Los Padres National Forest

Very friendly and kind Host. Asked us if we want to change our site, because site 14 is not so beautiful as it seems. You have to park near the toilet and walk up a steep way to get to your place. The other sites are more comfortable. But we changed our site and had a good time at site 17.

This was our first time visiting. The bathrooms and showers were out of service, only portable toilets available. I based my booking on the pictures and map, it looked like the campsites were right by the water, they're not. There were many helicopters taking water from the arroyo for 2 days and it pretty disturbing since they can get very loud. Besides that we had a good time.

We were looking for a calm, mellow family camp out. We stayed in the campground and floated in the ponds and enjoyed the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, even though we we’re 15 minutes away from town.

Kirk Creek Campground is pretty scene but the campground is poorly maintained by the Federal Forest Service. For starters the access to the beach (which is the main draw) was closed due to poison oak overgrowth. It hasn't rained in California for 5 months ... so that means the beach access has been closed all summer because the federal forest service can't get around to sending someone with a weedwacker for 30 mins to cutback the trail. That's pathetic. Secondly, there was an active hornet's nest the size of my head (no exaggeration) over the main bathroom. Thirdly, it wouldn't take much to improve this site with running water (there's an active year round creek nearby) ... if you're gonna claim it's a premier site and thus charge people for 2 nights (even on weekdays) when in fact they only want to stay one ... go ahead and splurge and provide the most basic necessity of life. I understand that every Park/Forest service is "underfunded" but it always blows me away how many white collar people they have manning desks/computers and how little prioritization is made on the blue collar maintenance folk (who actually make things operate). Maybe a little less white and lot more blue would be a good budgeting goal.

Had such a wonderful first camping experience at Wheeler Gorge! The campsite was incredibly clean and well maintained, and we enjoyed ourselves so much that we booked another stay the day we got back. There’s something so relaxing about disconnecting, slowing down, and enjoying the open space. Already looking forward to going back!

Arroyo Seco is a long time favorite of mine. I've been coming here for 30 years or more to enjoy the gorge. This trip was my first shot at sharing the experience with my 10 yo daughter. Unfortunately we didn't make it back into the gorge. It was very hot, and the entirely uphill bike ride up to the gorge parking lot from our campsite was grueling and used up too much water. We biked a ways on the fire road, but had to turn back. Lesson learned: drive up to the gorge parking lot and start biking from there, and bring more water. Pretty obvious, but somehow stuff like this didn't seem to matter so much back in the day...