San Lorenzo Canyon Recreation Area Dispersed Camping

Beautiful scenery, endless privacy, but no facilities, high wind, and harder getting there than anticipated. By far worth it and one of my favorite boon docking spots to date. Stayed one night on the earlier spots about 5 minutes off of the paved road (with high wind) and moved deeper into the canyon at night (also with high wind). Only had 2WD so moving deeper into the canyon was a little tricky, but made it there after some careful driving. The area is completely spacious with your pick of spots to park, all pretty level. There's a hiking trail deeper into the canyon. Rigs taller than 14' should be careful the road they take to enter the canyons--one route goes under a very narrow, low bridge.

Rather than trust the GPS, it's easier to just get off at the Lemitar Exit from I-40 and follow Frontage Rd northbound. Frontage Rd is on either side of the interstate--and both roads will get you there, as they connect via tunnel a few miles up the road.

Once you get to a wash path and signs saying San Lorenzo Canyon, follow that path to the left. Stay on it for 15ish minutes to get deeper into the canyon, or just stop earlier for a view overlooking the area and less stressful road conditions.

I already reviewed this site almost 2 years ago but I haven't seen anyone else mention coming in from the paved road to the east of the freeway instead of from the long, bumpy dirt road on the west side of the freeway.
It turns out that right where the San Lorenzo canyon area begins, next to the freeway, there is a little dirt access road that goes UNDER the freeway and connects to the local paved frontage Road on the EAST side of the freeway. (I accidentally discovered this because I didn't know about the long dirt access road on the west side of the freeway.)
I remember that the tunnel was very small and so probably wouldn't have been able to handle a fifth wheel or some tall rig like that, but handled my pickup truck and pop up trailer just fine.I also found that the dirt access road was not really marked and really difficult to find in the dark, even though it was only about 100 yards from the paved frontage road to the tunnel, as I recall.
So I'm posting this in case some intrepid explorer wants to find - and document - that dinky tunnel from the paved frontage road and thus gain access directly to this BLM land parcel by coming in from the west side. This could also be accomplished by someone leaving the San Lorenzo area through this tunnel, of course. :-)

There were a lot of fresh washouts and us novice campers rocked our wolfpup good trying to make it up the road so we set up for the night in the early part of the road. Very scenic and only saw a couple other vehicles out here so far. By the time we got well up the road we lost service with both Verizon and t-mobile but do have service closer to the highway.

I'm guessing the previous reviewer made the mistake of following the directions from Google Maps or a similar app, which tells you to get off at the San Acacia exit and go north about 5 miles on the access road along the west side of I-25. That route will take you to a locked gate going into the wildlife refuge. It's never open.

The correct route is to get off at the Lemitar exit and again, go north on the access road. After several miles, you'll come to a fork in the road. The paved road turns right and passes under I-25. If you look to your left, however, you'll see a sign for the canyon pointing to a dirt road. Follow that for several miles and you'll come to the entrance sign and a cattle guard. NOW you're in the right place. Keep following the dirt road on back into the canyon.

Nothing new to say about the canyon itself. It was 98 degrees over Memorial Day weekend, so bring plenty of water!

Very little traffic. We stayed at the very last spot at the end of the road at a lovely canyon with a firepit.

We stayed from 3pm on a Sunday night until 1pm on a Monday afternoon. We saw about a dozen hikers on Sunday and 1 group of hikers and a group of horseback riders on Monday. The last spot is also the turn around for the road and we had about a dozen people turn around near our teardrop trailer.

Only nuisance was 10 locals coming in at 5pm in 2 ATVs blaring a loud radio—with the intention to party all night next to our camper. They politely left after I went to make a fire in the firepit.

The road is bumpy gravel and was just fine for my stationwagon and teardrop trailer. It takes 35 minutes to get to this site from I-25. Max speed in a stationwagon is 10mph.

In January it was definitely a chilly overnight with no heat. (We have a heater that only works with electric hookup). But we managed with 2 comforters. Daytime was sunny and pleasant with a sweatshirt.

Found 3 pieces of garbage, which is pretty good in my opinion.

Camped here in October... arrived after dark and found that there were plenty of spots to camp with our 25’ trailer. The next morning we explored more in the truck and found that if you keep going to the end of the road you will end up in the canyon, with plenty of sites to camp. We moved into that area for our second night, and it was our most unique and amazing boondocking site ever!!!!
[followed directions from previous reviews and they were spot on!]
Also, we lost cell service as we went further along the road and into the canyon

Camped 6/8/2020 (Monday night). Driving north on I-25, we took Exit 156 and Frontage Rd (west side of interstate). It was about 5 miles to the first San Lorenzo Canyon sign pointing to the left. Since this was just an overnight stop, we didn't go all the way back into the canyon, but picked a spot along the gravel road that takes you to the BLM entrance and Enchantment Trail. Our spot was at 34.2227,-106.9387. The site had two entrances, but the first had a low ditch, so we took the second. The short drive into the site had a loop and was level.

After unhitching and setting up, we drove the road farther down to get the canyon. There's a second sign pointing you to take a right to San Lorenzo Canyon. There were plenty of spots back there, but the road had been graded, so there were mounds of soft dirt/gravel on each side. Some (not all) areas for camp sites along the road looked pretty soft, and there were soft spots on the road too, but we had no problem in our truck. As noted, the road dead ends in a large area where you can camp or turn around.

Our site along the first road had good views of the landscape and the Rio Grande valley. A cell tower was in site, getting us 3-4 bars. When we were there, it was SUPER windy, and it was only slightly better in the rocky canyon area. We didn't hear any noise (except the wind), and there were no other campers all the way back to the dead end. Our site had no trash, but there was a bit of trash at the dead end where we stopped to check out the rock formations.

Leaving, we went under the skinny tunnel under the interstate (by the first San Lorenzo Canyon sign) with no issue in our Tundra & camper. This got us to the frontage road on the east side, where we got back on the interstate to the north at Exit 163.

Definitely come in from exit 156, going north on that frontage road on the west side of the highway! It was truly a pain in the butt to use the frontage road on the other side of the highway and find that weird dark tunnel under the freeway.
I didn't actually go into San Lorenzo canyon, but I'm assuming it was really beautiful since I stayed straight and didn't take the (well marked) right turn to San Lorenzo canyon. Staying straight and going past the turn for San Lorenzo I was able to go about another half mile or so before ending up in a beautiful tiny canyon that ended with private property signs. fortunately, there was a small turn around that handled me and my pop up trailer camper just fine. Awesome place to camp but too far back in the hills to have cell service.