Joshua Tree Lake RV & Campground

Joshua Tree Lake was a great campground for exploring Joshua Tree National Park (about 9 miles from the entrance) AND for enjoying time with friends from the LA area, who came over to meet us. The campground was in great shape, well maintained and very pretty. The stars were dazzling every night, since it’s away from town and dimly lit at night. We didn’t use the showers or laundry facilities, so I can’t comment on them. We were in a 30’ Airstream trailer, and needed no leveling blocks at all. I liked this campground a lot, and only gave it four stars because we had to pay extra for so-so wifi. (Our booster helped a bit, but it could only do so much with the bandwidth we had.)

Joshua Tree NP is huge, so it's impossible to be close to everything, but this campground between the towns of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms was fairly well situated. This was our fallback choice after the park service closed campgrounds within the park during the shutdown, and we were satisfied with our choice.

Sites were clean and the graded gravel was in good shape. However, the sites seemed to be quite unlevel front to back, with the issue being worst in the 200 and 300 rows. We were able to get level with our front jack, but we watched campers in a Class C dig for hours to level their wheels without success, and they ended up moving to another site. Water pressure was quite low but functional, and our electricity worked fine. The oleander shrubs between sites provided some much-needed privacy because sites are very close together, as is typical in a private park.

The bathhouses are strangely configured, with the toilets and showers attached to the rear of two separate buildings that seem to have apartments for residents on the front. Bathrooms were clean, but definitely dated. There are lots of signs with warnings about how to flush the toilets, not to use too much hot water, not to spend too long at the dump station, etc., which made it seem that the infrastructure is a bit dilapidated.

The reason for our stay was to visit Joshua Tree NP, and the campground is fairly well situated on the north side of the park. It was a fairly easy drive (15 minutes or so) to the northwest and northeast entrances, and the campground was quite close to the Indian Cove and 49 Palms entrances. It definitely wasn't as scenic as staying inside the park, but met our needs.

Internet service on AT&T was great (at least 2 bars LTE at all times, uncluttered), but we found it odd that all the over-the-air TV channels were in foreign languages or played only infomercials. There are some services available in Joshua Tree and 29 Palms, but it's easiest to head west to Yucca Valley for Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and larger grocery stores. Our price reflects the weekly rate of $220.

We've stayed here before, and were happy to come back. The sites aren't exactly spread out, but there are small trees/hedges separating them, and both times we've stayed here, it's been sparse and the front desk made an effort to spread the guests out so they have don't have immediate neighbors if it could be avoided.

The campground overall is very clean, and the lake area is really nice and funky. They offered third-party wifi that was pretty weak at our site, an average distance from the antenna, so we stuck with our own. The laundry room was closed because apparently the machines were on their last legs, and the family that runs the place needs them for their own personal use...

Campsites have electric and water, but no sewer, although the hosts gave us the green light to water the trees next to our site with our grey water, which was really helpful.

As usual Joshua Tree was hammered, every campsite in the park full on a Fridsy evening.

This campground is clean, the bathrooms/showers are spotless.

The highlight is the lake, the very cool walking path that takes you around it and all the birds that call this place home.

Every evening it’s great fun to watch the park personnel feed all the birds in the area, bring your camera!

We are actually just staying here over night and are paying $18 for our Airstream to stay in the "no hook up" area. They let you run your generator until 11pm, but it's so quiet that we decided not to run it.
It took about 15 minutes for someone to come up to the front desk. This is obvious a place that people go to when Joshua Tree is completely full.
It's also a little out of the way from Joshua tree national park.
nice place overall.