Twenty Mile Beach

What a beautiful hidden gem. We stopped here for the night. Not many others around. Great pullouts on firm ground, pretty nice gravel roads. We decided to try to get closer to the water. Don’t do it without 4x4. We got stuck but a really nice local who was nearby, helped us out (THANK YOU DAKOTA!!). The lake is beautiful. It’s a salt lake and you can reportedly swim in it, though we didn’t. There are toilets. No plumbing. No hookups. No trash bins. Pack it in, pack it out. Dropped a star for the soft sand, the high evening winds, and a little road noise from the highway. Otherwise, it’s fabulous.

This is dispersed camping with beautiful views of lake and mountains. It was an easy on/off the highway onto decent gravel road. We set up on the North end of of the camp with a commanding view of the lake and mountains. It was a real treat as we woke to the morning sun.

Very good overnight, I would definitely stay again if passing through.

Just about every road except for the main road is sand and you can easily get stuck. The main road is nicely packed. It smelled like poop, and there was a good amount of nats/mosquitos. The water looked slimy green up close. Nothing I would ever get into. Right by the highway so of course you have some noise but wasn’t bad. Stars were out and poppin and you could see the Milky Way. Great sunrise over the mountain tops

More mosquitoes than I've ever seen anywhere. Feels like you're walking through sleet, only its bugs. Gross.

I heeded the prior reviewers advice and didn't head down towards the beach, and I'm glad I didn't. People were constantly getting stuck in the sand. Do not go down there without 4wd and a good idea of how to drive in sand.

The area offers no protection from the wind and it was gusting to over 50 mph.

Despite the dumpsters, there was dog poop everywhere.

Twenty Mile Beach is the northern free camping area along Walker Lake. You get amazing views of Mt. Grant and the lake together and there are some amenities like a dumpster and a vault toilet.

There is a hard packed dirt road that leads from the highway down to the dumpster. At this point, you can go either left or right. When we were there in April, there was a large group of campers set up next to the water directly behind the dumpster, so I think there’s some good camping along the road on the right. We took the road to the left, which leads to a large beach area and a vault toilet.

The most important thing you need to know about camping at Walker Lake BLM land is if you leave the road and drive down on to the beach you will be driving through loose sand, and it’s super easy to get stuck.

When we first go there, we saw a giant 5th-wheel camped all the way down the beach right next to the water. It seems like you can get in and out of this area if you know how to drive through sand. That means driving as fast as you can with no turning and no stopping.

Most people were camping along the hard packed dirt road or right by the vault toilet. We took a spot that was off the road but not so far down the beach that we couldn’t get out with our travel trailer. There was an RV that got stuck right next to us trying to get down to the beach so it’s possible to get trapped even in an area where other campers are.

Another thing about the beach is there are tons of orb weaver spiders everywhere. They are huge and look scary but are harmless. I read that they are the worst during late summer and early fall.

The lake is beautiful, but the water is murky.

All-in-all Twenty Mile Beach is not a bad place to camp for a few days on your way through Nevada. The nearby highway wasn’t too loud, and the town of Hawthorne Nevada was fun to explore. The dispersed camping area to the south also looked like it had some great spots to camp and it seemed like it didn’t have as much loose sand to get stuck in as Twenty Mile Beach.

One thing we love about boondocking is that every location is a new experience. It’s also always a surprise. And although the ebb and flow of boondockers typically follow a leave-and-arrive on Sunday pattern, this place was humming along nearly every day of the week. Not surprising giving it's proximity to 95. After getting in later than I would have liked on a Friday, we got an OK spot, but then were able to get a prime spot, with a large area to fit our vehicles the very next day.

It snowed right above 5K feet, but being at 4K feet it was rather comfortable.

There are two hard-packed roads down to the beach, and there were class c’s and tt’s down at that beach side spot. We preferred to be higher up, which offered some impressive views! I didn't want to chance getting stuck.

The night before we left, a dually with a truck camper towing a horse trailer pulled off one of those packed roads and got stuck. It took a wrecker to come and tow him out. Advise to stay on one of the to packed sand roads, or the main road.

The town of Hawthorne is 20 minutes away, but we never went into the town due to covid-19. I reccommend you come stocked before heading up. It does seem like it’s in the middle of nowhere, and it kind of is, maybe that’s why it wasn’t as busy as I thought it would be. Or then again, it’s more likely that the pandemic has sidelined a lot of travelers.

We would definitely stay here again.

P.S - No visitations by the Big Horn Sheep, although we did see them (and the babies) when coming in! Who knows, you might get lucky!

Twenty Mile Beach marks the first time we've used BLM to camp in our 15 months living full-time on the road. We've spent most of this winter past in Southern California, but with California's governor putting the state on lock down for the moment and with all the reported cases of COVID-19 in the state, we decided to move into Nevada for a period of time.

We're here in later March so bugs are not an issue. Temperatures are lower 60's during the day, upper 30's at night. There's snow on the mountains to our west.

Verizon service is great here. Nice few days of social distancing.