Medeiros Campground

My partner and I are en route back to San Diego and needed a place to stay for the night. We arrived after sunset. There is no light pollution so everything was DARK! We thought everyone might be exaggerating about the windy conditions... nope! The site is incredibly windy, but it’s right on the lake! A bathroom is located on site as well. There are a lot of bugs.

Good simple, dry camping. Potter Potty's on one end only. Check first what the wind conditions will be (!) otherwise it might be a nail bitter, especially at night! Not good for tent camping, you might fly off :) But if it wouldn't be that windy, it would be totally overrun. A word on cell service.. Verizon losing out to ATT all over the place! Here it got 1-3 bars intermittently only (!) ATT stable 3-4 bars & 4g.

I stuck it out for 13 days and by the end I didn't really want to leave. BUT! As a guy who has said on several occasions I want "He Loved Wind" chiseled into his tombstone, I have to say, I don't love THAT MUCH wind! My God!! 25-30 MPH day and night for days at a time! And I'm told it gets up to 50-60 MPH sometimes!! I saw the regulars brought extra tarps to rig up on the "ramadas" (wooden shade structures over most of the picnic tables) for shielding from the wind. I spent one entire evening staring at the front of my cabin tent waiting for it to blow in and shatter. But it didn't, and the wind died down for some bits and it was quite a bit nicer. But still really hot 90+ sometimes. After I got used to that I met the third adversary: BUGS! Ants, earwigs, silverfish, some kind of white spider, flies, and... hello wolf spiders. They are BIG (for me) and after having several inside I started carrying a bit of a grudge. I saw one on the road one night and kicked some gravel at it so it would run away from my tent. The damn thing retreated two feet, did a wide U-Turn and CHARGED ME! LOL!
Unbelievable. I bought some Raid Bug Barrier, emptied my cooking stuff out and doused my tent, and the outside perimeter. The next morning I woke up bug-free. Aaahhh.... Ok, water play: I have a 12' inflatable boat, electric powered with a trolling motor. Usually great fun... Day 1: I've never cursed so much in my life! Slimy, fine, seaweed EVERYWHERE, I had to stop and take my propellor off twice and dig it out of the motor axel with knife. Then I figured out to go backwards, then I could steer on a dime and navigate through it like a video game! Actually kind a fun, but now how I usually enjoy myself on the water. The next day suddenly the water level was two feet higher! Yay! but still kelp and some seaweed, eventually I learned to go backwards through it and where to head for more open waters, and then had quite a nice time. I even rescued two little girls from the middle of the fore-dam, I think their father couldn't quite pilot the boat there were in and called me to the rescue! Ha! On the next boat trip I saw three bald eagles, wow!! One day a guy came through with a kite surfing setup, I helped him launch and watched him use that wind to make jumps 10+' in the air! Then he gave me a lesson! Another day someone came and sat up next to me and turned out to be super cool, offering me beer (all night), dinner, great music and great company. Other people were not at all cool, setting up right next to me when the whole place was empty and then being jerks when I pointed out there were other options... Final warning: do NOT go there on a weekend if you are looking for a normal nature experience, it's FLOODED with people who blast music from their trucks until all hours. The guy next to me played news radio until 11pm then switched to random music until 3am... When they woke up his wife sat on the beach and chain-smoked, of course the wind shifted that day and blew directly from her to my camp. Sigh... So LOTS to bitch about, but still I had some good times there. Oh, I talked to a lot of the staff at the kiosks and almost every single one of them was really cool and great to chat with! All in all... Hmmm... I'll never go on a weekend, and I'll never camp under a tree again and have it rain spiders on me, but I think it's cool place. BTW they DO have water there, and I did see them pump the portapotties a couple times while I was there, but yes, there are a lot of unusable picnic benches.

The great cheap stopover on our way down to Baja/Arizona from Oregon. Trash/portapot servicing can be an issue as it was for us last March. We let the woman at the kiosk know. It is not always windy , and wasnt in March '18. Even had a kayak paddleout on perfectly flat water and 70 degree air. Strangely, it is pretty quiet here regardless of being tucked between two freeways. Not going to answer the Q's about cell coverage. We dont go camping to be slaves to a cell phone.

Senior rate is $18. We have been here 3 times and it gets worse each time. Portable Potties full to the brim. Wasted food of unknown source laying about our site. Very windy 2 out of 3 visits.
Snakes did I mention snakes , Rattlers where coming out of hybernation and found us.
Our picnic table was missing half the seating and cabana had been quite nice 15 years ago.
The State needs to service the pots and do some tlc,
The state staff at the gate where delightful people
The snakes may be gone. The wind blew so hard they may be in the next County.
Split Pea Anderson’s has great choices and is near and dear a mile or so north.
Happy Trails

This makes a good "en route" site when you're doing I-5, but it is not for "pleasure" camping. It is very windy most of the time. Windy enough that I didn't dare build a campfire. But, it's cheap and somewhat quieter than staying in a rest area.

Portable pit toilets, no water and lots of wind. However, it is only $20. Level enough in most sites. Nobody cares about your dog. Rarely many people there.

Beware of the trash pandas. They raided the Campers next to me. Then, the Campers started yelling at 2:30 in the morning when they got raided. (Amateur campers)

$20 a night, $18 for Geezers.

Medeiros Campground @ San Luis Reservoir SRA

Medeiros is the least expensive of the 4 campgrounds at San Luis Reservoir SRA, at $20 per night (plus a $2 discount for seniors). Sites are first-come-first-serve and I counted about 40 of them, all located along the south shoreline of the O’Neill Forebay. Most have some combination of picnic tables, shade structures, barbecues and fire rings. We could maneuver our 17 foot trailer along side almost any of the sites, and down the entire dirt road without any issues. There is a turnaround at the very end of the road so don’t feel that you’re going to become trapped. Easy access to Highway 152 and Highway 5. We were here on a Saturday night in February and the campground was mostly empty. We chose the location because we did not need the hookups at the more expensive campgrounds at the same reservoir ($30). Just note that later in the year this location probably gets HOT!