Name the best camping spot in California?

Question

give me details name of the place, do they have lakes, etc....

what do you do there.

Answer 1

WOW! That is a lot of area to cover! I do most of my California camping in the Tahoe and Eldorado national forests. Lakes all over the place! The entire American river system is there as well as the Rubicon. Most of what I do there is either wildlife and nature photography or gold prospecting or both.

Get yourself some maps of the Sierra Nevada mountains and pick an area to explore!

Answer 2

1st Choice: The Onion Valley.  Its in the Eastern Sierras, off the US-395 roughly between Lone Pine and Bishop.  You drive West off the US-395 near the small town of Independance.  The campground is very high up, about 9,000 feet and the air is cool and clear in the summer.  There is a lot of trees and flowers all over the area.  There is a stream full of hungry trout right by the campground.  You can hike to several different trout streams and alpine lakes nearby.  Its not usually crowded except for holiday weekends.  A couple years ago, it actually snowed there during Memorial Day Weekend!  But its usually pretty warm during the summer nights and pleasantly cool during the summer evenings.   If you don't mind the extra weight to carry for hiking, you can bring an inflatable kayak or raft to paddle around the small lakes.  There is a lot of wildlife to view, everything from deer to black bear.

2nd Choice: Anacapa Island in Channel Islands National Park.  You have to make special arrangements through a park service concessionaire to get dropped off on the island overnight from a ferry that will probably depart from the Ventura area.  The island is small, but few people camp there and no ones lives there - so you and your friends may get to have an entire island off the coast of California all to yourselves for the night.  There are a lot of seals on the beaches below the cloffs, and sometimes killer whales will chase them right through the surf.  The island is covered in ice plants which bloom in the early spring, covering the island with flowers.  Many sea birds nest there.  The two annoying things about camping on the island, besides the inconvenience of taking a boat there, are that (1) there is no freshwater water there you have to carry many gallons with you; and (2) there is a lighthouse that makes a fog-horn type of noise at regular intervals, day and night.

3rd Choice: Any of the campgrounds in the Yosemite Valley.  Yosemite National Park has everything from giant sequioa trees to granite monliths if you haven't been there yet, its a trip you won't regret.