Mescalero Sands North Dunes OHV Area Dispersed Camping

We arrived in the late afternoon on a Sunday and ended up idling on the road for about 2hr while a group of 7 campers, trailers piled high with OHVs and ATVs cleared out. From that point forward, it was relatively quite and a pretty nice stay. (To be clear: it is an OHV area and I fully expect OHVs! It was super interesting watching them all pack up and cram their gear onto trailers!)

This isn't a remote, beautiful, place to stay for weeks on end. If you need a stopover for a day or a few days, it is a great place for that.

We got water and dumped at Bottom Lakes State Park about 20 minutes up the road. Paid the day-use fee and they allowed us to use the campground facilities.

We'd stop over here again, but probably wouldn't plan for more than a night or two.

The road going in is pretty washboarded and there were a few deep sandy spots. We didn't get stuck, but I was watching out for it and dropped into 4 wheel drive preemptively.

Beautiful natural space with a very cheep fee saw nobody there on weekdays, wildlife very active beware of coyotes and lots of not smart beetles flying into things both relatively harmless amazing view from the dunes of sunrise and multiple locations pitching a tent was hard with small size stakes (get large or deep stakes) because of sand, would not recommend tent camping, but we hooked up hammock and bug nets to the shelter with relative ease.

I thought I’d clarify a few things here as I think folks are being a bit optimistic.

Yes, as far as endless beauty goes, yes, 5.7 stars on the Andy Richter scale no doubt. If you want privacy, find a spot just large enough for yourself. Big rigs pack into this place like bumping elbows will get you a tax write off.

Generators, highway noise and screaming babies were the primary sounds during our stay. We may have been responsible for the latter of those three.

Five star access? No, not really. I mean, it’s a washboard road and grandma broke her wrist cleaning pa’s undies on this one. You can’t just go 45 and float over them either, because deep sand appears out of nowhere, around curves, and often. So it’s slow going and all the fine China is now perfectly suitable for mosaic work. So, it’s a 2 star access at best, though we didn’t get stuck in the sand there were spots where a two wheel drive vehicle could if you don’t gun it through. 5 star access, to me, means you could roll a marble on it without any airtime.

But the dunes, gosh they’re pretty.

Awesome spot, 5$ day use fee to get it and camp. Large dumpster, many trash cans and shaded picnic table areas, even a bathroom at one part of the area. Awesome views, beautiful stars at night! The road is pretty packed in for the most part , just be careful with the sand build ups on the edges by the sites , almost got the coach stuck in one of these

Mescalero Sands North Dunes OHV Area was a great couple day stay for us. We pulled in on a Thursday (2/9/17) to an empty BLM property. We disconnected the “toad” and went exploring the area. There aren’t to many places to set up our motorhome so we took the first picnic/camping area just a 1/4 mile in. The road is meant for trucks pulling there toy’s so we went slow because of the washboarding of the road. None the less it’s a wide road and no worries about getting in at all. The area we set up in was more than ample for our rig and toad to get in and set up. We were parked right next to a table under a pavilion and a rather large sand dune!
We found plenty of hiking in the area with/without shoes. The sand was great to walk on but we had wished there was more of it. Plenty of ATV/OHV paths to hike for a different one each time we took off. The sand dunes offered a great way to look at the tracks all the wildlife made.
We could see the road from our spot but only heard the traffic only intermittently. On word of caution though, the wind here can get pretty strong. We incurred it’s wrath the night before we left and had a hard time sleeping. We ended up bringing in the slides to ride the storm out. (REO reference implied).
The toy’s started rolling in for the weekend of fun so we were kinda glad our plan was to leave. This is their area and we were just visitors.
Staying through the week seems like a safe bet but the weekends might get a bit noisy.