El Chorro Regional Park

We have camped here a number of times over the past 4 years and have always camping in the dry camping area (Bishop). In the beginning, we enjoyed our stays, but over time, our experience continually degraded. The Bishop loop is essential an open field with little trees or vegetation. But what we initially like about camping here was its proximity to SLO and the ability to quickly pull in and out of our site to go on day trips. Other than that, the camping here was not particularly special and was nothing more than a home base to explore the surrounding areas. But as time went on, more and more annoying events occurred that have dampened our interest in staying here in the future.

First of all, it's quite expensive to dry camp here ($79 for 2 nts), but in addition, we were charged an additional $3/nt for one small dog. When I asked why they charged a dog fee, I was told "because everyone else does". On top of that, they refuse to allow you to get water for you RV even though they have water spigots on site.

Also, the last time we were there, we got a big lecture when we arrived about observing quiet hours, when there was just myself and my wife, both in our 60s. OK, fine, but while we were there, there was a huge family gathering spread out across the entire campground that partied well after quiet hours which the camp host made no effort to address.

Finally, we left expensive gravity chairs out at our site one day while we went out for a day trip, and upon returning, found them stolen.

In closing, it's hard to recommend dry camping at El Chorro given the excessive price they charge for essentially parking in a dirt lot.

Reserved here because all the surrounding state parks were booked, but soon discovered that this was a unexpectedly pleasant place. It’s right off Hwy 1 meaning that there is some traffic noise, but nothing overly disturbing. The park, El Chorro Regional, has a wealth of activities, including a golf course (which I didn’t use), a botanical garden (which I highly recommend), and a pretty decent hiking trail which leads to some amazing views.
The bathrooms are clean and have showers (bring quarters).
Full hookups are available, but we stayed in the primitive loop (Bishop).
All in all a very nice campground.

Great location only about 5-6 miles to SLO, even closer to the Cal Poly campus.
Nice natural landscape, level sites, 30a and 20a

Not happy about having to pay $13 per night for a car that can’t be towed by the motorhome. This is basically for NOTHING. So chopped off one star for that (would have been a 4).

Starlink worked great 160 mbps.

Pismo Beach is also a short drive from the park. Located inside the park is San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden, and a large dog park. Next door to the park is Dairy Creek Golf Club. Be sure to Visit San Luis Obispo public market on main street held every Thursday evening. Our site was full hook-up and the fee included $3.50 fee for each dog. The park has a very large and well maintained dog park.

We stayed here to visit San Luis Obispo and Pismo Beach. It’s further out but we didn’t mind the location. People have complained about the noise but in our camper we didn’t hear any traffic. Perhaps if we had kept the windows open we might have heard noise, but it was much too dry, dusty and windy for that. We were in loop b, Chumash, site three. Listen though - these spaces are SHORT. We had a 25 foot travel trailer and it was barely enough space for JUST the camper. We had some weird terrain in the camp space which made us have to park our truck partially up on an embankment. Didn’t care for that. Anyway, overall we enjoyed the campground. No amenities. Verizon cell signal was good here. The playground was at the end of a short trail, and my kids enjoyed playing there several times. I don’t know if it’s the dryness or what, but we had a HUGE ant issue here. The first day I saw none, the second evening, I saw three ants in the camper. Didn’t think anything of it. When I looked in the camper garage that night, I saw a trail of ants, and went inside to get a Terro ant bait. I thought it would take care of things. I was so terribly wrong. I woke up to my wife saying “you have to go get something”, so I went to the hardware store at 8:00 am. I spent $30 on supplies: ant gel and baits. I came home and put the baits around and applied the gel in strategic places. Nothing helped. I went outside and noticed a branch of a bush touching our camper. It was lined with ants. I cut it back so it wouldn’t be touching the camper. I went back to a hardware store and got outdoor spray, diatomaceous earth and more baits. I sprayed all around the camper and put a ring of the DE around each of the stabilizing jacks and on the sewer hose (ants were on that too). I sprinkled a bit of DE inside the camper garage. Finally the ants started to subside. It took all afternoon to clean them up. Such a waste of time. Anyway - just be prepared. I don’t know if it was just my site or if the whole place is like that, but it was a LOT to deal with!

Was here the week before Labor Day.
The park is nestled between a golf course and the botanical gardens of SLO.
There’s a big dog park on the Botanical side and good hiking too.

There’s two parts to the campground. One is dry camping ($28 a night during the week and $31 on weekends, plus extra for pets and extra vehicles) and the other is full hookups ($42 a night during the week and $45 on weekends plus extra for pets and extra vehicles).

I was dry camping but my site had water. My rig is 24’ but the site was huge. Big enough for class A and a tow vehicle.

Sites on the dry camping side are gravel but mainly level or close to and the full hookup side mainly paved and also fairly level.

Did not use the bathrooms so I don’t know if it had showers.

There’s some road noise but not a big deal at night as there’s not a lot of traffic on hwy1 in general.

I stayed in the no-hookup area with my trailer. I'm well prepared for this, so the lack of hookups was not the problem. My main beef is that there is no dump station. If you don't have a full hookup site, you're not dumping unless there's an empty full hookup site that you can jump into before leaving. Some of the sites with full hookups have the hookups on the completely wrong side of the site. I saw many rigs with cords and hoses running under their camper to get to the hookups. I would go back with a group again, but alone I would not choose to stay here.

We stayed here Sunday through Wednesday in the bishop loop (no hook up), but the access to amenities was excellent. Bathrooms are clean, well maintained; water and sites are clean and maintained as well. The hook up sites looked even better. Easy access to the park, golf, and botanical gardens. 10 min to the beach and Morro Rock, 5 minutes to SLO, great access all around. Other campers were nice and pleasant too. The only negative was the road noise off of highway 1 headed into and from Morro bay to SLO. The bishop loop is real close, and no trees to soak off to block the noise. If you are a light sleeper bring ear plugs. The other loops with hookup were set farther away, and had less noise, but that was the only thing really keeping the campground from being truly excellent.