Kessler Peak Road Dispersed Camping

Cima Road Is Closed And Both Google And Apple Maps Will Take You 12 Miles Into The Mountains On ROUGH Dirt roads. There’s a warning on the NPS (that we found 2 hours in) website but no where else. It took is 5 hours to get out and I’m pulling a 15 foot travel trailer. It was awful and I’m exhausted. Just avoid the Mojave Desert Monument from the north

Peaceful. Room for 2 RVs. Nice rock formation kids (or grown-ups) to climb. We got in there with a 26' dual-axle trailer + Ford Expedition. 4wd might be needed, but 2wd can make it with skillful driving over a couple of ruts. Cell phone service is almost non-existent. You can get a text msg here and there if you point your phone in the right direction, or climb up some rocks.

AKA Sunrise Rock per NPS Website...
https://www.nps.gov/moja/planyourvisit/primitive-camping.htm

The official Campendium coordinates take you to the best spot on this road (35.316791, -115.544683). We managed to get our 30' trailer into the spot but it took some fancy driving to position it well, and the Kessler road has some rough bits and at least one low hanging Joshua tree branch that I was worried about.

Take the Kessler Road north from Cima Road, and not jeep track from the White Cross. The turnoff is not well marked but Google maps seems to know where it is.

We saw some people tow small trailers up the jeep trail but why bother? (Unless you want one of the sites along it, like 35.316986, -115.547189 where maybe a small rig could fit if it could handle the jeep trail, or 35.316374, -115.548822 where probably just a van would fit and you'd essentially be parked in a turnout along the jeep trail.)

Further north on Kessler there are at least two more sites. Not quite as nice for a larger trailer but we saw a fifth wheel head down there one night so who knows!

35.319946, -115.544720 is going to be pretty tight since lots of it is rock
35.326019, -115.544933 has a bit more space but maneuverability may be a challenge

Finally, things get busy on the weekends. We saw more people driving in on Friday that we did all the rest of the week combined -- in November (which, while chilly, is actually the high season, it seems).

There was Verizon signal in HALF the campsite. Getting up higher in the rig helped too. One or two bars at best. (With a booster pointed north we could get four solid bars and, when the towers weren't overloaded, decent enough speed to stream video in low quality.). So, the other sites may or may not have cell signal, this is just sort of a marginal area (like a lot of the park) where the towers from the interstates may reach you fine, or not at all, in a strange patchwork pattern.

Speaking of which, this is a GIANT park, and this campsite is not close to the key sites (Kelso, Hole in the Wall) but many boon docking sites in the park are wide apart, and this site has the advantage of less traffic, 15 miles north to a gas station, cell service, and a beautiful Joshua Tree forest.

There are three excellent sites in the first 1-mile stretch of Kessler Peak Rd. (Beyond that, there's nothing, including no turnarounds, at least for the couple miles where I biked. If you have a travel trailer and you're worried about this road, just drop your trailer at the White Cross Memorial about a mile away and go scout it out.) Our site was exactly 1 mile down the road, which is a typical packed sand desert road. There are 3-4 very small rocky sections, but in my opinion nothing that requires 4WD; just a little extra care.

On the weekend, maybe a few trucks passed by. It's otherwise totally quiet and private.

To our surprise, we had 2 bars Verizon LTE with our booster.

The Joshua trees here are beautiful and special. I've never seen so many in one place.

This is a great little series of sites just the right distance off the road. Quiet, private, but not a big hassle to get to; nestled among the Joshua trees and the big rocks.

You can get in either from White Cross or the Kessler Peak road itself, a short distance south of there. High clearance is recommended for either, and maybe 4X4 from the White Cross side (some deep sand). There are several campsites along both routes, converging at the coordinates given here with a couple more to the north along Kessler.