turkey vultures

Caspers Wilderness Park — Orange County, California
April 21st – 24th 2024 (3 nights)

Located a little over an hour north of Carlsbad and just about twenty minutes inland from Dana Point, Caspers Wilderness Park feels very remote.  Situated on over 8,000 acres of wilderness land, the park was originally occupied by the Juanenos, a tribe of Native Americans. Eventually, the city of Orange County purchased the land and the regional park was opened in 1974. The park is notable for its expansive hiking and biking trails, equestrian access, and ranger programs.  Pets are not allowed here.  Although, if you are feeling lonely, there’s a scurry of California Ground Squirrels here that will keep you company!  Otherwise, you can stare up at the sky and watch the large turkey vultures circling.

There are several campgrounds within the park, each with its own focus.  The first campground encountered after driving through the entrance gate is Ortega Flats Campground (13 campsites).  It’s perfect for those who need to have electrical hookups (otherwise, skip this campground as it’s close to Ortega Highway and gets road noise).  The next campground is San Juan Meadow Group Campground (4 group sites), which accommodates large groups of people travelling together.  Farther back into the park is our top choice for setting up your travel trailer (or rv/van/tent) – Live Oak Campground.  It’s the largest campground in the park with 42 dry campsites. However, threaded water spigots are sprinkled throughout the campground. Additionally, there are restrooms and showers as well as trash receptacles.  The next campground, Starr Mesa Equestrian Campground (23 campsites), is for campers with horses.  There are horse corrals and horse trails accessible from this campground.  The final campground is another group campground, Owl/Quail Group Campground.

We arrived in the early afternoon on a weekday and the campground was very quiet.  Our campsite, #36, is spacious and there’s a threaded water spigot across the road.  Campsites cost $20/night (or $15/night for seniors 60 years or older or people with disabilities).  The Verizon service was very fast during our visit.  There’s a central RV dump station at the campground entrance (free for campers).  When we arrived we received a wonderful oversized trail map which illustrates all the accessible trails, their difficulty level, and what type of use is allowed (e.g. hiking/horse riding/biking) – similar to a ski area trail map.  E-bikes are allowed on the park roads but not allowed on the backcountry trails within the park.  There are enough trails to keep one busy for days.  There’s also a nature center (closed during our visit) along with interpretive and ranger programs (including the Space Ranger Program with night talks on space and stargazing).  For those interested in activities outside the campground, Caspers Park serves as a great base for exploring the beaches and towns of San Juan Capistrano (including the famous Mission) and Dana Point.

We brought our bikes and alternated between hiking in the morning (when the skies were cloudy and the temperatures were cooler) and biking in the afternoon (when it was more sunny and warm).  We hiked the moderate trails but only took our bikes on the easy ones to avoid very steep and rocky terrain (along the dry creek bed).  Some of our favorite hikes and rides were the Juaneno Trail (hike), East Ridge Trail (hike), Bell Canyon Trail (bike), Mesa Loop Trail (bike), and Cougar Pass (hike).  The Juaneno Trail is a good easy first hike in the park – it follows and crosses the San Juan Creek and the four miles round trip from the campground takes about two hours.  The longest hike we took (East Ridge Trail from the campground > Cougar Pass > Bell Canyon Trail) was around six miles and took two and a half hours.

We decided to move our campsite on the second morning to the adjacent site #37 for a bit more shade.  The ranger was very nice and said it was no issue to move us.  Since we were moving anyway, we used the free central dump located next to the park entrance to empty our tanks.  The threaded water spigot across the road from site #37 allowed us to fill our Scamp’s freshwater tank using two connected water hoses.

This trip gave us the opportunity to test our new bike rack for the first time.  It’s incredibly fast and easy to use and worked out really well.  The beauty of this rack is that there is no frame contact (protects the frame) and because there are only two contact points (front and rear tires) it takes only seconds to put on and take off each bike.  There are pistons in the arms which makes the process very smooth.  Additionally, because of its internal hitch locking mechanism, there’s absolutely no sway while driving.  We wanted to test the rack on this trip before using it on a longer adventure to Lake Tahoe this summer.  The rack really performed and we look forward to using it in the future.

Caspers Wilderness Park is a gem of a natural area that also has a fantastic campground.  We are fortunate that it is so close to where we live.  It probably doesn’t come up on the radar for most campers because it is a regional county park.  However, as we’ve discovered, even regional parks can have some secrets worth discovering.  In this case, over 8,000 acres of beautiful wilderness is hiding within plain sight minutes from the uber popular beaches and cities of Orange County.  One of the best ways to find hidden treasure is to use maps on specialized camping websites, like this one.  And, once you’ve discovered a regional park you like, odds are that there are other similarly good finds within the same regional park network.  In this case, we’ve already scheduled our next OC Park visit in a couple weeks at O’Neill Regional Park – stay tuned!

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