Bonita Canyon Campground

We stayed the last weekend of July and although it was hot, enjoyed every minute of our stay. The visitor center was wonderful with very helpful staff. The campground and bathrooms were clean and well kept. We stayed in site 14 with our 18 ft Lance travel trailer. This specific site is not level and does not allow for the trailer to open to the table and grill area, but we didn’t mind too much. Definitely scoped out which sites we will try to snag for our next visit. Our kiddos rode their bikes through the campground during the evenings and we did some light hiking in the mornings, spotting many white tail deer, birds, squirrels and the gorgeous views. We will for sure be back!

Bonita campground has flush toilets, grill stands, and bear boxes. It’s well wooded, but the sites are close, and if you have neighbors who delight in screaming at each other and thinking they own the universe, there’s no escape. Except there is escape—the first class hiking trails! Echo Canyon loop has views, changes, creek, mountains, all in a 5- mile hike. Awesome. The visitor center has free WiFi.

I almost hate to share this place, but two people told me I had to go there, so I'll pass along that favor and say "you have to go here" because it's simply one of the most breath-taking places I've ever hiked.

Tiny campground, nothing bigger than 35 feet fits, and your site may be VERY unlevel and rocky so come prepared with blocks and stuff like that.

There are zero hookups (although my solar did OK even under some shade), and no water (so bring your own). There are, however, toilets. And hiking trails with beautiful views. Many beautiful views. Take the shuttle to the point and hike back down to the campground for the most amazing scenery in Arizona.

First, a few things to know are that Chiricahua National Monument is about 30 miles from any services,there is no cell signal in the canyon, the campground is small and reservations are pretty much a must. We had pretty much resigned ourselves to doing a day trip from Wilcox, AZ when we were able to snag a cancellation. I did later learn from a couple of other campers that there are two or three sites that are first come first served, but I imagine you'd have to get up pretty early to snag one of them.

Be aware also that there are size limits on RVs for this campground. I believe the maximum RV length is 28., but check the park's website for exact numbers. The main limiting factors are narrow roads within the campground and two rather serious dips in them where they cross Bonita Creek (usually dry, but which can become a flash flood corridor). Long rigs and/or those with a low profile may bottom out going through these dips. We had no problems with our 19' dual axle trailer, but it has pretty good clearance.

The campground itself has fairly spacious, private sites with picnic tables, fire grills (no ground fires allowed), and bear boxes - or as one ranger called them, "skunk boxes", as there are 4 different species of skunk in the monument. There are flush toilet, but no showers. You will need to dump holding tanks and fill fresh water tanks elsewhere too.

The monument has a nice little visitors center located in a pretty stone building built by the CCC. There are great hiking tails, many of them also constructed by the CCC, which take you up close and personal into the amazing rock formations for which the monument is so famous. Since this monument doesn't get the volume of visitors of some of the more well known National Park properties, we found our stay here wonderfully relaxing and interesting.

The camping was very well maintained and has a lot of trees for privacy. The host was very friendly. We have a small 19ft motorhome so we did not have difficulties to park, but I can imagine some would have. There were no hookups, but water spigots were close by, and there was a grey water discharge station. It is in a canyon, so there was no cell service. But at the top of the mountains, we had a few bars!

The campground is now 20$ from January 2018.

The only thing I would say to improve this campground is to reduce the allowed hours for generators. This is a very quiet place, and generators running from 8am to 8pm can be a pain.
Also, showers and dump station would be nice, but we understand there was none because of the location.

Note that there's a free shuttle that can pick you up in the campground at 9am to go up the mountain, so you can take the trail all the way down to the visitor center.

I stayed in late November. I would have stayed a week, but I could only get a reservation for 1 night. I'll be back next year! I got 50% off the nightly rate with my NPS senior pass, so I only paid $6. The campground road is narrow, and the sites are mostly short and at right angles to the road, so most sites will be difficult to get into, but I happened to get site 11, the easiest to back into! My site was away from the road and backed onto a wash, which had the advantage of space and privacy, but the site was very unlevel longwise and laterally. However, I would still choose it over any other site. The campground was beautiful and spotlessly clean. There were no hookups, but water spigots were close by, and each site had bear-proof storage for those that needed it. It is in a canyon, so there was no cell service.

Really nice campground with clean bathrooms and good water throughout the site. One of the nicest places I've stayed lately and the rest of Chiricahua is spectacular. Great hiking trails with amazing views...Beautiful. Only two small complaints... 1... There are four different kinds of skunks in the park and from time to time you would smell them. 2...The sites are nice and large but unfortunately they have large rocks placed so that you can't get right in with your vehicle. They state that all sites will accommodate two vehicle, No Way. We booked one site based on that information. We had one regular pick up with a camper and one small pickup with a canopy, the regular truck and camper took the entire parking spot with just enough room to walk around it and not hang out onto the road. Of course the place was booked so there was no other spots available. The host clearly felt bad and allowed us to park the small truck sort of in the ditch off of the pavement right next to the site. Not ideal but got the job done. Some sites were longer and knowing now what we know we would book a 30'+ site to get both in. Had the big rocks not been there we would have easily slipped the small truck in. Just be aware...
Still loved it and would go again. Cell reception with verizon was spotty at best, sometimes a text would pop up and sometimes I could reply, sometimes not...

A couple points others have mostly overlooked:

1. There is a free shuttle from the visitors center and Campground to the top of the Chiracahua's that you can take just by signing up. From the drop off point you can either take a 4.3 mile walk known as Echo Canyon or a 7.3 mile hike known as Masi Point.

2. There IS guest wifi 24/7 outside the visitor's center.

3. This is an excellent place to see Coati's as there are troops of them and they're fairly observable - we watched 16 of them for hours over 3 days.