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We camped overnight at the Vallecito Stage Station County Park in November with Perfect weather. (70’s in the daytime) Excellent spot to visit, with beautiful desert mountain views. The facilities were clean, the people were amiable. The Vallecito Stage Station (First Official Trans-Continental Overland Mail Stage Line in the United States) is exciting to visit. Presentations signs were posted outside the “Adobe style” structure that talked about the living conditions of our Ancestors. They were “Strong-willed people.” (Impressive)
Riding the mail by horse and wagon through Desert weather looked difficult. I now have a whole new perspective on what it was like to live here, in the California Desert, just 100 years ago. In addition, there is a historical small cemetery on site. It’s well-maintained and important to the story of the historical site. We enjoyed this historical and highly recommend this campsite.
We LOVE staying here! Our camp host is so sweet and so knowledgeable of the area. She works very hard to keep everything nice and clean and looking neat. If you can you definitely need to stay here. Not far away is a place to swim, but we prefer to stay here. We plan on being back for Halloween. There will be a special guest speaker telling stories of the area and such. We are very excited about it.
READ THE REVIEWS OF THIS CAMPGROUND!!
Especially on the actual campground website.
We wanted to experience a new park and discovered the San Diego county parks. This is our first visit to one of the parks and Vallecito was lacking a lot.
The bad:
- There is one central bathroom for the entire park. 2 toilets for the men's and 4 for the women's. The one shower stall that was used was humid and the toilet was out of order. There was plenty of toilet paper and the ranger kept them clean.
- Flies are very abundant at the youth group site. Even with the fly traps they were pretty overwhelming in certain areas. Ant hills were also an issue in the youth group and site 16.
- The playground reminded me of my childhood upbringing with scorching metal slides and sacrificing a good chunk of skin to the fun of things. Why metal playground structure in a desert?
- We did understand that we were staying for the last weekend of the season and understood that it was going to be on the warm to hot side. On the camp ground brochure it states that it is on average 10° cooler. LIES! It was most definitely the same temps.
- There is nothing to do within 50 minutes of the campground.
- Pretty windy with no shelter for your tent. Bring extra cord and stakes to batten down the tent.
- Firewood was not sold at the campground as advertised. Had to run down the road and pay almost double the price. Supply and demand got us.
The good:
- Decent cell service for where we were.
- Great night skies. We were fortunate enough to catch the train of satellites for Starlink. It was pretty cool to watch.
- Youth group site has a pretty nice grill set up to feed a lot.
- Fire pits were pretty big for the youth group site.
- The Park Ranger was super nice and very helpful.
Some of the other reviews talk about being very quiet with minimal other visitors. I can see this being very true. It is right next to the road so you do get highway noise during the night. Maybe one car an hour.
Usually not crowded. Beautiful desert hikes right from your campsite. Primitive camping. The park ranger is super nice. Stay here and use the hot spring pool at Agua Caliente. Just a relaxing Mellow place.
