Central Avenue Walk-in Sites

It truly is a WALK IN SITE. LIKE A REALLY LONG WALK IN SITE. The trail takes you to site 1 and then goes backwards to site 5, 4, 3 and then ends at 2.

It was private and a very pleasant experience.

Site 1 was perfectly isolated, yet close enough the road that it was easy to carry all our gear in. The washroom by the beach lookout is a nice stroll - not too far, and worth seeing at night and in the morning anyways. There's potable water there and an outdoor shower to rinse off the lake water and sand. I went for a jog along the beach, past Mt. Baldy, all the way to the power plant and back again, and didn't see another human until I reached the parking lot. Gorgeous site and gorgeous park.

I paid the weekly fee for the Dunes area on top of the campsite fee. I drove to the area where said campsites were supposed to be. There was no signage, no directions on a map on how to get there. I ended up staying at a friends nearby out of necessity. I didn't even camp.

Super easy. Site 1 is a short walk from the parking lot, and beach too. Park Ranger was hella friendly and helpful. Site 1 was nice and secluded. Good grill on the fire. I don’t really have anything negative to say. And we didn’t see anyone except in the parking lot. Stoked to go back.

If you, like me, like to have information about where you’re going and can’t find anything about this site, this is your answer. They describe these sites as “walk in” but make no mistake about it, with the exception of site number one, the rest of these sites should be classified as back country.

My wife and I had a reservation at site two, and we have extensive experience having camped at multiple walk in sites with the national park system. Once we arrived, we walked 1.2 miles to our site. When we got there, we immediately looked at each other and started calling around for other campsites. It was a nice site, things were very secluded and private, and we wish we could’ve stayed there. If you bring backpacking gear, this is the site for you. Otherwise, you are better off looking elsewhere like the dune wood, campground, or any of the other numerous sites in the area.

This was a great first "walk-in" trip for my kids. Hopefully it will lead to an interest if future backpacking trips. We stayed at campsite #1,a whopping 510ft from the trailhead, and honestly, I'd do it the same way again. Even the farthest campsite is less than a mile in. Not great for hardcore backpackers, but the site was secluded enough and well maintained. We really enjoyed it, and I'd like to see more options like this in other parks (Looking at you, CVNP).

The only things I'd change would be clearer communication. I went expecting a communal fire pit with fire wood supplied, and when we got there, we found that each campsite had their own supplied fire ring and campers were expected to bring in their own firewood. I like the change, but I didn't know to bring in my own wood till I was already there. Also, there was a little confusion about the National Park Pass and the Parking Pass. We drove in the evening of our first night coming from the East, and we didn't realize that we were supposed to get our National Park Pass at the visitor's center (another 10mi west or so). We have a senior pass, so were covered as it turns out, but we didn't know to display it or that it was expected before we parked. Regardless, we no problem whatsoever with parking our car overnight. It would have been nice to better know what the rules were, though.

Big storm!! No shelter avaible.

We first pulled into the beach area and a very nice park ranger gave us directions, when we got there we couldn’t find it to we checked every campsite on the map she gave us and we couldn’t find it. After driving around for 2 hours and asking another very nice park ranger we went back to the original spot the First Lady told us about and we walked around for about 30 minutes seeing if we could find it and we happened to come across a little sign thrown in the bushes that said central campsites. So we walked in to see what it was like and when we got there a bunch of people were already in our spot and I mean it’s not our responsibility to tell them to move and it was already 9PM so we decided to just go sleep in our car in a parking lot !

I didn't stay the night because it was unclear where to check in and the offices were closed. There are no signs to the plots and the sign at the lot says cars will be towed. I continued driving and slept at a rest stop instead.