Idyllwild Campground — Attraction in Idyllwild-Pine Cove

Campsite 13 - a comprehensive look at the good and bad!

The campground in general:

We had a great time, visiting late September during the very start of the Fall season. This campground is perfect for new campers or campers who need access to amenities and necessities (whether that's as simple as ice from the general store or as vital as ADA accessibility). If you are an experienced camper willing to forego hot showers and a town within walking distance, you may get more out of a different campground.

As many have stated, this campground is surrounded on most sides by a winding "freeway" (two-lane road) that, even at night, still gets the occasional car. This can be distracting if you're trying to be isolated. But we found it did not inhibit sleep or severely detract from the sounds of nature. The nature trail follows the outside of the campground and thus is sandwiched between campsites and freeway, but still was a gentile and shaded walk with plenty to admire (including an indigenous mortar stone halfway through!)

Small wildlife in the campground is plentiful! Squirrels, stellars jays, and woodpeckers were almost constantly visible and/or audible. Larger wildlife like deer or bears paid us no visits during our few days there. I suspect that the proximity to town, the roads, and people contributed to that.

Bear boxes are in every campsite (I've included a photo), but space-wise they werea bit limited This worked great for dry goods, but everything we had packed in our cooler went into our car overnight instead.

Insects this time of the year were fairly minimal, we had a handful of mosquito visitors as well as a hungry couple of wasps sniffing out our bacon and hamburger meat (but we just let them enjoy their snacks and went on with our business). We started the day with bug spray and sunscreen, and ended the day with a ThermoCell bug repellant vaporizer, so in total I only had 2 mosquito bites over 3 days.

Now, onto our campsite!

Campsite 13 is definitely not the most popular site, as it is certainly the smallest we saw there - adequate for 2 people. The payoff is that it is fairly well separate from the neighboring sites thanks to the short, full manzanita shrubs that surround us. There were 3 main "windows" into neighboring sites (11 on the right and 14 on the left, as well as a distant look at 20 through the back), but depending on how you position your tent/canopies/tarps, you can keep things pretty private.

Our tent is a 14'X10' "10 person" tent, and we found a nice, level spot under a small oak on the left side that worked perfectly. We would say that there's roughly 20'X25' usable space, although save for the spot our tent was on and where the firepit sat, the rest of the site was on a slight incline toward the right. There was a nice open area past the trees in the back that we put our chairs in to enjoy the shade and quiet (and across the way you can see the topside of Site 20!)

Since we were there during fire season, we moved the picnic table over the firepit (which was smack in the middle of the campsite) to give us a little more space. I recommend doing this if you don't intend on using it!

The info on the booking website describes site 13 as "full shade", which definitely isn't true. The manzanita isn't tall enough to provide much shade past morning or evening, so be prepared to spend time outside of the site during peak heat hours (the backside offered some good shade late morning/midday but was also full sun by 1-2pm.

Another thing the website gets wrong is the water spigot location! It is smack between site 13 and 11 , not 13 and 14. You can see in one of the photos the erosion that leads from the spigot into site 13 - yes, unfortunately the base of the spigot is simply a pit of gravel and not a drain, so using any more than a gallon of water or so and the rest runs of through the middle of site 13. Nobody else used this spigot while we were there, but it could easily become a problem if someone at site 11 wanted to do their dishes or wash their clothes without minding...

Just got home from my first trip to this pretty campground. Great location to enjoy the best of both worlds - camping under pines and oaks, with walking distance to town and its shops and restaurants.

The showers are pretty long for this shower-with-a-bucket girl; 5 minutes is enough to clean up yourself, plus a garment or two, before the water shuts off automatically. Water starts out cool, then warms up to a medium hot temp. No temp controls on the showers, which was not a problem for me, but something to be aware of. Bathrooms are CLEAN and staff cleaned them every morning, even in the middle of the week.

Food lockers in sites were a nice touch for storage.

There is NO pool as mentioned by one previous reviewer. There is an RV camping place in town, so I suspect that she confused the two - a lot of places with similar names up here!

We stayed in site #17, which has two nice oak trees and a scattering of pines, which gives dappled shade throughout the day. #4 is on our list for next time, because of the deep shade it offers, since it was pretty hot when we went. Sites 21-25 have a potentially uninspiring view of a truck-based facility (fire station, maybe?) next door. Some of the sites are relatively flat, some are reached by slopes that you carry your stuff up to. Nothing that a reasonably fit person cannot handle. #20 you park by the campground road as usual, then haul all of your stuff pretty far down a path to a cool site next to bridged gulch that I imagine has a creek during spring runoff. It is marked on the map differently than where it really is - it is between sites #17& 18, across the afore-mentioned bridge from them. Campsite Photos.com is a great place to check out for seeing what the various sites look like. Many reviewers have mentioned road noise. We didn't find this to be a huge problem, but we were there midweek, which may have cut down on traffic quite a bit. Previous reviews have mentioned noise from folks who want to party until dawn, ignore the 10 p.m. quiet time, etc. It seems that this has been handled by the park system better than in the past, because there is a number posted on the bathrooms that you can call should you have noise issues with neighboring campsites. Mostly we heard the usual people talking after dinner around the campfire after dinner, kids being kids, etc. all of which is to be expected and which tended to wind down around 10, so most of our camping neighbors seemed respectful of the quiet hours.

We ran into noise from 3 other parties, but it was all dealt with by state park personnel for the most part.

First was a HUGE group who had ignored the 8 max per campground rule and were projecting movies onto a tent after 10. They quieted down after we asked them to and we hadn't heard them much until their "movie night".

The second was a single guy who started blasting his car stereo as soon as he arrived, but the camp host promptly got him quiet after only 5 minutes max of this.

The third was a group next to us who decided that talking REALLY loudly around their campfire until late was a good idea. (In their defense, they were really quiet until their louder friends arrived their second day there and the drinking began.) My friend called the noise report phone number for this third occurrence. They sent a ranger over within about 5 minutes of the call and the problem was solved.

I do think that if there was a more obvious presence of rangers in the campground, such as patrolling for party size, that this might not happen as much. But I have never seen such an effective response to excess noise in any other campground that I have visited than that we got after calling the number posted on the bathrooms!

Nomad Adventures in Idyllwild is a GREAT mountain shop with welcoming staff who can provide you with a fine selection of backpacking and climbing gear, plus advice about hiking in the area. They also have locations in Joshua Tree and a couple other places. I cannot recommend them enough! I really enjoyed my stay here and cannot...

I was there 3 days. The first day was great. The last two not so much. The spaces are small and everyone is literally packed in on top of each other for one. You have 10-15 feet, if that much, between campsites for starters. Then, moving on to the restrooms, 1 was trying to overflow...1 didn't want to even put water in the bowl for the flushing process...the young man I notified said he was trying to fix it and would put a note about it in the restroom....nothing happened. The showers are coin operated that you purchase from a machine at the office for $1 each....I cleaned up outside of the facility. Then you have other campers. They walk through your campsite without a second thought. Poor camping etiquette. They shine bright lights into your camp at 11:30 pm. Very rude. Quiet hours are from 10 pm-7 am...no one cared and disregarded that rule and kept others awake until 2 am being loud...absolutely no one enforced that. No rangers were seen patrolling or enforcing the rules after 5 pm. 1 family with children left because of this. Not right. And people attracted animals into campsites by leaving their food and trash out...possible poor end result for humans and their pets....nothing done to discourage such behavior. And folks...you cannot burn plastic in a campfire. It puts out toxic smoke that can cause other campers with respiratory problems serious trouble breathing and can cause them headaches. No one considered the privacy or respected other campers. And campfires were overly large in people's pits during high fire danger in the area. No one said a word. I can promise you this, this is one State Park I will not ever return to nor would I recommend anyone to visit until they can improve in the areas needed to be improved on. That's not something I say lightly either. On the plus side, restaurants, shopping, and hiking, ect are all right there. They should also do weed removal from the day use area as it looks very uninviting and could be a potential fire hazard if someone throws a lit cigarette in it. Just stating the facts. Stay at...