Sweetwater Regional Park — Attraction in La Presa

Sweetwater review

This was our first time staying at Sweetwater RV Park and this review might get lengthy, strap in. We stayed for 7 nights for a conference in July in our 43 foot toy hauler. We’re on the fence of staying here again and I’ll run you through our pros and cons. Mind you, this is our experience, our opinions, and yours may differ.

Pros: All the employees/workers were super friendly and nice, except for one (we’ll discuss him later). They rake the sites after each person checks out of their stay. They do have pet stations around the park. It’s cheap. $35 a night for full hook ups in San Diego. Weather, it’s San Diego. Highest we saw in July was 84. It’s out of downtown and in the hills. They have a decent hiking/biking trail. Bathrooms were always maintained and cleaned. Splash pad and playground were clean and kept. Picnic tables were in great condition. I love planes, the campground is directly over the flight path for San Diego airport.

Cons: “Supervisor Ranger James” is a (insert not nice word) who likes to fluff his feathers. The park doesn’t allow golf carts, which is dumb in itself. But ranger James shines the flash light in my wife’s face and demands her return to her site and asks what site she’s in. There’s dozens of kids going WELL over the speed limit on E bikes and E scooters all week, and they’re fine. But my golf cart which only does 10mph (the posted speed limit), ranger James acts like we just committed murder. He never explains anything to us, refused to talk to us, just wanted to fluff his feathers. I go talk to all the other staff members throughout the week, ALL of them say “yeah we allow golf carts, i don’t see why not”. You all need to get on the same page. We aren’t harming anyone in our golf cart, heck we mostly need it to take the trash the half a mile away to the dumpsters. You need to allow golf carts in your park, they don’t harm anything. The workers all drive around polaris ranger gas UTV’s…… so is my Can Am allowed since it’s registered? He drives by sites, shines his flashlight into people’s sites, makes people move their truck a foot over, he’s a prick in charge and the power is in his head. Go after the ACTUAL problems like the homeless walking through the park. Power trip Officer Doofey over here. He does all this at night, never during sunlight. Instead of ranger James being overly concerned with my golf cart, maybe he should address the trash issue in the park. My mom almost hurt herself on your broken trash enclosure. (See photos). These enclosures are massive steel structures designed to keep animals out. Well, the bottom hinge welds were broke clean off. How are we supposed to open this gate when all your other dumpsters are over flowing. (See photos). Again, ranger James needing to address the trash issue, the dumpsters often are over flowing and trash just piled up (see photos). Ants. LOTS of them. Ants every night in everything we have. Dry brush and overgrown bushes everywhere. Fires are allowed but most people don’t understand how to safely have a fire especially with all this dry brush on the sites. The campground is hilly and tight. My tail swing hit the wooden fence getting into my spot. I couldn’t be more inside because then i would have taken out their light that didn’t work. A lot of the drive entrances are STEEP and most trailers will drag. Check in takes a while and a long line occurs. They need pictures of license plates on everything, driver’s license, etc. This isn’t a huge con because it maintains who is supposed to be here but it takes forever when there’s a massive line. Once the rangers leave for the day, there is no gate or security to stop any randoms from driving in. I don’t think having a locked gate after 5pm is the solution, but a gate with a combo lock that rotates weekly would solve this. Multiple county parks do it.

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading all my thoughts and opinions. I hope your experience is good, but we probably won’t stay here again which...

Good experience, but this place has some issues.

The good: Lots of employees during the daytime Staff and volunteers are nice and mostly knowledgable, although when asked questions, some of them didn’t seem confident in their answers, indicating a lack of training. The nature aspect is beautiful, with great views of the mountains and miles of hiking/biking/horseback trails.

The bad: Reservation system sucks (Camava) because it’s hard to navigate and depending on what you’re looking for it keeps bouncing you back and forth between the park website and the reservation system website. The setup of letting people reserve their spot means different sites free on different days so anyone staying for more than a few days ends up playing musical chairs, having to pack up and move to another site. Thoughtful reservation systems would avoid this by not guaranteeing you a specific site# when you reserve 1-2 nights. The would also not let a tent- or car-camper buy a huge RV site, which leaves only the small sites available when a large RV arrives. Rules handed out upon arrival were shocking (no smoking). I did not see these before completing my online purchase. (I did go back and see they were emailed to me in the fine print under my reservation confirmation. But again, after I completed my essentially non-refundable puchases Many infrastructure problem, not made clear until after arrival and not on their website, including: Most restrooms/showers unusable The lower loop bathhouse has 3 showers. One handicap, one out of order (no sign, just missing shower head and coin box, and the third has a shredded shower curtain. Fun fact: They added a new shower curtain to the out-of-order shower stall during my stay, leaving the shredded one there. The upper loop campground has two bathhouses, each with individual bathroom/showers. The lower bathhouse only has hot shower water in 2 of the 6 bathrooms (according to an employee, the hot water heater is broken). I used both of these and found hot water in one of them, and “slightly less cold” water in the other. The upper bathhouse is closed and locked during the week because the sewer grinder is broken. They open it only during the weekend to accommodate the increased number of campers One of the two RV sewer dump stations is closed down. This leads to a line for the sewer dump on Sunday mornings as everyone’s leaving. For all the gatekeeping control they have in the day time, there doesn’t seem to be night security. All the work trucks are parked in a lot. The gate is wide open with nobody at the gatehouse. I found no signs with an after-hours number to call for security concerns at the closed gatehouse. While walking my dog multiple times between closing time and 2:00 AM, the park was mostly quiet. However there were some vehicles driving through without a permit (i.e. maybe they’re not registered campers) and a vehicle full of kids partying in their unregistered car next to a bathhouse.

Conclusion: Would I stay there again? Yes! I had a mostly good experience, and I have learned how to work around the infrastructure problems like finding the one restroom that has hot shower water and doesn’t look like a girl scout was murdered in it. But it did take me an adjustment period because I was initially upset that the rules and the knowledge of broken things were not available to me until after it was too late. That is not how I’d...

Great campground. The pull through spots are a little different than they are listed on the reservation map. Take 57 and 58 for example. On the reservation map the 2 are joined together. In person though, they are each loops parallel to each other. So they share a driveway at first, but one can pull through the spot completely without disturbing the other.

Spot 58 is fairly close to the bathroom, without being right on top of it. This is definitely a plus. There are lots of trees as well. There are 2 parts of the campground, the new section is pretty much tree less and contains only paved spots. This to me is more for long term camping, and takes away from the "camping" experience. The spots are not next to each other, unless you had someone in spot 57 and spot 58 for example. I think if you were camping in a group, you would prefer that someone else in your group was camped there. I didn't check all the spots, but I believe the even numbered spots (in the 50's) are the spots closest to the grass, and the odd numbers are the ones closest to the campground loop road.

I didn't leave at all, but my guests who paid for day passes were able to leave and come back. I believe the front gate is staffed 24/7 and allows in and out privileges.

We brought our own firewood, but burned through it rather fast. One of our guests was able to buy good quality firewood bundles at the front gate which lasted much longer.

This campground offers a dump station as well. We camped in November and given the number of empty spots in our part of the campground, I am guessing that reservations are not necessary. Our spot, with 15 amp, 30 amp and 50 amp connections as well as water was $29 a night.

The bathrooms were clean and well kept. The sinks lacked soap and any thing to dry your hands after washing them, (i.e. no paper towels or hand drier). The showers are now coin operated -- per what I read they were not always coin-operated. This is a drought restriction.

I noticed a nice hiking trail which looks like it takes you to Sweetwater lake, but we did not try it. They have a playground which appears to be for the younger kids. My daughter, 10, was not at all interested in playing on it.

They have a "splash zone" which I thought was included with the campground, but I noticed a sign at the front entrance advertising that this was $3.00. The splash zone was off, and I am not sure when it's on, if maybe just the summer only.

Our campsite had a firepit with the removable (to the side) grill and a nice newer metal picnic table.

Not sure what else I may have missed -- during the day I did see lots of staff pass by, at least every hour, so that gives me the impression that they check on things often.

Since the campground is near the freeway (toll road 125) we expected more noise, but the noise was not too bad.

I forgot to mention there is WiFi and the signal was very strong -- it appears the antenna is on the nearby restrooms, but the Internet itself was very slow and some things did not load. I know this takes away from "camping" but I thought it was...