Tijuana River Valley Campground

Was super happy to find this place. No trouble pulling in on a Friday (early May) and booking a 3-day weekend. Large, level sites, super nice staff, all new facilities/infrastructure and, best of all... Cheap! $25 a night, $5 bundles of quality firewood and 25¢ shower tokens good for 4 minutes. After dealing with the Cali state parks system from the north coast to the south, I've come to love county parks and this was the best of them all. Amazing wild flowers in the spring with the whole place smelling vaguely nice, but not allergy triggering.

A new campground, opened in 2021, in the San Diego County system. Built, the planners say, to highlight the environmental concerns of the area. Overall, a good stay, but a few big issues, some permanent and some of that should be addressed

PROS: Relatively quiet. Many, but not all, sites are level. Clean restrooms. Friendly, helpful staff. A pretty decent playground/environmental education area. A bocce court and cornhole games, with equipment available. What appear to be good quality yurts. A great hike up and around the mesa, with fantastic views. A decent amount of space between the RV sites. Probably the best fire pit/rings I’ve ever seen. New, good-quality picnic tables.

CONS: Difficult to access some of the water spigots, which are not well-marked/easy to see. RV orientation is parallel to the road, which negates some of that site spacing. Sites have small pea gravel only about a quarter of an inch deep, and some larger blue stone gravel in small car sized parking pads; could get tricky with rain. Speaking of which, when I arrived the road was flooded, and I almost couldn’t make it to the campground (I understand that in heavy rain, everyone is stuck at the campground and cannot make it out on the road). There were large pools of standing water around the yurts and the playground, and for more than 24 hours, a strong sewage smell. The nearby horse concessions take trail rides not only around but through the campground, and there are several equestrian sites, too; consequently, there is manure in a lot of the places you want to walk without stepping in it. Had to abandon part of the trail and backtrack because it was, edge to edge, manure. Very noisy at times, mostly from helicopters doing what appeared to be grid searches—the campground is very close to the border—for a lot of my stay. Also some of the day-use visitors can be noisy, especially on trail rides, shouting back and forth to each other to be heard. Inconsistent application of the rules, including documentation you need in order to register, and who can camp where. Would be helpful to have the camp map on the website. Not great cell service, and varies wildly even within each site.

37ft RV - 2 slides. F250 pickup.

First off, this camp is well maintained. Water spigots are located around the grounds, trash is conveniently located. Quiet at night minus occasional helicopter. Gravel lot, sites were pretty level and easy to come into. Rangers are here seemingly about 75% of the time. Camp host is usually around.

Site #5 and some others were odd as the outdoor slab faces the rear of most trailers. Not sure why this is the case.

We did not experience a foul smell like sewage as others have said but it’s not impossible. Lookup the issues with the Tijuana river and sewer for a better understanding of why it may happen. We seem to be far enough away that we didn’t get to experience this thankfully.

We visited early February-No real pests around or bugs besides a couple wasp looking bugs. Non invasive. We did not hike on this trip.

Showers could be better as the water pressure in #3 was low and the rooms are not heated. Water will warm up by the first 60seconds or so. $0.25/token. Token is for 4 minutes, water pauses every 30seconds or so.

My last area for improvement here is get a dump station accessible. Closest dump station is at the boat launches near Sea World!

We will be back just with a Rhino portable black tank next time :)

The campground and site layout simply boggles the mind. The RV site pads with the picnic tables and fire rings are randomly placed on either the left or right side of the parking spur for no discernible reason. If your in a van or motorhome you can deal with that. If you are in a trailer you'll want to use satellite view to get a spot the has the pad on the curb side of your trailer. The parking pads are angled to make it easier to back in. The problem is that it is in the wrong direction to the normal flow of traffic. So either you back down the access road to your site or you back out of the check in area and drive through the area with yurts to get the correct angle on the angled parking pad. Once you get past the campground layout, it's pretty nice. All of the facilities appear to be new. Separation between campsites is reasonable, but there is no screening vegetation. The low numbered RV sites are across the playground from the yurts. This was a fairly active and noisy area on the weekend, though quiet hours were respected.

The biggest source of noise was the nearby military base. For about 12 hours a day during midweek, helicopters practiced take-off and landings. It was a constant noise as three or four would circle around the area at a low level. They apparently break for the weekend and for lunch. They do seem to cease by 9pm. But they were back at it at 8am the next morning.

The area around the campground consists of a network of trails that are shared with horses. Bikes are also allowed on some of the trails. On the weekend there is quite a bit of equestrian traffic on the trails. It's about a mile and a half to the beach. It's a lovely, nearly deserted, sand beach. You'll need to walk or bike as no cars are allowed in the area.

There is no dump station at this campground.

I stumbled across this campground, without even realizing it was there. Ranger was very accommodating, nice facilities for shower and restrooms. Hot showers, four tokens for a dollar, equals 16 minutes total. I disagree with other reviews, I thought the layout was very nice and loads of space between the individual campsites. Yurts are also available, for $60 per night. Regular dry camping cost is $24. Water is available, but no dump station. Excellent hiking all around the facility. Multiple trails across from the campground will take you as physically close to the border as you can go. Be advised that border patrol is there. You cannot get to the water from Monument Road. There is a state park but the gate is closed. I'd stay again in a heartbeat.

Access may be impossible following heavy rains as the road to it may wash out. We were able to get through, but left a day early due to saturated grounds and rain predicted the following days. The staff we interacted with were very friendly and the campground would be very nice during dry times, but lots of puddling that only started to resolve after four days.

Our site (4) was very nice, however many sites would have the fire pit and picnic tables on the driver side if you back in. Still nice spots, just on the wrong side for back in sites. The tokens for showers give you 4 minutes and provided hot water. Shower # 1 had the best pressure of the few we tried.

Finally, if you dislike the sounds of helicopters, this wouldn’t be a great place for you. The Navy’s Outlying Airfield is very close, so lots of helo training going on, often into the evening. Proximity to SD and price make this a bargain, it just has some caveats to be aware of. We’d go back in dryer months, just avoid rainy periods there.

I really, really liked this place, even with the two negatives that others have pointed out. The Navy helicopters nearby during the week and if there's a heavy rain the roads get flooded and you can't leave until the water goes down. When that happened the office telephoned to let me know, which I thought was good customer service. The sites are well spaced and the bathrooms are modern and clean. Each one is a separate unit. There are lots of trails and dirt roads for long walks, which I especially enjoy with my dog.

It had rained a few days before we arrived while led to water across the road in several places about 6 to 8 inches deep. We did have to wait a while as new sites are not available until 2:00. We arrived around 11:00.
They did let us set up about 12:30. While this is a dry camp campground, it does have bathrooms and pay showers. I used these many time in a two week period and always found them clean. My only negative is that this place has sewage capabilities as the toilets and showers all go somewhere. It would be nice if they could open that up for a dump station.

There are trails surrounding the campsite and horse trail even through the camp sites. I will say in April, the flowers are beautiful all over. A hill is just south of the campground leads to a wonderful area for hiking and sharing the wonder of nature. Be sure to climb the 1/2 mile. It is worth it just for the view.