Red Canyon Campground

This review is for the campground that's a little lower in elevation, at these coordinates: 34.616976, -106.402420

The road is paved (but not much more than one lane wide) part of the way in. The unpaved part is well maintained except for a few craters here and there. There are some free dispersed camping spots along the way. The campground has small-ish sites, mostly for tent camping and smaller rigs. The usual basic amenities: vault toilets, tables, grills, some bear boxes, trash bins. Dirt & gravel pads. The 7,700' elevation and tree canopy make it cooler than the surrounding high prairie. Verizon cell tower just down the road.

We took our 21' Rialta out, and it fit in the spaces just fine. There are a couple of spaces that would work for a bit larger RVs even. There are some big road bumps to be aware of.

In the RV circle there is a large bonfire area in the middle with seating.

Toilets are closer to the entrance--some people with younger children drove them to the bathrooms.

The campsites on the south side of the campground all drop off into a bit of a ravine--it was neat to explore, but would be worrisome with younger children (ours are teens and pre-teens).

Nice trees perfect for slacklines and hammocks, but not too dense to see the gorgeous stars. Very quiet. Lots of downed, dry wood to scavenge. There is a trail head for a 7 mile hike that leads to a waterfall here as well. Nice big, sturdy tables for each campsite as well as a BBQ and fire ring.

Site 9 seemed huge, but quite possibly because 8 and 10 were empty.

We have Google Fi, which uses the best of Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular. We had spotty LTE--sometimes great, sometimes non-existent, but always able to find it when we needed.

No water. Vault toilets.

We pulled a 25’ trailer here with no problem. The last two miles of the access road are packed gravel. The grade is mellow, but we benefited from 4-wheel Drive. There were several trailers of similar size in the RV loop, so we chose a site of suitable size in the tent loop. Our site, #23, had good solar exposure which was good for us since we have solar panels on the roof.

The campground is generally quiet, but FS Road 422 which abuts the east side of the campground, has an unusually high volume of traffic. However we did come in on a Saturday, so this may be due to the weekend.

This is our first visit to the Cibola National Forest, and it won’t be our last. Good hiking and mountain bike riding opportunities. And the elevation, 8000’-10,000’, gets you up into the cool and cold temperatures.

The price is hard to beat, $3.50/night with our NP GEEZER Pass; we’re over 62 years old. The regular price of $7 is also great.

Good road access. Vault toilets clean and well stocked with TP, still smelt like a vault toilet. $7.00 nightly rate...half price with Pass. Great deal....6 nights for $21.00, 2-3 bar Verizon. 13-14 Mbps.

Drove all the way to the campsite on a dirt road but when we got there it was closed, gates locked!

I didn’t camp here, but drove the forest roads to the top of the mountain. Pretty drive. All gates are open and people are camping. Forest service people were out and about.