Painted Rock Petroglyph Site & Campground

It's about 11 miles North of I-8. Peaceful desert location and big, fairly flat sites make a suitable overnight spot. We prefer boondocking to RV parks and if you don't need hookups this a good choice. Online payment only, check recreation.gov for available sites before going here, but if you have ATT or Verizon there's good cell service here, wait to reserve a site until you arrive. T-Mobile coverage is marginal. It was mostly empty when we arrived late on a Sunday afternoon. Note there is an $8 reservation fee.

It is very quiet and a good stop when traveling across AZ. The petroglyphs are amazing.

You do have to use recreatoin.gov to pay for your site. We drove around, found an empty site so we parked it. It turned out, someone else had already reserved it online. There is no onsite camp host to mark which sites are reserved and which are open. The good thin is there is great cell service so using recreation.gov was easy. We pulled up which sites were open, then drove around until we found one we liked.

The good thing is there are a lot of sites and I would say by nightfall, more than 3/4 of them were in use. You could spend several nights there but these are no services, no even water so be prepared. The sunsets are spectacular.

This is now a reservation-only campground, bookable on Recreation.gov. I had plenty of ATT coverage to book a site upon arrival, but T-Mobile service was inadequate. There is a hefty $8.00 reservation fee, so if you are only staying one night, the nightly cost is now $16.00 without a discount, $12.00 with a senior pass or something similar. I presume that the $8.00 fee is a one-time fee per reservation, so that if you stay multiple nights you can amortize the fee over those nights, but hopefully another reviewer can clarify that. As others have noted, the sites here are huge, with nice picnic tables and fire pits. Generators are allowed all day, and there is no generator-free section of the campground. That used to not be an issue in the winter, but with the proliferation of StarLink, which leads people to run their gennies all day long, campgrounds like this are becoming super annoying for folks hoping for peace and quiet. I hope BLM creates a generator free section and perhaps dramatically restricts generator hours during the winter months.

Sites are more than big rig friendly you could put two or three big rigs in every spot and they are well spaced apart. And if you want dark skies, this is the place to come. And with your senior pass, it’s all of $4.00 we are here on April 10 and there are six other rigs in this entire campground besides us I know there’s well over 50 spots. It is super quiet.

Spaces are huge and far apart. Many are pull through and could fit multiple rigs. We love rock art so enjoyed visiting the petroglyphs. They are on a Boulder hill with an easy walkway around them. Bring binoculars as you can't climb on the boulders. Only 3 bars 4G but we were able to watch a utube video about the site while there.

Visited mid March with many flowers in bloom.

Large BLM campground, sites are large and spread out, pit toilets were very clean with no smell. It's in a large flat area with hills off in a distance that provide no wind break, so it can get pretty windy as do most parts of the Arizona desert. A lot of active kangaroo rat burrows so I would advise lights or some other deterrent. If you're looking for peace and quiet and a lot of stars this is the place...even though it's a campground.

Our first visit to this campground and we were not disappointed. Using our NP Senior Pass provided us a 50% discount.
But we were actually quite surprised how well planned out this campground was, with huge pull through/back in sites that could accommodate any size rig. Park featured two buildings with very clean vault toilets and two picnic shelters by petroglyph site. With trash dumpsters located by registration area, this park looked very tidy and trash free.
The actual Painted Rock Petroglyph site is well preserved, protected and centrally located for all to enjoy. A camphost is available for any questions or concerns.
Plenty of hiking to be had around campground. If the park had water available for campers, we would have rated this campground 5 stars.

Quick and pleasant little detour for spending the night when traveling I-8. The campground is large, quiet and dark. Big enough for any size rig and has ADA sites as well. There is a bathroom, dumpsters and each site has a picnic table and fire ring. AT&T signal was strong. . Petroglyphs site is right beside the camping area. We have a National Park Pass so the camping was $6.00 and Petroglyphs were free. Otherwise, it would be $8.00 and $2.00. I read some reviews saying reservations can be made for this campground but we just showed up and arrived at dusk. There were maybe 10 other campers.