Camping in a Vineyard

As avid wine enthusiasts, we love visiting wine regions and tasting our way through. With our newly acquired travel trailer, we were ready to hit the road and thought it would be fun to explore a new wine area. Our goal was to winery that offered an option to camp and do some wine tasting. While we found a couple of options doing a Google search, none were in areas we wanted to visit. But, our research did result in finding a couple of cool resources for camping in non-traditional RV parks. Websites like Hip Camp, Glamping Hub, and Harvest Hosts (HH). All of these sites have lists of really unique places to camp including treehouses, tee pees, wineries, and even yurts. Through Harvest Hosts we found a perfect winery to visit, in an area that we wanted to go. The cool thing about their site is they have directory of wineries, breweries, distilleries, and farms across the country where you can stay for FREE, in exchange for a purchase of a bottle of wine, beer, or spirits, or items from their farm. This is an easy ask for us since we usually buy wine when we go tasting anyhow.

For our wine-venture we found Sierra Roble Winery in Warner Springs, CA. Warner Springs is located in North San Diego County just 2 ½ hours southeast of Los Angeles. We called and talked to the Owner, Dave and were immediately impressed with the hospitality. So, on a rare 85 degree January weekend, we headed out on our weekend, and enjoyed a beautiful, easy drive.

We arrived a bit after noon and were greeted by the owner Dave. He was extremely welcoming and helpful in advice for getting situated. The camping spot was above the winery and vineyard with beautiful views of Palomar Mountain. There were 3 other couples camping nearby but ample room to spread out and enjoy peace and privacy.

After setting up camp we strolled down the hill through the vineyard to visit the winery. Unfortunately with Covid restrictions doing a tasting was out of the question. But Dave gave us a quick history of the winery and a description of the wines. We purchased a couple bottles and headed back up the hill to relax and take in the scenery.

We spent the afternoon sipping wine, snacking on a selection of cheeses, charcuterie, olives, and nuts while playing cards. We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset, dined by candlelight and had a restful night’s sleep. After a leisurely morning savoring our coffee and home-made mini-waffles we took a final stroll before packing up and heading home.

The one lesson we learned is that the next time we head out on a wine-venture we'll plan on spending a couple of nights, to visit other surrounding wineries and finding a place for a hike. The bonus with this stay is that for the cost of a bottle of wine we to a visit a winery and have a beautiful, free place to stay!

Travelers Tip: Locations on Harvest Hosts, Hip Camp and other similar site require visitors to be self-contained and there are no hook-ups. We went with a full tank of water and our brand new generator - all set to go...or so we thought. Since this was our first experience camping off-the-grid we weren’t 100% sure what the expect. The lesson we learned is that most people these days, camping off the grid, use Solar panels and rely on their battery for electricity rather than a noisy generator. We managed to go without using the generator other than for about 20 minutes in the morning to make coffee - the one thing we can’t go without! Needless to say, we are researching our options for solar!