Friday, March 1, 2013

Campground Review: Catalina State Park, Tucson, AZ

Catalina State Park is nestled against the Santa Catalina Mountains on the NE edge of the Tucson metro area. This is a beautiful and popular state park.

There are 120 sites, 95 of those have water and electric hookups for $25 per night. Roads and sites are paved and have a picnic table. Facilities include large, clean showers, recycling and a dump station.

In the newer B loop sites are huge and well separated, with some pull throughs, and 20/30/50 amp service. Loop A is older and has decent sites with 20/30 amp service, though all are not as large as those in loop B. There is an overflow dry camping area (Ringtail) and an equestrian camping and staging area.

We had perimeter site B11 with a lovely view of the mountains, easy access to trails and no camp sites  behind us. We were able to get a perimeter site because we had made reservations back in December. The park was full each night of our stay.

We had excellent 4G Verizon cell service and internet signal.

We loved the easy access to many hiking trails into the Santa Catalina Mountain wilderness, the huge and fairly private site we had, and the quietness and beauty of this campground.

Site B11



4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review. I've heard a lot of good things about this campground in one of the my favorite locations. How much are the dry camping sites? At Lost Dutchman SP they cost $17 per night.

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  2. Just came from there for a day hike. They had a snake exhibit going on at the parking lot... very cool to see a gila monster close up!!! and the diamond back, with a head as big as my fist. Sheesh! We didn't make reservations in december so of course couldn't get in to the state park with our rv... not even overflow. Necessity is the mother of invention, however, and we found a boondock right up against the mountain 10 minutes down the road.
    Box Canyon Mark

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    1. How cool! We saw a snake exhibit at Usery last fall. But I also remember that snake you saw on the trail just a few months ago! That looked intense!

      Sounds like you ended up with a better spot than you would have had in the overflow area!

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