Joshua Tree Lake RV & Campground — Hotel in Joshua Tree

We stayed here for two weeks while visiting Joshua Tree National Park. The campground is located 5 miles north of Route 62 between the towns of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, making it relatively close to both the north and west entrances to the park yet distant enough be isolated and quiet.

Other than the asphalt parking lot you pull into to check-in, the entire surface of the campground is hard-packed desert sand with some patches of softer sand, very easy to drive on. The campground is a mix of pull-through and back-in RV sites, plus a large number of tent sites, with wide roads between the rows of sites. All sites have a picnic table and a fire ring. The hookup sites are arranged to have the adjacent RVs facing opposite directions, driver's side facing driver's side, with the hookups in-between. The two rows of sites that are all full hookups (on Nighthawk Drive and Starling Street) are all separated by walls of tall desert shrubs and trees, providing a sense of privacy and a little bit of shade (none of the trees hang over the site). Most sites have at least on adjacent tree or shrub. The campground is slightly sloped north to south, so you may need some blocks to level your RV. Our site (212) was also slightly un-level side-to-side, again nothing we couldn't handle.

The "lake" in the campground name refers to a large artificial pond located next to the office that is home to about three dozen ducks and an owl who hangs out in a nearby tree during the night and pre-dawn hours. Walking around the lake will bring you past the locked entrance to the grounds of the annual Joshua Tree music festival, which contains a number of permanent artistic structures. There are also a few art pieces located around the lake, along with numerous shaded places to sit and relax.

The office is open most of the day - 8:30am to either 8pm or 9pm depending on the day of the week - and sells a small but diverse number of convenience items. Restrooms are located on the west side of the building located across from the office as well as a building adjacent to the full hookup sites, which also has an outdoor sink. A separate nearby building contains the shower stalls. Further west of these buildings is a large fenced dog park that encloses a retired swimming pool filled with sand, but the entire campground is suitable for leash walks. There are dumpsters and recycling containers located next to the dog park and near the RV dump station just beyond the parking lot.

In terms of cell service, the best bandwidth I saw on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna showed 193 Mbps down and 30 up, and I had no trouble streaming video or working online. The best bandwidth I saw on my 5G AT&T smartphone showed 86 Mbps down and 20 up (though our first afternoon there I saw 38 down but only 1 up). My one test of the WiFi showed 4.5 down and 2.75 up.

Other than some lighting around the main bathhouse and the office, the campground is very dark at night: that and it's distance from the towns makes it a great place for stargazing. But if you plan to do any stargazing within the national park itself, be aware that the entrance gate is closed to both vehicular and pedestrian traffic after office hours, and you will have to call the number posted on the gate to get in or our of the park.

We would stay here again if we were...

DO NOT, NOT, NOT CAMP AT JOSHUA TREE LAKE RV PARK CAMPGROUND! Located at 2601 Sunfair Rd, Joshua Tree, CA 92252. We had reservations at the campground for two nights. We arrived at 10:43 AM. We knew that the check-in time was 12 noon and we were a little early. I went to the office to ask if I could check in early. He said no the check-in wasn’t until 12 noon. I asked if site 107 was available and if it was can I please check in early and pay whatever fee they wanted. He looked at the computer and said no they are not out of the site yet and to come back after noon. I asked if there was another site available that was comparable to the site. He said no and check-in is at noon. No exceptions. I repeated “no exceptions? He repeated “no exceptions”. By this time it was five till eleven. He said I could come back at noon. I said “pulling the camper”. He reiterated check was at noon. I asked if there was a place to park and he pointed to a parking lot near the dump station.. So we pulled in to the parking lot and looked over. There was our site, empty as can be along with all the other full hookups in that row. In fact, the campground was 90% empty. We drove through the desert to get here. So, basically, he lied about the site not being available and just did not want us there until noon. Maybe we were impeding on his nap? You would think they would want the business, especially during the year of COVID. There should have been a clown on a box or an inflatable blow up man waving for us to come in and offering free water to get our business! Overall, service was unacceptable. I do not feel that checking in an hour early was a big ordeal. Apparently I was wrong. Sitting in the parking lot, in the heat, with two dogs, was not something I was willing to do. I went on my iPad, found another RV place in town, and made reservations. I then went back to the web page for the crappy service resort and hit the link to cancel our reservations. Problem solved. They did charge us $15 to cancel but I am disputing that with the bank. DO...

Owners are not very friendly or helpful. Horrible customer service. We had no power and were told it was a fault in our motor home. It was however only a problem when we got a neighbor plugging into power. I told the maintenance guy, who is the husband of the husband wife owner team, that it was not a problem in the motor home and was giving a ground fault error. I explained that upon check in a heard him and his wife talking about the same problem at another site and he just said "yeah we had a ground problem there." He concluded his "help" by saying "well that's all I can do." So when my husband returned home from Joshua tree, I told him what was going on and he tried to get help again to explain it was an issue with their box. The owner didn't want to come back to our site to assist my husband, who wanted to have the rig next to us unplug so we could plug in their outlet to show it was not a problem with our rig. He told my husband he just got off work. My husband, being himself a business owner told him owners don't get hours to witch he responded "oh no, I have hours." So my husband talked to our neighbor and used his voltage meter to determine that we did indeed loose voltage when the neighbor plugged in. So back to the office my husband went to explain again, this time with proof, that it was their issue. He once again got an "oh well" attitude from the staff. We had to move to another site and will have to move again in a day. So when asked for some compensation for the hassle of moving sites two times in 3 days, he said he would have to ask the boss. Mind you this was the same maintenance guy who said he was the owner. He did however tell us we could leave and he would refund us the rest of the nights. We gladly would have left but unfortunately there is no where else in the area. I would not stay here again as they put no value on their costumers but rather treat you like you...