California Camping: The Complete Guide to California's Recreational Areas

by Tom Stienstra

Book Overview

Covering every worthwhile destination in California, this is the camper's guide to finding the best spots in the Golden State. Families, day-trippers, and seasoned campers looking for a change of pace... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0935701281
• ISBN13: 9780935701289
• Release Date: April 1991
• Publisher: Foghorn Press
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One to keep with you

We love this book. It has helped us sort through all the choices of campgrounds out there. Fun to read and imagine all the places we can go!

Our Favorite Series of Campground Guides

As indicated by other reviewers, the Foghorn (Moon) series of campground guides is not without flaws. Even so, we know of no directories which do a better job of addressing campground aesthetics than these wonderful guides. In our experience, the look and feel of a campground is often the single greatest factor influencing the quality of a camping experience . . . and the factor totally ignored by nearly all other campground guides. There are a number of directories which rate facilities, provide directions, tell you how to make reservations and give you an idea of the cost for a night's stay in a specific campground. This series gives similar basic information and then goes beyond that. The Foghorn (Moon)guides actually give you a feel of what it is like to stay in a specific campground - a bit of a narrative description and a "scenic beauty rating" for each campground plus information about nearby recreation opportunities. We like that a lot. Have we found instances where we liked a campground more or less than the book's author? Of course. Tastes differ and things change over time. Even so, we would rather have an admittedly subjective rating of a campground's intangibles than to have nothing to go on but a recitation of facts and figures. Are the Foghorn (Moon) Outdoors the only guides we carry? No. But they are ALWAYS the first place we turn when selecting a destination campground.

Comprehensive and personal

I can't speak for the person who disagreed with some of the ratings. In my experience, this is an invaluable reference, and the personal descriptions of each campground are extremely helpful. Few references will go the extra mile to provide ratings and personal observations about each site like this one does. It's clear that the author has actually visited most of these sites, which is not always the case. It's a great book, and the anecdotes & camping advice in the introduction are very well-written. This book covers every kind of campsite in California, from hike-in primitive sites to RV parking lots. I highly recommend it.

Excellent Book!

I have actually purchased this book twice now, once about 10 years ago and it was the best book then! then I lost the book in the Cedar fire in 2003. Now we are ready to go camping again, so what book did I look for? That's right, the Complete Guide but realized it had been burned like all the others. So I quickly purchased it again, and upon its receipt and review am amazed at all the new campsites he has added and all the fantastic information! The one thing I miss-all my notes I had made in the other book! Oh well, time to start the new one!

Perfect Trip

We used the Foghorn Series to plan a trip up "The One". We camped three different nights and had a great experience at all of them. The book did an excellent job of describing the locations and each was exactly as described. One night we camped on the beach, another in a eucalyptus grove and the last in a stand of redwoods--it breathtaking and offered a diverse range of camping experiences. As visitors from Colorado we didn't know anything about camping in California and we an excellent experience due to the information outlined in the book.