Overnight camping - Barton Flats

We have a few short camping trips lined up this summer and last weekend it was an overnight in Barton Flats campground, near Big Bear. It's just two hours from home, which is our limit for one night trips. The short drive means we can wake up at a normal hour on Saturday, toss stuff in the car, hit the grocery store and then be at the campground by check in time. 

Campground notes: 

This is a pretty nice, well maintained campground with running water (restrooms and showers were both pretty decent). However, the sites are very hit or miss. Some are large and shady and some are tiny with very little shelter. They all have fire rings, and you can get firewood from the camp host. We stayed at site 11, which was not the best but definitely not the worst. It's right on a trail head, which was mildly annoying during the day but fine at night. If you're going, take a look at the site map and try to choose sites that are on the back of the loops, because they're furthest from Highway 38. Anything in the front of the loops will get traffic noise. Sites 37 and 38 looked particularly promising to us. 

The campground was packed and fairly noisy, FYI. I'm not complaining, because that isn't a feature of the campground itself. You roll the dice when you camp, because you're never sure what the crowd is going to be like. I swear that almost everyone here except us had multiple kids with them, so there was a LOT of noise during daylight hours, but it calmed down at night for the most part (I really wish the people who watch TV in their RVs would just stay home and leave the rest of us in peace). I think we just haven't been warm weather camping in a while, so we've gotten used to very adult, very quiet campgrounds. This is a good reminder that summer is different!

There are hiking trails right out of the campground, which is a huge plus. On Saturday we hiked up to Jenks Lake. I read (somewhere) that this was a 45 minute easy walk, and I'm not sure if I'm super out of shape or if carrying Circe (dogs are allowed on all the trails here but she was on full-on hike boycott this weekend) was wearing me out, but it felt like an effort! 

On Sunday morning we hiked part of the Santa Ana River trail, which was just gorgeous. I was wishing we had more time because I would have happily kept going for hours, but we just hiked from Barton Flats to the San Gorgonio campground. The trail is narrow, with a lot of shade, and you get beautiful views and lots of different landscapes. 

We're getting better at quick camping trips, so I tried to take a few notes this weekend so I can hopefully get a post up this week about our camping essentials and how we pack for these trips.