El Monte County Park
Lakeside, CA
$5 day-use parking
By Simir Shah
★★★★★4.7(471 Google reviews)
What parents say
AI summary of 5 Google reviews — not a first-hand visit. How we write these
Three playgrounds, huge grass areas, oak shade, picnic tables and clean stocked restrooms. A modest parking fee is paid at the ranger station or by envelope. Rangers show kids the resident snakes and birds of prey, and the office lends sports equipment. Cell service is poor, so agree meeting points.
An 88-acre park beneath the towering granite face of El Cajon Mountain in the San Diego River valley, with big grassy meadows, playgrounds and shade from massive oaks — a great spot for a family picnic and open-space running-around. Pedestrians enter from sunrise, but you'll need the gate open after 9:30am to park.
Happening near here
- Santee Certified Farmers MarketSantee · 9 mi · 3pm–7pmFree
- Downtown El Cajon Certified Farmers' MarketEl Cajon · 10 mi · 3pm–7pmFree
- Ramona Farmers' MarketRamona · 11 mi · 9am–1pmFree
- Poway Farmers MarketPoway · 13 mi · 8am–1pmFree
15805 El Monte Rd, Lakeside, CA 92040, USA
Hours via Google — confirm before a special trip.
Map
What visitors say
- Shahid Azizi★★★★★
Location is perfect. It is in a very quite area of the county and has plenty of parking and party spaces perfect for families some times there is no one at gate to pay for the ticket and service doesn't work to pay online, So If you don't have exact 5$ in cash because there will be no change bills, later they coming and arguing you why you didn't pay just a reason to put you in a trouble before heading that way would be better to pay from home.
2 months ago
- Rhonda Vogt★★★★★
Nice park for making family memories. Needs some TLC as far as the grass goes... . Lots of dips for potential sprained ankles .Either they use the kind of grass that grows in thicker layers as time goes by, or the picnic tables are sinking so low, you can hardly sit at them. .It would also be nice to have another way out at the east end of the valley in case there was a big fire west of the valley. (That was the problem in the catastrophic Paradise, California fire.)
4 months ago
Showing 2 of 5 Google reviews · Read them all on Google Maps