Cougar Buttes Dispersed Camping

Cougar Buttes is everything you'd want in dispersed camping, easy access, decent cell signal, very quiet. Gets more traffic during the weekends but still very serene. Lucerne Valley is a few minutes down the road and a great little town, the market has everything you need and more than you'd expect in a small town. Cafe 247 has good food, usually has live music, and everyone is super welcoming. You can dump, fill up water, and throw away trash at the Lone Wolf Colony Rv park in Apple Valley for reasonable prices.

I spent 14 days there. The weekends are the noisiest (Thursday through Sunday) with the 4 wheelers and dirt bikes everywhere. The closest RV dump seems to be the Lucerne Valley Self Storage and they charge $12.00. They are located in the town on Hwy 18. Near the supermarket you will also find a coin operated laundromat. The Valero gas station has propane for $3.00 per gallon. The scenery is beautiful and after 10:00 pm the noise is usually over.

This is part of the Johnson Valley OHV area...sort of. There are signs on the roads off of Camp Rock Road indicating those roads don't lead to the OHV but I suspect they are there to keep campers from using residential roads for access instead of area further down. There were no signs prohibiting camping or gates restricting access.

In any case, we used Astral road and didn't have any issues. It's sandy but there's hard pack below making getting stuck unlikely. We camped at the first site though just around the rock outcropping is a nice big area that gets evening shade. Not totally flat but you can find level ground. The rocks are fun to climb on. We camped on a Monday and there were just two other small Class C's nearby.

However, the area gets a lot of use and there is trash and debris scattered about. Lot's of shooting goes on our here too. We also found nails everywhere. Are they from burning pallets? Who knows but they are all over and not just in our site. You can just tell this area is a madhouse on weekends and holidays. Too bad, it's a pretty area but too many people abuse the privilege.

We stayed in our Winnebago View. Loved the area. Being a Monday night, there weren't many off-roaders. Overall, it was pretty quiet. Nearest neighbor was about a tenth of a mile away. The road to turn on to go into the dispersed area is about 3 miles down Camp Rock Road. We missed it the first time. It's tricky because the same sign has 2 different names! (We used a previous post post to help us find this place.). We also had decent internet via Verizon.

I am SO surprised I didn't get stuck getting here!

Instead of following RV to Freedom's directions below, I just plugged in the GPS coordinates and let Google do her thing. What a mistake! Google had me turn on Planet Rd to Lunar. Basically, I was going cross country through the OHV tracks and they get DEEP when you get closer to the camping spot at the big rock.

Take Astral/Cambria/Solar from Camp Rock road and you should be fine.

It was very quiet and I was able to get level fairly easily. I loved scrambling the rocks in the morning right outside my door.

This was just an overnight for me on the way to Quartzsite. It was convenient and very restful.

We arrived on Christmas Eve and there was one other RV and a tent camper in the distance. The tent camper shot fireworks the first night, but then it was relatively quiet for the next couple days.

Later in the week, the whole area filled up with campers with four-wheelers and dirt bikes. By Thursday night before New Years there was constant noise and dust in the air.

If you're looking for peace and quiet, I would avoid holiday weekends here.

Verizon was the only useable cell service and there isn't any over the air HDTV.

Verizon - DOWNLOAD: 45.57 Mbps, UPLOAD: 9.13 Mbps

With our new motorhome we headed to Belle Campground in Joshua Tree. Was full, so we headed to Johnson Valley. Off camprock rd. and granite in a couple miles. Hardly anyone there. Was extremely quiet and cold. A bit of rain one day but had a great time.

This is usually for off road enthusiasts and typically pretty busy this time of the year. With the rain that had set in, I figured a lot of people. Again, hardly none. Great rock climbing. Great hiking. Total boondocking. No hookups and no water. They have added a few pit toilets.

Had a great time. Will go many more times!!

We liked our stay and our spot in Johnson Valley OHV. If you look at the satellite, you can see people camped farther east, but we couldn't figure out how to get the MH that far in over the washes. Maybe they used to be easier. In any case, the spot we were in was nice because it had a great sunset view and view of the town's twinkling lights from above. One of the downsides is there is a fair amount of trash, mainly broken glass and shotgun shells, in the camping areas. I gave up trying to pick it up. And if that gives you a clue, there is shooting out there which we had some neighbors over the weekend doing it from early morning to night. And we were right along the "road", so 4-wheelers were driving by in the morning. It's busier on the weekend than during the week, of course.

If you have an OHV or 4-WD, it is an open area and you can drive just about anywhere. The guys made an overland trip to The Hammers site and had a lot of fun. We also used it as a staging area to take a trip to Big Bear lake through the San Bernadino Forest.

If you're coming from 247/Old Woman Springs Road, you'll go north on Camp Rock Road. You can continue to Power Line Road, but we turned right on Astral/Cambria/Solar Road and camped here: 34°29'20.8"N 116°49'43.4"W. Solar Road is a dirt/sand road. It can get pretty sandy after our area. Camp Rock Road from 247/ Old Woman Springs to Astral/Camria/Solar is paved and pretty decent. We decided to go north on it when leaving as it looked paved, but that was a mistake. It's all broken up and we had to go very slow. We would have been better going back the way we came in and turn north in Lucerne Valley. We told our companions as much and they left way after us and beat us to Barstow.