roadtripper2628252

I agree with all the things recent reviewers have said. Sites vary with size, access, privacy, and level. Visitor center bathrooms were clean, warm, and spacious. The bathroom lights were on in the evening but not one morning when I went in before dawn. Pit toilets are also spread around the park. The location is striking. Our $10/night is the regular rate for non-electric sites.

If you are making reservations from afar, look at www.campsitephotos.com/campground/nm/city-of-rocks-state-park/ to see images of every campsite to help you decide what works for you. We stayed in site 8 with a 30' trailer. Once a month, around the new moon, an astronomy group comes out of Las Cruces for a public viewing night. If you hope to show up unannounced, they have a small area which supports overflow parking while you could wait for a spot to open. We were pleased to see that bees were posted as a protected species in the park. We heard owls every night and saw them a few times. There are about 12 miles of trails in the area, most of which are bikeable. A goathead found one of my bike tires.

The visitor center staff and rangers were all very helpful, friendly, and accommodating. The camp host runs a tight ship. Our site was raked and ashes removed from the fire grate. He also gave us some great ideas for other places to go visit. They have put a lot of work into that park. Rock retaining walls have been built to enlarge flat areas in campsites. The trails are occasionally rocky and sandy, but well marked and maintained. The visitor center is beautiful and well maintained. Access is paved to the visitor center and a good gravel road all around the park. Potable water is available at the visitor center and the electric sites. There is no dump station. OHVs and drones are not allowed in the park. There are fines for using glass bottles outside your vehicle. We were in a less private location and occasionally listened to people's generators, and sometimes ran ours.

I spent a night tenting here to get on a local trail early for a day hike. I drove in with a Nissan Titan.

The first 5.5 miles are on an excellent, wide, gravel road. The remainder is a much narrower, winding, gravel road with pot holes and water trenches occasionally. It is a full 20 miles from Hwy 12 to the campground. I did the one way distance in about 70 minutes. Don't bother coming before mid June, and some snow years later than that.

The area is setup for horse packing. There are many trails leaving Elk Summit into some beautiful country. The campground has three loops. Loops A & B are for camping with stock. Loop C without stock. Loop C has 6 campsites.

First come camping, pit toilets (moderately clean), no water except in the creeks, picnic table and fire grates. Considering it is 20 miles, there are not many places to stay by the road on the way in. I think there were 5 possibilities in the last 7 miles.

The primary downside are all the burns of the past couple decades. But they work hard up there to keep trails clear for access to lookouts, general horse packing, and hunting in the fall. It is a pretty wet area so mosquito's are thick probably through most the summer.

Some horse packer trailers get pretty long, but I would not bring my 30' trailer in, even though half the sites in loop C would support a 30' trailer.. I would bring my 13' Scamp in though and plan on 2 hours for the drive in.

There is probably no cell service within 50 miles of this spot.

We were here over New Years weekend 2022. 9 sites were filled out of 71 available. 28 mile road in from Hwy 93 was narrow but two lane, paved, and in good shape. The campground is paved and graveled. Fire grates and concrete tables at each site. No one was in our line of site. We agree with most what Lynda said in 2018.
Noise was not a problem for us. There was a group of 4 class A coaches who ran their generators almost constantly (not during quiet hours) but far enough away as to be unnoticed. Most noticeable noise came from Lake Mead tour helicopters. The host was charming. He told us the coaches were planning Karaoke after quiet hours for New Years Eve and asked if that was OK with us. We said let er rip but we heard nothing. A little disappointed.
The campground is well watered and good foliage for privacy and wind break but the Oleander is poisonous. Don't burn the wood, don't touch the wood or leaves. The eucalyptus and palm trees are thick enough to impact solar panels, but a dozen or so sites get pretty good solar. Water spigots are spread across the campground. Dumpsters around the perimeter. Dump station functions.
Bathrooms were clean with flush toilets, but old and only cold water with no functioning electrical outlets in bathrooms. The place felt safe. The Marina showers and laundry were closed, as was the restaurant and store. The lake is 154 feet below full pool. We had a few nights below freezing. Very little rain. The cost is now $20/night and $10 with senior pass. Local wifi is usually available, but not working during our stay. At $5/day we would have not used it anyway.
The surrounding country has no trails for hiking save for a 3/4 mile nature trail at the visitor center. But there is a dirt road heading north for biking and some other other shorter dirt roads. Deep sand is frequent on dirt roads. The surrounding countryside is gravel, no cryptobiotic, with sparse creosote, rabbit sage, and many cactus varieties. Walking cross country is easy following ridges and washes. Elevation is about 1500 ft. We went 2 miles east to some higher volcanic ridges, saw burros, jackrabbits, and had a great hike. Very interesting geology. Such a wide variety of rock types in surrounding country. The campground makes a great bocce court. We did no boating.
This place looks like it would be very different when boating was in peak season, but we like it empty like this. Some may call countryside empty and boring, but bring binocs and magnifying glasses and look for clues across the large and small. It will get under your skin, just like the cactus if you don't pay attention to where you sit down. We are just starting a 3 month winter tour of AZ and NM and would love to happen across more places like this.

I just stopped by to have a look at this campground as I was passing through. I didn't stay for the night. I would not bring my 30' trailer, but I certainly would my 13' Scamp. I hiked up the Steel/Odell trail a few miles. A very pretty dirt trail through a lodgepole forest.

The campground has 11 spots. It seems a little run down. It was empty at 5 PM on a beautiful August Friday afternoon. There are two pit toilets. Each site has a fire pit, a charcoal grill, and a table. At least one spot had a flat graveled square for a tent. There are a group of food storage boxes in the center of the campground. The campground itself is fairly open so not a lot of privacy from site to site.

The campground is 6 miles in from the pavement. The first 3 miles are a good graveled road. The last 3 are a wide dirt road with potholes. Some of it is very slow. Because of campsite size, a 20' trailer would be the max. The turn around loop at the end of the campground is plenty wide for a 20" trailer.

There are a couple nice hiking trails right out of the campground and it is close to the Big Hole River which is popular fly fishing. There is much camping along the Big Hole which is more convenient for a day of fishing but also next to the road and crowded.

Gordon Hirabayashi campground is the second campground up the Catalina Highway at 4800 feet elevation and at mile post 7.4 We didn’t stay here but would have preferred this to Molina Basin. $20 per night, $10 with senior pass.

There are 12 sites, mostly pull-through but the entrance and exit to these pull-throughs are sharp turns, so long rigs beware. I pull a 30’ trailer and did not want to chance it. I would suggest it is suitable for trailers in the low 20’s. The campground is all gravel. If you pull in and find no suitable sites, the loop at the end of the campground does support a long rig for turning around. Each site has a concrete table, fire grate, charcoal grate, food box, and hanging pole. There is no water at the campground but there are trash dumpsters. There is one pit toilet restroom of medium cleanliness. The campground generally looks a little run down. I would have preferred to stay at this campground rather than Molina, because there is less road noise and it feels more remote, but I didn’t think I could get my trailer into any of the sites. There was no Verizon cell service. It felt safe and the campground was clean.

Hirabayashi is the quieter of the two campgrounds and it has more directions to go on hiking trails. The host was absent when we stopped in to look around. This site seems to be popular with horse riders as there were many stock pens at the turn around loop at the end. Both Hirabayashi and Molina seem to want to support AZT through hikers, hence the food storage boxes and poles for hanging packs away from critters. I wonder if a water tank is brought in when AZT traffic is busy.

The Catalina Highway is a heavily trafficked road. It very good pavement but narrow and winding. It is very popular with road bikes, people with fast cars, tourists, rock climbers, and locals generally. If you have a big rig, you should have a plan for turning around before you leave the valley floor because there are not a lot of options.

The Molina Basin Campground is the first campground up the Catalina Highway at about 4200 feet and mile post 5.6. There are 36 sites. It is paved. It has 4 very clean pit toilet restrooms. There is no water available, nor a dump station, but there are trash dumpsters. Most sites have a concrete table, fire grate, charcoal grate, food storage box, and hanging pole. Three sites are designated for RVs and do not have food storage boxes nor hanging poles. It felt very safe. $20/night, $10/night with senior pass. We had no Verizon cell service.

This campground’s strength is well-shaded tent sites. I suspect it aims to support AZT through-hikers. There are some sites here which do not even have a space to park a vehicle. The three sites designated as RV sites are 17, 18, and 19. The host was very pleasant and helpful answering my only question.

I have a 30’ trailer. You do not want to take a 30’ trailer past site 19. The only sites which would support this trailer are 17, and 19. They were both flat. Site 18 was sloped and a little short for me. If you couldn’t use one of these campsites to back the trailer into, so you could turn around, you would be in a difficult position. The loop at the end of the campground is pretty tight. I had left the trailer on the valley floor and came up to inspect Molina and Hirabayashi with just the truck to see what I could and could not do. Both sites 17, and 19 would work well for something this long but you should know you have one of these sites before you come up. The campground recommends a maximum length of 22 feet. I would agree.

Our only complaint is road noise. The front half of the campground is surrounded on 3 sides by the Catalina Highway and it is a very busy road. The back end of this campground would be a little quieter. The 3 RV sites are spaced well away from each other but other areas are tighter. There is a 20 ft waterfall (seasonally) one mile up the canyon to the north with a good trail to it.

We stayed on the MST&T road, but these comments would apply also to the other roads into Kofa from Hwy 95 once you get at least 10 miles from Quartzsite. The main roads into Kofa are wide graveled roads with some washboards and rare soft spots. Once inside the Kofa boundary, vehicles must stay within 100 feet of the designated roads. But there are a couple miles between Hwy 95 and the Kofa boundary in which you can get farther away from the MST&Troad. The turn off Hwy 95 onto MST&T is poorly marked but it is a couple hundred yards south of the 93 mile marker. We pulled in too late to be selective about a spot so we just went to bed and took our time the next morning. This would be an easy place to pull into after dark.

We had 2-3 bars Verizon but noticeably slower in evenings over the weekend we were here.

We are new to the desert so it is all fascinating for us. There are some hiking trails in the area but we just take off across the desert floor to explore. This is no place for a dog. Too much Cholla. We would have taken our bikes cross country except for the cactus. Once you get away from Quartzsite though, and whatever local road you are near, this place feels very remote.

This place seems to be a OHV riders paradise. They seem to gather in groups and travel the back roads. Our only complaint with the location we selected is that it is too close to one of the side roads the OHVs use so we get a little dust and noise. Had we known, it would have been easy to find a better spot. We are very impressed though with how respectful the OHV users seem to be of the Kofa restrictions. We saw very few OHV tracks beyond the 100 foot line and what we did see seemed to be very old.

We agree with what Tim said in April of '21 about how clean this place is. Between the 2 spots we stayed here there were a few bits of broken glass, and a couple old beer cans in the wash. Over the stay, we walked about 15 miles across the desert and picked up a old glove and a couple more pop cans.

We were here at beginning of January, while Quartzsite was at peak population, and we had two neighbors we could see from our campsite, both about a quarter mile away. The sunsets, sunrises, and stars are fantastic. There is a glow in the sky from Yuma and Quartzsite, but not bad. By 9 am we were sitting outside in the sun with our coffee in t-shirts. One afternoon we had to move to the shade to read. This is not like Montana in January.