Plaster City East OHV Open Area

We were looking for a overnight spot on our way to San Diego. This area is mostly used by locals for off roading. If you can get past the noise of the toys whizzing by and the occasional tractor trailer then it is a great spot.

Spent two days here. Both our Verizon and T-Mobile had 4 bars. We didn't venture to far in as we had just recently gotten stuck in soft sand recently. The sand here seemed to be very well packed and we could see lots of motorhomes further in.

The location is perfect for day trips to San Diego. Except for some crappy, litter- and shotgun cartridge-strewn campsites around Ocotillo, it is the furthest west you can boondock along Interstate 8. It is 97 miles to the San Diego waterfront. I recommend parking at the Navy Pier next to the USS Midway - it's easy to get to and $10 for the day. Make sure you buy gas in El Centro - the cost along I-8 and in San Diego is horrific.

There is a fair amount to explore in the desert here. Download the "Escape to Adventure" PDF from the Imperial Valley Joint Chambers of Commerce at ivjointchambers.org. The Navy's Blue Angels aerobatic team is based at El Centro Naval Air Facility from January to March. I often watched them training quite close by over the desert. The drywall factory has the nation's last working industrial narrow-guage railroad, to bring gypsum from a quarry 25 miles away. The historic "Impossible Railroad" runs alongside the highway, and west of the drywall factory, you can see the railroad, the original single-track road between San Diego and Yuma (that became the wood plank road over the Imperial sand dunes), and historic CA-80, all running side-by-side.

It is an OHV area. Most weekdays, I was the only RV there. About a half dozen RVs came in on the weekends, and many OHV day trippers. I had intended to go sightseeing in San Diego on all the weekend days, but I stayed here one Sunday because of high winds on the coast. I was parked 1/5 mile in from the highway (because the sand road became very loose further in), and most of the OHVs were operating much further in, but there were some kids making a nuisance of themselves, racing repeatedly past within 30 feet of my RV. I didn't try to stop them because I didn't want to come back one afternoon and find my trailer vandalized.

The location is on old California Hwy 80 (now S80), the predecessor to I-8. It is a busy road, particularly with trucks from the adjacent drywall factory, and tanker trucks, all day and all night. Because the road surface is rough and dilapidated, the road noise was horrendous. It sounded like jets flying by. There we low flying helicopters all day, up to 10pm at night. Aircraft noise normally doesn't bother me (I spent my life in aviation), but this was too much. The drywall factory was almost silent, just a low rumbling noise that only happened at night, and the occasional locomotive horn.

With OHV day trippers, there was trash. I picked up broken glass throughout the camping area, and pallet nails around my campsite. I carefully cleared a route between my campsite and the sand road to drive my truck on, and I cleared a path to tow the trailer along when I departed. Because of the glass, nails, and highway and helicopter noise, I will not come back here again.

Plaster City is convenient for shopping in El Centro, Imperial and Brawley. I got water for 75 cents for 5 gallons at Circle K gas stations. I used the Brawley Laundry; it had good online reviews, and I found it to be clean and in a respectable area of town. It has various sizes and prices of washers. There are free dump stations and trash cans (the dumpsters are locked) at the Sunbeam rest areas on I-8 between Plaster City and El Centro.

Weekdays Plaster City is the perfect place to stop and get some work done. There's nothing here, meaning no distractions. Military pilots from a nearby base seemed to enjoy buzzing our Airstream with their helicopters, and the drywall factory down the way (*the* Plaster City) revs up at night, so you get machine noises to lull you to sleep. That said—great cell service, dog can run free and I'd rate the human running here as not too shabby, if you're the type to get up early and put in miles through empty, but oddly trancelike desert.

Final note: The OHV crowd sometimes digs honey holes. They're deep, but nonetheless, proceed with caution and don't let kids/animals investigate any mysterious holes too closely.

This spot is in a pretty flat area overlooking a Gypsum plant on one side. Though not scenic, it was peaceful on the weekend evening and the one weekday we were there (we heard that the OHV's can be pretty active on weekends).

A good place for catching up on computer work, as cell signal is quite strong. El Centro, about fifteen minutes away is the best re-supply place between Yuma and San Diego, there are all kinds of stores there including a Costco, a Von's and several big box type shops. There is also a nice movie theater with 14 screens in town.

The area is good for doggies, with soft sand and no cacti.

We don't have Off-Highway Vehicles but it seems this spot would be great for RVers that have them.

We camped at the Plaster City OHV Area for a week because we needed to be between San Diego and Yuma and wanted fast cell service, and for that, it was perfect.

This relatively flat desert location sits next to a gypsum plant and isn't very scenic.

Since it's an OHV area, there was a lot of noise on the weekend, however, during the week it was empty and peaceful.

There is water and a dump station 15 miles away at the Sunbeam Rest Area towards El Centro.