May 15, 2010

Mount Madonna Camping

We went camping at Mt. Madonna County Park. The park is only 10 miles west of Gilroy on Highway 152. The park has 118 campsites with the usual fire pit, food locker and picnic table spread out through 4 campgrounds. The are 17 sites with partial hookups for RV's. Also this year they have added Yurts. Yurts are circular domed tent like structures with a wooden floor and canvas sides. We took a look at the yurt on the site next to us. It had two sets of bunk beds and a couch. Bathrooms with flush toilets are located in each campground. And there is one central building for showers.We weren't sure whether we were going to be able to go camping or not so we did not make reservations. We could tell that from the reservation website, that we would have no problems getting a first come first serve site. We arrived around 4:30PM on Friday. We checked with the ranger at the gate who sent us in to pick a campsite that was available. We simply headed into the first campground which was Valley View 1. Valley View 1 has several RV sites at the front, and the back loop is tent sites intermingled with sites that have yurts. We chose site 124 for no particular reason. We weren't picky since all the sites had shade, there weren't many people around and we were only going to stay for one night. We went back to the gate to tell the ranger the site we wanted and paid the $24 camping fee. The rest of the night remained quiet as there were very few campers in our area. Mount Madonna has 14 miles of hiking trails. There is a 1 mile nature trail around the ruins of Henry Millers summer home. There is an archery range along one of the trails. The other thing to check out is the rare white fallow deer. They are kept in a deer pen near the visitor center. We really liked Mt. Madonna, especially how easy it was to get to. We will certainly be camping there again sometime in the near future. 







Mount Madonna Website
Mount Madonna Camping Reservations
Our Hike at Mount Madonna

3 comments:

Anonymous May 22, 2012 at 3:15 PM  

While trying to make reservations, all I see are "paved" sites. Do you remember if they look different then the one in your photo?

Embrace the Outdoors May 22, 2012 at 7:18 PM  

Paved refers to the driveway where you park your car. The top photo is reflective of the regular sites. The last photo is of course a site with a yurt.

Anonymous July 5, 2012 at 11:56 AM  

very useful info...

thx