California Camping – The Anza Borego

I’ve been meaning to add this to my blog for quite a while now. If you’re looking for great camping spots in California, the Anza Berego is fantastic.  There’s free camping within a certain distance from the road, and they ask you to re-use spots.  This was the view from our first spot.

If I remember correctly, they also allow fires in a container (they’re still digging up ash from 100s of years ago, so it sticks around).  Pack it out you know.  At anyrate, this was probably the greatest camping spot we’ve found so far in California.  Beautiful place, lots of wildlife, and so quiet.  And if you’re looking for adventure, well there’s always Mt. Pinyon.  There’s a sign on this road saying “4×4 Recommended”. Hah! Reading the web on it later, a lot of folks claim you can’t even do it with a stock 4×4.  We did it when I Suzuki was still stock, although I couldn’t open my door by the end of it.  You can check out those pics here but we stopped taking photos when we thought the truck was going to roll.  There are better pics here (you’ll see the one fellah dropped the one wheel too much).  I think the funniest part of the Mt Pinyon pass is that some of the climbs were too steep to do with all our stuff in the truck. I actually had to unpack all our shit, hike it up, and then drive up. I’ve just lifted the suspension and put in a new transfer case with lower gear ratios from Calmini.

If you like the quiet and the outdoors, and don’t mind free camping (there are paid campsites too), you’ll love the Anza. We did.