Mono Vista RV Park

Conveniently located on the North end of tiny Lee Vining proper, a very walkable town.

This was our third time staying here on one of our many Hwy 395 roadtrips. If you need electric and water at your site this is the place. One communal dump station is located closer to the office. Gravel and green grass surfaces throughout. Sites are pretty packed in.

Old school style ( no wifi ) make reservations on the phone, and pay by cash or check. Who uses checks anymore? * except Forest Service campgrounds.
There will be some Hwy noise from 395 as its close by.

Hot showers ( get tokens from the office before they close at 5 pm ) bathhouse, and laundry available. People NOT staying here can use the showers, dump station, and laundry (for a fee) during the office hours so it can be a tad more impacted during the daytime.

Stopped here for two nights on our road trip to Utah. It was very nice for an RV park. Lots of trees and shade. Very friendly front desk staff. Grounds keepers not so much. We had a back in site next to the laundry room with electric and water hookups. There’s a small green area for pets with a trail leading to a large undeveloped area with native vegetation that backed up to the mountains which I thought was neat. The cell service was satisfactory. Close to dining. Great hamburger/ice cream stand across the street.

Mono Vista RV Park is perfectly located to explore the Eastern Sierra Nevada area of California. It sits on the northern edge of the town of Lee Vining, CA, along US-395. Tioga Road, leading to Inyo National Forest and the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park, is a few miles south. Other areas to explore are Bodie Historical State Park, Mammoth Lakes, Bishop, and a slightly longer drive to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. There are numerous other recreational areas, such as Mono, Twin and Virginia Lakes, nearby, too. Don't forget to stop at the famous Exxon-Mobil station and the Whoa Nellie Deli. The central location will also assist in keeping your fuel costs down - gas/diesel are very expensive in this region.

The RV Park is privately owned/operated by a local family and has a nice, hometown feel. The RV sites are gravel with plenty of shade from large cottonwood trees and grassy areas between them. Not a lot of space between sites, but it's a small park. There are some sites along the perimeter without trees if you need full solar access and a grassy area for tent campers, too. My electric worked flawlessly the entire 19 nights I stayed. The restrooms are cleaned daily and the showers take tokens which give you 5 minutes of hot water. The tokens are provided at no additional cost. There's a dump station on site that is free to campers and a laundry room. Quiet hours are 10pm - 8am. I had a good Verizon signal and no problem using the internet or streaming on my phone.

A few things to know: They only take cash/checks in order to keep costs down by not paying credit card processing fees. Reservations are made via phone or email, no online booking. They do not allow wood fires - maybe because they're within the city limits? I appreciated the improved air quality after numerous smoky campgrounds and forest fires. There's an area set aside for owners to walk their pets. Pets must be leashed for their safety - the park borders open desert which is home to coyotes, cougars and rattlesnakes, not to mention a major highway. As to the highway (US-395), the noise of semi trucks was my only gripe. It's not something the park owners can control, so I didn't let it affect my rating. The town of Lee Vining should prohibit the use of Jake brakes, at least at night.

Would I return to Mono Vista RV Park? Yes!

There were lots of cottonwoods, so most or all of the sites were shaded nicely. We had an electric- and water-only site, on a gravel surface. The sites aren't particularly spacious but adequate. If the sites had more space between them, I'd likely have given an overall rating of 5 stars.

The tokens for the shower were handed out on check-in. Apparently I could have asked for more if I had needed them. The tokens enable the hot water for 5 minutes per token. I suppose someone sufficiently stoic could take a cold--very cold!--shower without tokens.

Note that their web site is out of date and lists prices from 2021.

If it were me coming again, I'd probably search for dry camping options in the area if it were cool enough for my dog to stay in the trailer without A/C. Otherwise, when I needed electric for A/C, this place would be my first choice. My wife liked the place even more than I did.

Mono Vista is easy access right off of Hwy 395, and we had no difficulty getting a level space. We had looked for dispersed sites in the area but all of the National Park campsites are closed until May and we didn’t want to chance getting stuck in mud or snow.
This RV park, as with several businesses in
these parts cannot accept credit cards (why, I don’t know) and as we had the cash on hand (they take checks as well) opted to stay here.
The hillside view of Mono Lake is beautiful, and although next to the highway there is practically no road noise.
Our cell service was nonexistent here, but park Wi-Fi worked great! According to Barbara (the owner) it doesn’t reach very far from the office but our spot picked it up beautifully.
The showers require a token (purchased at front desk) per 5 minutes, regardless we were glad for the cleanup. Laundry is very reasonably priced coin-op.
We had meant for this to be just an overnight stop but high wind advisories and morning snow kept us an additional night. The winds at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas can be ferocious, and our neighbors with a pop-up camper left their rig to go sleep in a hotel for fear of being ripped to pieces. Barbara allowed us a very generous late checkout to allow for winds to abate before we dared hit the highway.
We used the extra day here to drive 20 miles north and another 10 miles East to the ghost town of Bodie. Man alive (or not….), Bodie is the best ghost town we have ever seen, and we’ve been to a few! Tombstone? Not. This town has over 100 original buildings still intact in varying states of decay, many of the homes with scattered furnishings viewable through the windows. Okay, so here and there it looks to me like some of the artifacts have been staged, but overall it is worth the drive to spend two or three hours wandering it’s roads.
Mono Lake is also very cool, if you drive to the southern lakeshore to check out the tufa formations.
We very much enjoyed our stay here both for the area attractions and for the welcoming hospitality. We would definitely stay here again!

It is unusual for me to stay in an RV park - typically I prefer Nat'l Forest or boondocking. But after a frustrating day in the Mammoth Lake area (everything! was full). I pulled in here. Really nice office staff, gave me a slight discount and although the sites are close together there are trees over each site, the facilities are clean and the showers hot Water and electric at the site -- RV dump and drinking water available in park..
If I were going to pay a private campground I would definitely come here again.

First, they ONLY accept cash. No credit/debit cards. They are upfront about it but I like to give the warning. Reservations are by phone. The lady we spoke with was nice. At check-in the woman was clearly not a people person. The laundry facilities are clean. They "have a bear" so all trash must be in your site's trashcan by 4:30pm.
The dog walk area is the short walk way between parking spaces and the swings. With a dog station that includes doggie bags, a trash can and a water spigot/bowl. It does lead to a dusty trail through the shrubbery, which worked fine for our pups. The park is clearly older but not in disrepair. The grass was green. The sites were gravel but fairly level. The sites are relatively close together. There was good tree coverage. The sites were pretty small and the picnic tables were tiny too. The cell signal was great to work from, 2 bars verizon yeilded 105 mbps down and 15 mbps up. 2 bars t-mobile gave 30 down and 10 up. ATT was not great. No park wifi as far as we could tell.
It was very full while we were there, and its location is nice for local exploring. It is within walking distance of town, mono lakes is practically across the street, Yosemite is a hop away and we loved the Mammoth Lakes area that is just a 30 minute drive away.
A couple of days into our week long stay our power started to flicker, and our surge protector kept going red every few minutes which disconnected us from shore. After investigation our 50 to 30 converter had MELTED. So we replaced it, luckily there was a sports shop 3 minutes away that had a couple on hand. When we replaced it, the flicker and the surge protector going red mess continued. We contacted the office, and they sent out someone to take a look. We were told that the power was dipping due to the number of people using power in the park, likely for AC as it was 105 at the time. We were told that we should disconnect our surge protector because it was tripping due to the low voltages. We debated our choices and against better judgement removed the surge protector from the equation. I DID NOT like this solution and was NOT happy about it. While the power did continue to fluxuate, no damage was done to our rig... this time. They did not apologize, they had no other sites available to move us to and the rest of our stay went without incident.