Peg Leg

The Peg Leg Smith free camping area is located at grid coordinates 33.294971, -116.297546 and is just off of the intersection of California Route S22 and Henderson Canyon Road. New vault toilets have been installed on-site at this Anza-Borrego Desert State Park free camping area. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 108 Mbps download speed and 3.64 Mbps upload speed. Verizon cellular service clocked in at 16.4 Mbps download speed and and zero upload speed. The Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor Center and Borrego Springs are approximately 9 miles away from this big rig friendly free camping area.

Stayed 30 days Jan-Feb. Little tricky getting in due to dips at the entrance. Smaller area than the Rockhouse trail to the east. Was a chore to find level spots, it's just a little off kilter in most of the campground. Amenities can be found in Borrego Springs (5 miles) including stores, shops and 2 gas stations. It IS at the crossroads of a highway and a normally used road. Noise was a little bit, especially during weekends where many camp across the S22 in the open land to the south.

We stayed one night in the Peg Leg area. This is a dispersed camping area and there were a lot of ATVs zipping around while we were there on this Saturday night. It's a large area so you don't have to be right next to anyone. We drove around a bit and found a nice spot with an existing fire pit. The land is nice and level in this area. As we drove on to the dispersed camping area we notice a big sign that said the land was "for sale." It may be that some of this land is private and that it will be sold at some point and developed. Let's hope not as it was a great boondocking spot. The sunset and sunrise where fantastic as the area is surrounded by mountains. I would definitely want to return. Verizon was working weakly at our spot. If we stood on one side of our van we could get fairly good verizon, on the other side it did't work as well. A booster would help here. There was some noise from ATVs zooming by, but I enjoyed watching them. Luckly the trail they were using was downwind from us so we didn't eat there dust. Watch that. (One star deduction for ATV noise and potential dust.) Nearby is the Clark Dry Lake bed dispersed camping area that might not have as many ATVs. We didn't have time to check it out this trip. The next morning we drove into Borrego-Springs and had a great breakfast at Kendall's Cafe. We also took the great nearby Palm Canyon Hike and the huge metal sculptures in the area.