply with the Southern California coast and desert communities that send the majority of Big Bear's visitors up the mountain. The north shore's relative quiet and the absence of the commercial density found on the south shore give Fawnskin an off-the-beaten-path character that has attracted loyal repeat guests to properties like Grey Squirrel for generations. Big Bear Mountain Resort, accessible via the south shore road around the lake, offers skiing and snowboarding in winter alongside mountain biking and lift-accessed hiking in summer, making the surrounding mountain landscape a legitimate four-season outdoor recreation destination. Big Bear Lake itself provides boating, fishing for trout and bass, kayaking, and paddleboarding from multiple marinas and launch points, and the PCT-adjacent trail system of the San Gorgonio Wilderness to the south provides backcountry hiking access to some of Southern California's highest and most dramatic mountain terrain. The Moonridge Animal Park and the Baldwin Lake Ecological Reserve provide additional nature-focused excursions in the immediate area. Grey Squirrel Resort operates year-round in Big Bear Lake's four-season mountain climate, with winter skiing season from December through March and summer's lake and mountain recreation driving the two peak demand periods. Fall's aspen and black oak color in the surrounding San Bernardino National Forest creates a third visitation surge in October, when the mountain's foliage rivals the more celebrated deciduous displays of the eastern United States. Cabin reservations for winter ski weekends and summer holidays fill months in advance, and the resort's intimate 19-cabin scale means early booking is essential for any stay during Big Bear's peak windows.

from $75/night

Arrowhead Tree Top Lodge

1 Cabin, 19 Hotel Rooms

Arrowhead Tree Top Lodge in Lake Arrowhead, California, offers 20 cabin and hotel-room accommodations at 5,100 feet in the San Bernardino Mountains, with an outdoor pool, walking trails, and a creek on the property. A wedding venue and mountain setting serve guests two hours from Los Angeles. Twenty cabins and hotel rooms make up the accommodations — this is lodging rather than an RV park, with no sites or hookups. Restrooms and showers serve the property, with WiFi throughout. The lodge also operates as a wedding venue, which the pine and cedar setting supports well. Pets are welcome. An outdoor pool anchors the warm months, with walking trails through the forest and a creek running the property. Birding is productive across the mountain terrain, with swimming from the area and a lake, golf course, wineries, and skiing all nearby. The elevation is the point. At 5,100 feet in the rim country above the Inland Empire, mountain air runs 20 to 30 degrees cooler than the valley floor below — which is the entire reason Southern Californians make the drive. The Rim of the World Drive's panoramic views stretch across the San Bernardino Valley to the Pacific horizon, and the contrast between elevation and valley is what gives the Lake Arrowhead corridor its character. The lodge serves guests year-round. Summer heat in the valley drives the heaviest demand as visitors escape uphill, with winter bringing snow and ski traffic to the same corridor. Reserve well ahead for summer weekends and holiday periods.

from $119/night

Silver View RV Resort

315 RV Sites

Silver View RV Resort in Bullhead City, Arizona, offers 315 full-hookup RV sites on the Colorado River with 30 and 50-amp service, cable TV, and rigs accepted to 45 feet. River view back-in, premium back-in, and pull-through categories join a pool, spa, hot tub, fitness center, and on-site dining directly across from Laughlin. Three hundred fifteen sites span premium back-in, river view back-in, and pull-through categories, all carrying water, sewer, and electric on 30 and 50-amp with cable TV and site WiFi, sized to 45 feet. The river view category is the reason most guests book here rather than inland. A general store, laundry, dump station, restrooms, showers, and personal mailboxes handle the practical side — the mailboxes point to the long-stay winter residents who fill much of the resort. An outdoor pool, spa, and hot tub and sauna anchor daily recreation, with a fitness center, clubhouse, on-site dining, walking trails, and a dog park besides. Pickleball and corn hole fill the courts. Boating runs from the river and a golf course is nearby. Pets are welcome. Bullhead City sits directly across the Colorado from Laughlin's casino resort corridor, which gives guests a genuinely unusual combination: river-view camping on the quiet Arizona bank with a full entertainment strip visible across the water and reachable in minutes. Winter is decisively the season on the lower Colorado. Book well ahead for January through March, when snowbirds fill the river corridor, and expect considerably easier availability through the summer.

from $70/night

Meadview RV Park & Cozy Cabins

25 RV Sites, 1 Cabin, 4 Tent Sites

Meadview RV Park and Cozy Cabins in Meadview, Arizona, is a gateway camping destination at 3,400 feet elevation in the remote northwest Arizona strip country where the western Grand Canyon meets Lake Mead — a campground positioned at the confluence of two of the American West's most dramatic natural landscapes in Mohave County, giving guests the specific wilderness access to Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument's roadless terrain and the Pierce Ferry Launch to Lake Mead's upper arm that only the Meadview area's remote Arizona Strip location provides with overnight accommodation infrastructure. Meadview's Mohave County position at the end of Pierce Ferry Road, 70 miles east of Kingman on the Colorado River plateau, gives the campground the specific remote-Arizona character of a destination at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau where the Grand Canyon's western extension and the Mojave Desert's northeastern reach converge in the most geologically complex and most accessible-but-remote landscape in the lower 48 states. RV sites and cozy cabins with the Meadview area's complete campground infrastructure give guests the comfortable accommodation base for the Grand Canyon-Parashant NM exploration and the Lake Mead boating access that the Pierce Ferry area's remote position specifically sustains for the adventurous visitor whose itinerary extends beyond the South Rim's developed visitor infrastructure into the canyon country's less-traveled western districts. The cabin option gives the couple or small family the comfortable Arizona Strip shelter that the remote Meadview location's temperature extremes — hot summers, cold winter nights at 3,400 feet — specifically motivate beyond the tent camping option. Pets are welcome. Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, the roadless BLM-NPS co-managed monument to the north and northwest of Meadview, encompasses 1.05 million acres of Arizona Strip canyon country — one of the most remote and least visited national monuments in the lower 48 states, a landscape of Shivwits Plateau volcanic fields, Toroweap Valley's dramatic canyon vista, and the Whitmore Wash's route to the Colorado River at the canyon bottom that give Parashant the specific wild and unmaintained character that the monument's high-clearance road requirement and the absence of visitor services specifically sustain in the most deliberately unmanaged unit of the national monument system. Lake Mead National Recreation Area's Pierce Ferry launch site, seven miles south of Meadview, provides the boat access to the upper arm of Lake Mead — the Colorado River's last undammed section above the Lake Mead reservoir pool where the river canyon narrows in the lower Grand Canyon's volcanic Grand Wash Cliffs. The Pierce Ferry boat launch gives kayakers and motorboat operators the direct water access to the Canyon's western terminus in a boating experience that approaches the Grand Canyon's lower canyon from the reservoir rather than the hiking route from the South Rim. Meadview RV Park and Cozy Cabins serves guests year-round in the Arizona Strip's high desert climate, where the spring and fall seasons from March through May and September through November provide the most comfortable conditions for the Grand Canyon-Parashant backcountry driving and the Lake Mead boating that the Meadview area's remote position specifically enables. Hoover Dam, 60 miles southwest of Meadview on US-93 at the Nevada-Arizona border, provides the landmark dam tour and the Lake Mead scenic overlook that give the Northwest Arizona campground its most historically significant day-trip destination in the most visited dam in the United States. Reserve sites and cabins ahead for the spring and fall prime Arizona Strip seasons and the Hoover Dam spring tourism peak.

from $20/night

Joshua Tree Lake RV & Campground

Joshua Tree Lake RV Campground in Joshua Tree, California, provides a lakeside and desert camping experience at the gateway to Joshua Tree National Park—the 800,000-acre California desert preserve where the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts converge and the iconic twisted Joshua trees create the alien landscape that has made this park one of the most photographed national parks in the American West. The campground's pond and lake, wedding venue, live music programming, and exceptional dark-sky stargazing access distinguish it from the park's own developed campgrounds, providing resort-amenity camping with the Joshua Tree character—moonlit boulder piles, star-filled desert skies, and the haunting silhouettes of Yucca brevifolia in the desert night—that defines the high-desert camping experience at the edge of one of California's most beloved national parks. The campground's facility reflects the desert environment and destination event character: a private lake and pond for fishing and desert water recreation, planned activities and live music and entertainment programming that takes advantage of the dramatic desert landscape setting, a wedding venue for celebrations in the Joshua Tree destination event market, bird and wildlife watching in the desert tortoise and roadrunner habitat, a general store, pavilion, showers, bathrooms, dump station, pet-friendly policies, Wi-Fi, and mountain and desert views that frame every camping site with the park scenery that brought guests to Joshua Tree in the first place. Stargazing events and the campground's exceptional night-sky access provide the evening programming that no facilities can improve upon in this dark-sky desert. Joshua Tree National Park's Wonderland of Rocks—a concentration of massive rounded granite monoliths that rose from magma intrusions 100 million years ago and were exposed by erosion to create the boulder-pile landscape that defines the park's distinctive visual character—contains over 8,000 documented rock climbing routes that have made Joshua Tree the most visited and most iconic rock climbing destination in North America. The Skull Rock Nature Trail, Keys View's panoramic Coachella Valley overlook, and the Cottonwood Spring oasis in the Sonoran Desert section provide the representative national park experiences accessible on day hikes from the campground's Joshua Tree gateway position. The town of Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, and the High Desert arts and culture community that has grown around the national park's western gateway have developed a distinctive creative culture of galleries, music venues, and the annual Joshua Tree Music Festival that reflect the desert landscape's effect on artistic practice in the creative community that has colonized the Morongo Valley's high desert terrain. The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum in Joshua Tree—a free outdoor sculpture garden of assemblage art created by Purifoy from the debris of the 1965 Watts Riots—is one of the most significant and unusual outdoor art installations in California. Joshua Tree Lake RV Campground operates year-round in the high Mojave Desert's four-season climate, with the fall and spring seasons from October through April delivering the most comfortable desert temperatures for hiking, rock climbing, and boulder exploration in Joshua Tree National Park—the summer months above 100 degrees Fahrenheit make the park's sun-exposed terrain genuinely dangerous for unprepared hikers in the heat of the day, while the mild winter nights create extraordinary stargazing conditions when the desert air's low humidity and the campground's minimal light pollution combine with the Milky Way's winter arc over the park's boulder silhouettes. The spring wildflower season in February and March after winter rains creates the desert bloom that brings maximum visitor volume to Joshua Tree.

from $16 $14/night

Outdoorsy Yosemite

141 RV Sites, 4 Cabins, 10 Tent Sites, 6 Glamping Sites

Outdoorsy Yosemite in Bass Lake, California, offers 141 full-hookup RV sites, four cabins, 10 tent sites, and six glamping sites in the Sierra foothills, with 30 and 50-amp service, cable TV, and rigs accepted to 40 feet on a big-rig-friendly layout, open all year. Superior back-in, premium pull-through, and standard back-in categories join a pool, clubhouse, boat and kayak rentals, and lake access. One hundred forty-one sites run in standard back-in, superior back-in, and premium pull-thru categories, all carrying water, sewer, and electric on 30 and 50-amp with cable TV, sized to 40 feet, with picnic tables. Note the 40-foot cap before booking a larger rig. Four cabins, 10 tent sites, and six glamping sites round out the lodging. A general store, laundry, propane fills, restrooms, showers, and RV storage handle the practical side. Reservation holders must be at least 18, and guests of all ages are welcome. An outdoor pool anchors the summer, with boat rentals, kayak rentals, and bike rentals opening the lake for boating, paddle boats, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, and fishing. A clubhouse, game room, billiards, ping pong, basketball, horseshoes, sports courts, walking trails, hiking, mountain biking, a playground, community fire pit, dog park, and on-site dining fill the rest, with strong stargazing and birding. Eighteen miles from Yosemite's South Entrance with Bass Lake's warm water immediately adjacent, this works as both a park basecamp and a lake destination. Summer fills both Yosemite and Bass Lake. Reserve well ahead.

from $44 $38/night