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Camping at Paso Picacho

For me, camping brings back so many good childhood memories – cooking over an open fire, biking around the campground with friends and sitting around the campfire making s’mores.

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Now that my son is in Cub Scouts, we have even more opportunities to take fun camping trips as a family. For his first ever Scouts trip, we went camping at Paso Picacho with his Troop.

Getting There

Paso Picacho Campground is located within Cuyamaca Rancho State Park in Southern California. The scenic drive from San Diego takes just about an hour.

Campsites here are $40 per night and the campground is open from spring to fall. There is a limit of 8 people per campsite.

There are 85 campsites and they book up well in advance. Reservations can be made up to six months in advance by clicking here.

Each site is allowed one car but an additional car can be parked at the site for $10. Additional parking is available at the entrance to the campground.

Once we arrived at the campground, we checked in at the booth at the entrance of the park, received a parking pass for our car and then made our way to our campsite.

Despite having been given a map upon arrival, it took us a few minutes to navigate all of the roadways and find where our site was located.

We were one of the first families from our group to arrive and it didn’t take long for us to get our campsite all set-up and organized. Click here for a tent option similar to the one we have.

Each campsite has a picnic table and a fire ring. There are bathrooms located throughout the campground and quarter showers too!

We’ve had these Coleman string lights for years and love them.

Things to Do

Early the next morning, we hiked Stonewall Peak which offers perfect views of the surrounding desert landscape and of Lake Cuyamaca.

Cuyamaca State Park has more than 100 miles of beautiful hiking trails for hikers, bikers and horseback riders.

If you are visiting during the hot summer months, Lake Cuyamaca is the perfect place to cool down with a swim or go fishing.

Check out another one of my camping posts, Our Glamping Experience in the Adirondack’s!

The Food

The perfect fuel for the hike? Breakfast burritos, of course!

I am all about prepping most of our camping food at home to make things so much easier during the trip.

I premade these burritos at home using Spanish rice, breakfast sausage, scrambled eggs, shredded cheese and salsa. Everything is wrapped up in a flour tortilla and then in foil.

We each like our burritos a little different, so I make them according to what each person likes and then label them with a marker.

When we are ready to eat, just place them on the fire/hot coals for a few minutes to warm up.

After our hike, we relaxed by the fire for lunch and had hot dogs and nachos.

The kids enjoyed a nature scavenger hunt, built a fort out of sticks and did plenty of snacking (it’s the best part about camping!).

Later on in the day, we grilled one of my favorite camping dinners – shish kabobs and corn.

The shish kabobs are another thing that I like to prep at home to make things a little bit easier.

These grill baskets are perfect for camping too!

The kids put the campfire potatoes together by slicing potatoes that I had precooked, adding spices and topping with cheddar cheese and bacon.

We wrapped them in foil and put it over the fire to warm up. They are also good topped with sour cream and salsa!

This simple recipe is a great way to get kids involved in cooking during the camping trip.

It wouldn’t be camping without s’mores…just don’t forget the wet wipes!

This short trip flew by so quickly but we had so much fun. Paso Picacho is a great place for family camping and creating memories that last a lifetime!