That Cool Travel Couple

We had an amazing time camping in the windy and sunny Anza Borrego State Park. Our favorite part: the hidden palm tree oasis!

Where to Stay

We booked ourselves into the Anza Borrego State Park Campground. This is a clean and fairly well maintained campground. You can pay for showers here and the toilets are decent for being out in the boonies. When we checked in, the camp host told us to make sure to tie down our tent tightly. We were glad we did – it got SUPER windy especially in the evening!

Borrego Springs

Borrego Springs is an extremely small town that is a few minute drive from the campground. It has all you need in terms of a general store for supplies like ice and food to cook, and a couple of small restaurants. Don’t expect any major chains here. If you’re not into camping, you can also look into renting a small cabin or hotel room in Borrego Springs and exploring the park from there.

Anza Borrego State Park

The state park is MASSIVE. You definitely will not want to explore the whole park on foot. You’ll see the iconic metal statues of pre-historic animals near the park entrance.

In terms of hiking, one of the most well known hikes in the area is the hike to the palm canyon oasis. The loop is a little over three miles but felt like a lot more in the hot desert sun – be sure to bring plenty of water! It’s well worth it to see the trickle of water that feeds the shady grove of palms that are seemingly a hidden oasis in the middle of the desert. We also really enjoyed doing the easy Pictograph Trail from which you can see Ancient Native American petroglyphs on the rocks.

The desert sunsets in the park are absolutely phenomenal and you can watch the mountains and valleys light up all sorts of shades of pink and purple. It’s also an International Dark Sky Park, so definitely be sure to do some star gazing while you’re here!

Salton Sea

The Salton Sea is a fairly short drive away from Borrego Springs – only about forty minutes. It’s well worth doing this drive because you can see TONS of Anza Borrego State Park on the drive over. We referred to this website that has a great auto tour of Anza Borrego as you head east to Salton Sea, with lots of various suggested stops along the way. Our favorite stop was the badlands overlook!

The Salton Sea is called this because of its extremely high salt content. It’s a pretty body of water but you’ll see plenty of dead fish carcasses littering the shore. You can actually camp along the shore as well.

If you head west from Anza Borrego, you can visit the mountain town of Julian! If you’re looking for more California, you can check out our California landing page.