Craggy Wash Dispersed Camping

I don’t get the bad reviews. Maybe it was trashed in the past, but someone has been cleaning up. I saw one abandoned camper at the beginning of the camping area with no one camped around it, but the canyon goes back for a long ways and there are plenty of spots. There was also one tire by the road and I thought someone had set it there for garbage pickup in the future. There was no trash near our spot. The road is good enough for my 38’ class A with a toad. It is a scenic area compared to other boondock areas around Lake Havasu, as most others are gravel pit looking spots. We were there the last of January 2023. Walmart is close, we watched the football game at the Hangar bar at the airport, which is very near.

We stayed 14 nights 3 miles in on the gravel road. Only one short area was washboard, otherwise smooth road. There is a camphost here during the winter who is a great asset to this area. He is friendly, has LOTS of great information and does keep a good eye on those camping here. Very few "permanent" campers here. Apparently the camp host and a large number of Rangers came through and evicted those who had greatly overstayed and were allowing garbage to spread. From 1/9/23-1/23/23, it was very empty as far down as we drove. It would be a bit tough to take our rig past the "Y" where we turned right. Lots of car, van and tent campers farther in. Not much trouble with OHV noise. Very few came to the right at the "Y", there were more OHV roads straight on. We highly recommend this area at this time of year. We did experience a wind advisory for several days and we had solid clouds and lots of rain for 4 days. That was a solar power challenge for a bit. Oh, if you are a Geocacher...there are MANY around this area. Hubby has put in about 16 miles of hiking and found most of them! We grabbed 8 giant, heavy Mil garbage bags from the Host and cleaned up some campsites, got some sun and enjoyed our time, knowing someone would really enjoy those sites now! Overall...one of our favorites, Lake Havasu has anything you might want or need.

I can understand the previous comments in regards to questionable residents, but honestly I spoke with a lot of the more permanent campers and they were friendly and harmless. When I was staying there the ranger did come by for what seemed like the first time in a while and gave warning of the 14 day limit. This may start eliminating that too. The trash is pretty disappointing. Overall, it was a good experience here. Pretty average boondocking site. Quiet, good stargazing. Good cell service. It was very crowded, but still easy to find a place to post up. Apparently two campers passed away in the exact same spot only two weeks apart, so choose your spots wisely if you’re superstitious! 15 minute drive to Safeway where you can also get water. You can dump at the state park, but not portable waste tanks, they require you to bring your rig if you want to use the dump. Kind of silly but dem the rules. I’d definitely camp here again when visiting.

We moved here from the BLM area south of town. We liked the scenery but we found that the area was really crowded and not necessarily with the most classy folks. There was a mix of people staying here, some were here to party, others were just here so they could get into town. In general we found this area to be more scenic than the BLM area but much, much noisier. Some people ran generators all day and night and others were partying and listening to loud music until midnight. With all that said, the area itself was awesome and we'd at least scope it out again if we were in town to see what the vibe from the neighbors feels like.

Access was easy for our 39' fifth wheel and the road was easy to navigate. There are some sandy areas that should be avoided but aren't major concerns. We had cell coverage at the road but not in where we were camping.

We stopped here planning to stay in the area for a few days. Getting to the dispersed camping area was trying. The road is horrible getting to the camping area and even worse beyond that. There are many signs that telling you 1 mile to camping area, 1/2 mile to camping area, not that anyone was paying much attention to them. There were many campers before the designated camping areas. We drove well passed that area and there was no place to reasonably camp at after 3 miles into camping area. We finally found a place, what I would say was crowding other campers, but maybe not for this area. There is poor cell service (Verison) and most of the time no service. We pulled in right at dark. The next morning campers were up at around 7 - 7:30 and there wasn’t much sleeping past that time. We packed up and left about 8:30 am to find a better place. It was ok I guess for a quick overnight, but since we didn’t have to stay in the area we opted to move on. Quartzsite was much friendlier and the blm roads to dispersed camping there are rough but not as much as here.

This is our third time at Craggy Wash and oh has it changed. It’s tough to find a tree without a bunch of garbage collected under it and a few sites have large piles of garbage (one with mattresses!). This was a lovely spot five years ago but has really gone downhill. Some dogs are left loose and there is dog crap everywhere. One neighboring camper watched his dog run over and poop right behind our trailer and he did nothing. Despite the 14-day rule and the presence of a host, a number of sites look like long-stayers with stuff piled everywhere— pallets, tires, etc. And if you don’t like listening to a choir of generators, don’t camp here. It’s really a shame because it was such a great place, but we won’t be back.