Joshua Tree South Dispersed Camping

Hundreds of spots from which to choose, so you may want to score it out (we pulled off to the side of the main road while I walked around for 15 minutes looking at spots). Most spots aren't perfectly level, but plenty of space and the desert is beautiful. Easy access from the interstate, but we couldn't hear the traffic noise at all inside. A lot more RVs than many BLM sites, but everyone was respectful and seemed to keep the area clean. Amazing to be so close to the park even though many of the popular trails are a 45-60 minute drive.

Dump and freshwater by the Cottonwood visitors center for $5 (with decent water for the desert).

Great dispersed camping just outside Joshua Tree National Park. Beautiful sunset but may be windy at times. WE Were there Sunday to Thursday in January 2021 and our closest neighbor was 200 yards away. In can be busy on weekends and in season. There is water and a dump at Cottonwood campsite 8 miles in the park ($5) that was open even though all sites in the park were covid closed.

Easy access right off the highway and super closed to JT. We stayed three nights and only one of them was super windy! Pretty busy for dispersed camping but that’s probably because we stayed over New Years Eve. Great stars at night, warm bright sunshine in the day. No complaints other than the crazy washboard road! We drove about a mile and a half in until we found a spot big enough for our group and away from others. Many established spots and fire pits available! Our spot was really level luckily, so not need to adjust the rig. Our group camped with a 31ft motorhome, a truck camper and some tents.

There are many ocotillo and pala verde here adding serious privacy if you want it. We went halfway between the road and the service road to the south. There was a little more freeway nose as we were closer to the traffic, but it want serious. We left on the fifth night because we had a cute little kangaroo rat visitor crawling in our rig.

There are so many camping spots to park at and they're all very dispersed. I stayed at a few different spots while I was here and the closest I was to the next person was maybe 200 feet and the furthest was 600 feet or so. Obviously since it's right outside the park, there's a big weekend crowd and there were quite a few campers during the week since the parked closed its camping the Sunday before I got here. But there are so many spots and if you want to spend the time traveling down the gravel road you can find some pretty secluded spots. I would recommend driving down the first road (going north towards the park entrance) and not the second one, which is extremely washboarded.

Love: easy access and any rig can get there, right outside the park, so many spots to choose from and they're very far away from each other, the sites are mostly level and need only a few adjustments, fire rings at every site

Dislike: there was some crazy large trash at some of the sites (like an entire stove) and the weekend crowd isn't respectful of neighbors

There are plentiful level spots off of an easy to navigate dirt road. There were several other campers in view from our spot, but it was very quiet. 30 minutes to grocery stores and restaurants in Indio. About an hour to the major attractions in Joshua Tree. Excellent Verizon signal and passable T-Mobile signal. We were able to work remotely at this spot unboosted all week. It has been very windy, so I would not recommend tent camping.