The Rainbow Junction

My husband and I scored tickets to one of the "Music of the Spheres" concert nights at Lick Observatory and were happy to find this campsite about 30 minutes away. (It's a good hour and a half from the Observatory back to home, and that seemed like a lot in the middle of the night.) Bonus, it was the weekend of the peak of the Perseid meteor shower! We can't see meteors well at our house due to city light pollution and fog, but the campsite is located in a spot that is quite dark in comparison, and we did see some great fireballs shoot across the sky. The site we were in is in sight of Mines R…

We camped here at the end of August. The land is beautiful and very secluded. There is only one other campsite in eye sight and it’s still quite far and it feels private. We brought our 3 dogs (one of which is a barker) and they hardly noticed the other group. Molly is great. Her and her family live on the property as well and they were all very kind and accommodating. It was extremely hot the weekend that we stayed and they invited our family to swim with them to escape the heat. There is a cute little restaurant on the property that is open for lunch however we didn’t get a chance to try it …

We were in a bind one weekend because our original group campsite wasn’t available as the park was closed due to a brush fire, so we were grateful that Molly responded relatively quickly. When we arrived at our estimated time she was not available to greet us and open the gate as originally planned (car troubles?) and showed up maybe 6 hours later (midnight-ish) - a volunteer onsite opened the gate for us instead but didn’t know much about the site so couldn’t answer our questions with certainty. The listing says wagons available but there is only one wagon available, another only has three…

Molly and Nate were really nice! The food at their restaurant is also to die for. A very cool location which enables a lot of bike tours in the area.

The drive out to the site is really fun with lots of twisty roads over canyons or mountain tops, depending on your approach. Once at the location, the star gazing is pretty good with only minimal light pollution from SJC low in the sky. The owner's restaurant makes a great burger - which is good because nothing else is around! :)

It was a wonderful out of the way location. It was great challenging ourselves to backpack in and setup camp far away far from the normal amenities, but still be close enough to get help.