Chisos Basin Campground

Fantastic campground. Absolutely stunning views, lots of hiking, clean campsites, and friendly / helpful Host. Chisos Basin Campground is for smaller campers and tenting. We camped in a truck camper and it was tight. We camped in site 17. Could not take the camper off the truck and have room for the truck. But do not let this stop you from visiting this stunning NP. Thank you!

Rained hard during one night at the campground, but was an awesome experience . We saw a couple scorpions at night roaming camp, and we even had a Tarantula camping with us! We love those and we watched her for many hours re digging her whole after the storm, we estimated 10-15 year old texas brown spider. Awesome campground with AMAZING views!

Beautiful campground with spacious sites, plenty to do in the areas surrounding campsite. Lodges, visitors center, and small store/gas station near by. There are a lot of campsites so would not recommend to anyone looking for something off of the beaten path. Temps in Chisos are typically much cooler than other areas of the park so a great place to beat the heat while exploring Big Bend!! Bathrooms are well managed and clean. Plenty of access to drinking water. Picnic tables, bear box, grill and SOME sort of shade at every campsite.

We stayed at the campground in the basin. I highly recommend site 13 or 14. I believe those can't be reserved until 2 weeks out. We had reservations for site 18 which we made 6 months prior, and then switched to site 14 when we could make the reservation. A lot of people don't know this, but the basin is usually 20° cooler in summer, than it is at the river. Typically, the high temperature in August at the basin is in the mid to upper 80s. This summer with the heat wave, it did reach the mid-90s around 5 or 6:00. It fell down to the upper 60s to lower 70s at night. As long as you're doing your hiking in the upper elevation trails, August is a great time to visit. You can even hike the lower trails in August if you can manage to be off the trail by 10:30 or so a.m. that means you need to get up at 5:00 and drive down to the Santa Elena canyon to knock it off the list before the heat comes. Be prepared for the monsoons in August as it will rain every day in a typical summer. Unfortunately, this summer was not typical and it was warmer and dryer than normal. One last thought- make sure everything on your vehicle is in proper order. I've never made it to big bend without being pulled over just south of Marathon by the state police. This time they pulled me over because I had a clear plastic license plate cover on my front plate. They said it was against the law. Luckily, I've never been given a ticket. They just want a reason to pull you over in hopes to find something illegal going on. It's called fishing. If they pull enough cars over they'll eventually get to take someone to jail.