Owens River Road Dispersed Camping

Good find here at Owens. Big dispersed Area than I thought. Although we arrived on a Saturday night, it was hard to find a spot especially at night. Some dirt roads can be a little rough especially for bigger Rigs. It’s possible that you can find yourself not being able to turn around. Most spots tend to be next to narrow dirt road. Try to get here on a weekday and/or daytime so you can spot open sites. Overall I would still here again.

The sites are super-easy to get to. We drive a 32' Forest River Sunseeker with a tow dolly and we made it to some sites about half a mile in. There are numerous areas to set up camp in, however, there were a few campers when we were there in mid-October. We still found a site right away though (see pictures).

We didn't see the herd of sheep but they left about 10,000 of their little poops all around the forest, so the smell was there, but not too bad.

We took our car off the tow dolly and scouted out the best site before we drove our RV in. Our site had easy to turn radius and we didn't even have to take off the dolly. Nice and serene with hiking nearby. We drove into Mammoth Lake (about 20 minutes) and hike their world-class hikes too (Crystal Lake, and Duck Lake via the Emerald Lake Trail.

Don't let this stop you from going . But our very first night EVER there was a barricade situation in one of the campsites. The place is beautiful, its so calming and we had deer and 1200 sheep go through our site. Yes Sheep. The night was filled with stars and the clean fresh air was wonderful. The spots were very clean and we cleaned up after ourselves which as you know is very important. Mammoth hiking is great make sure you do that when you are there.

Showed up mid afternoon and found a spot within 5-10 minutes. There were a few others in the Southern area, but plenty of spaces. I arrived on a Monday, so naturally there’s probably fewer people than on the weekend. Regardless there’s other sections that are larger and I explored long enough to get a decent signal and set camp. Roads along the highway had pretty heavy deep rolling ruts. Not good for cars there or trailers. The other roads I saw could do midsized trailers and roads quite a bit nicer than the frontage road to the S. Verizon works well in several spots.

Stayed here over the 2022 4th of July weekend. My rig is a Ford Transit AWD and had no problems dealing with the sandy roads and some tight corners (larger rigs will likely have less options but this is still an embarrassment of riches).I parked in an wide open spot with no shade because of solar panel and night time astronomy. However, there are many shady sites as well. As others have mentioned, the proximity to the Highway 395 rest area with drinking water refill faucet and garbage cans is a huge bonus. Also, the excellent mobile phone coverage for both ATT and Verizon makes this an ideal spot for remote work. If there's one drawback, it's that the lack of good nearby water options for swimming, etc (at least I didn't see anything). ATV vehicles do frequent here but I didn't think it was much of an issue (I was parked away from where they often travelled). Very few mosquitos. In the summer, there are mild days and cool nights. The skies are excellent for astronomy but the winds do pick up in the afternoon and can impact telescope stability. I look forward to coming back here.