By:
Submission
10 miles northeast of Grants via NM 547 and FRs 239 & 193
Don't be fooled by the sign at the entrance - this is a picnic ground and not a campground. It's nice enough and the group shelter has a fireplace and a nice serving bench, but a lot of the other spots are a bit overgrown and under-maintained.
This place is listed as a free campground (limit 14 days) on various sites, however, the campsites are very small pull off spots on the side of the road. If someone comes blasting through there at night (happens often) they could take off the side of your vehicle. pull off spots are very narrow, even a hatchback would have a hard time getting completely out of the way of oncoming traffic....not that a hatchback could get up the road to this camp area. Also, this is mountain lion country. We slept with one eye opened the entire time and thought we heard wolves or something large outside at night. Place has a very very creepy vibe, constantly felt like we were watched even though we were the only people there and there was a lot of suspicious trash about the place. We took off as soon as we could the next day.
There are a few picnic tables fairly close together. Only one is under a roof. This place use to be a campground, but they made it into a picnic area. One of the signs say day use only, no camping. No AT&T service. The dirt road coming in was redone in June 2023, so it is nice and flat.
