The Forest Service has a good guide to some dispersed camping spots here. Mono County has an embarrassment of places to lay back and watch the stars wheel overhead, with literally thousands of places to camp or park for hours with no one going past. Keep in mind two very important details: 1) you'll have to bring water, because the campground doesn't have any, and 2) this spot is at 8,500 feet and well to the north of much of the desert, so count on winter storms closing it. Register for an open site when you arrive. (We've paid five times that much for less-inspiring places to sleep.) Sites are first-come, first-served. The Forest Service asks for a $5 donation per night of camping. The result? A nearly unimpeded view of the night sky, with the High Sierra's peaks less than 20 miles across the valley below. Because it's so popular with the stargazing set, the Forest Service asks campers to keep their ambient lighting to a minimum. Just 20 miles of paved road from the thriving metropolis of Big Pine gets you out of much of the pesky atmosphere and away from the night lighting in the Owens Valley. It's not easy to find a higher spot in the high desert than this favorite among Southern California astronomers, at 8,500 feet in the pinyon juniper forested slopes of the White Mountains, well into the Inyo National Forest. As are coyotes, hiking trails, and some of the best wide-open country in the Mojave. Camping is $12, first-come first-served (though if you go to one of the Conservancy's star parties, there's no charge to camp in the group area) and water and pit toilets are available. It's no accident that the Mojave National Preserve Conservancy holds regular star parties in the adjacent Black Canyon group campground. The New York Mountains to the north cut out a lot of the light from Las Vegas, and smaller mountain ranges to the east likewise block light domes from the smaller cities along the Colorado river. Even with the presence of other campers and the light from a nearby visitor center, this part of the preserve gets pretty dark. This is the Mojave National Preserve's most popular campground, which admittedly isn't much of a contest seeing as there's only one other campground in the 1.6 million-acre preserve (it also made our best desert winter camping list). Hole In The Wall, Mojave National Preserve, San Bernardino County Some supplies and a hot meal are available halfway to Barstow in Ludlow, and extremely limited supplies might be had around the corner in Amboy. There's no camping here, so overnighters will have to either find dispersed sites on the BLM's eight frillion acres of surrounding land, or grab a room 80 miles west in Barstow. It's about equally difficult to get there from Barstow, Joshua Tree, and Needles. It's got a parking lot where larger scopes can be set up securely - though keep in mind the occasional ferocious winds. But on school nights, you may well find yourself here alone, with just the stars and the bighorn sheep and the frequent freight trains to keep you company.Ī great spot with almost no amenities whatsoever, this BLM scenic area off old Route 66 has a few things to recommend it nonetheless. On weekends this campsite about 40 miles from downtown Barstow (four of those miles on good dirt road) can get a little busy, as it's along the popular ORV route, the Mojave Road. Turns out it's also a good place in the California desert from which to see faraway stars. Get here before the entire southern horizon fills up with wind turbine warning lights.Ī secluded BLM campground near one of the few stretches of the Mojave River that has year-round water, Afton Canyon made our list of "Places You Need To See in the California Desert" a year ago. The park's day use area, across Route 14 from the campground, closes at sunset, but campsites (with nearby pit toilets and potable water) run $25 a night at this writing. We listed this spot in our Kern County night sky listicle as well, and for good reason: it's an easy jaunt from Southern California's crowded urban core, and it's easy to get a little ways off from the campground's gas lanterns and take in some reasonably dark sky. Here are nine great places for watching those heavenly bodies, including one site that's the darkest we've ever mentioned. Instead, we've whittled this list down to the best of the best. So for the High Desert, which we're defining here as the arid parts of Kern, San Bernardino, Inyo, and Mono counties, it would be easy to list all kinds of casual stops and turnouts. California's High Desert is a great place for stargazing: the cities tend to be small and far apart, and there are plenty of places where a casual sky watcher can just pull over to the side of the road and look up at amazingly dark skies.
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