Dog Canyon Dispersed Camping

We stayed for 3 days at the tail end of November. 30 min or so to White Sands and not far from Alamogordo. There is a state campground just up the road that you can pay 5 dollars to have day use of the trails and facilities. You are not supposed to use their dump station unless you stayed at the campground, so we paid the 15 bucks for a site, hiked the trails and then dumped and filled before we left, figured that was fair. 42 ft fifth wheel.

Nice views, but people starting to leave trash here, working on vehicles, etc. They do have a federal law enforcement ranger who periodically
drives through to enforce length of stay and other rules.
FYI, the facilities, ie the dump station, and water fill at the state park are NOT available to the campers in the dispersed area.
That is a N.M. State Park, and the disbursed is federal land.

Huge spot with lots of places to park. Big rig friendly. Saw a few buses here even. Gorgeous Mountain Views and sunsets. No amenities on site other than rock made fire pits. But just up the street, there’s a campground with water and dump station just outside their entrance. A few of us at Dog Canyon used that with no issues. Internet usage was fine. Even though I only had 2 bars on TMobile and Verizon, I was able to stream and search just fine.

We stayed here in our popup with our 4 kids for 1 night. We came on a weekend and there were several other campers, but still plenty of space. Our spot wasn't as level as we hoped but we made it work. It has a pretty view of the mountains and is fairly close to White Sands NP, which was our reason for being here. There is some glass around our spot left by former campers, but overall decent. I'd stay again.

There are two big ruts right when you turn in after the closed landfill but just go slow. We did fine with our truck and 29’ TT. Ended up backing in to a spot on the right since the bigger u-shapes pull thrus were full on the left. Bunch of smaller back ins for cars and vans. Watch out for the local plants. They pierce through the soles of your shoes and hurt. We were all set to stay a second night until we woke up to hundreds of ants inside. We had no food left out so not sure why.

The most spectacular starry night I have ever seen in my life wish I had a better camera to capture what we saw that night.

Oliver Lee was full, this dispersed area worked fine. About a dozen sites, some suitable for big rigs, some sized for tent camping. Other boondockers were quiet when we were there. Typical desert scrub & sites were relatively clean (didn't see any toilet paper scattered around), no shade. Thong man not present (although we met him last year in another location).