Boondocking in the White Mountains of Arizona

SILVER FIRE

 

We had been planning a trip to Arizona anyway, but this Silver Fire as seen from our front yard was not a wildfire to ignore! It was over 80 miles away, but still very imposing!

 

 

We packed The MotherShip, filled our bird feeders and headed off to Arizona!

Our first stop is only 2.5 hours from Truth or Consequences, but it is a great little boondocking campground at Datil Well, just off Highway 60 west.
$5.00 a night for non-geezers and $2.50 a night for geezers! It gives us a chance to "settle in", put things in proper places. Seems we always leave in a bit of a frenzy, so having a nice cool place in the mountains to stop and re-organize a bit makes it nice!

BOONDOCKING 101

I have always been a fan of boondocking, tucking myself away in some corner of my world, like I spent my early camping days. Chuck.... not so much. He has always preferred campgrounds. But I think RVSue and I have changed that idea a bit. Datil Well is step one... It's a campground BUT it's dry camping! NO UTILITIES, but they have good clean pit toilets and a place to refill your water jugs.

Last year, we took our first positive step towards boondocking more often!

 

We had a big metal box welded to the frame of the MotherShip!

 

 We then installed our Honda i200eu generator and 2 propane tanks.  Chuck had the generator converted to propane because he didn't like the idea of carrying gasoline around with us everywhere!

 

Propane is definitely the way to go for us, it lasts a very long time. We are still on the little tank and it has been a week now since we left home!

 

After we left Datil Well, we went up to I-40 and camped at Homolovi State Park near Winslow AZ.

$25 for full hook-ups. We wanted to fill our water tanks and use their dump station. I understand the ruins there are worth the visit, but we got there late and left early.

 

One sad note, as we got close to Flagstaff, we saw an elk doe carcass on the road. I have been wanting to see an elk for years.....  but not this way. Bummer!

 

Finally we got to Sheilah and Chuck's home in Paulden. They have quite a farm going there! BIG garden and fruit trees and bee hives and lots of yummy things from the garden. I am sorry, we were so into visiting after so many years.... I forgot to take pictures! But Sheilah decided to try and make Navajo Pizza like we had in Bluff Utah. Her daughter Alana came to visit with her two sons so we got busy in Sheilah's kitchen.  Sheilah made the frybread while Alana and I loaded on the tomato sauce, cheese, onions, avocado, asparagus, & elk meat! YUM!

All 7 of us pigged out on amazing Navajo Pizza!

 

If any of you would like to learn how to make fry bread, here is a link to an earlier visit to Shiela's kitchen where she taight me how to make frybread!

http://phunnyfarm.blogspot.com/2008/10/az-day-2-and-navajo-tacos.html

 

When we left Sheilah and Chuck's great company, we headed to Camp Verde to meet our old friend John.

We went to a very fancy campground where John used to workcamp! Distant Drums come complete with pool, spa, laundry facilities, and gym with a high price tag too! Distant Drums was $39 per night but well laid out and a fun Casino across the way!  John tried hard to get off work... but as it turned out, none of his co-workers would cover for him at his current workamper job in Apache Junction and (as much as we love you John)we didn't want to get involved in Phoenix traffic or heat! So we left Camp Verde after one night of leaving the Yavapai Apache some of our hard earned $$$ at the Casino!  We headed east down highway 260 through the mountain towns of Strawberry and Pine on to Payson and Star Valley. We ended up in a beautiful pine forest in the White Mountains.

 

 

We are tucked away comfortably, lots of room to play!  We took Young Road off of highway 260 and within the first few miles found this lovely site!

 

 

 Doogie Bowser and Radar love being off leash and raising the dust level in the forest!

I think they would both add a huge hip hip hooray for being free of campgrounds into FREE campgrounds!

 

In fact, it's so nice here, at noon temp is all of 74 degrees, the trees are gently blowing in the breeze and we have the whole place to ourselves! We have decided to stay one more day!  YaY!

 

So that's it from the crew of the MotherShip, Geri and Chuck with our K-9 kids DoogieBowser and Radar!  I sure hope we boondock like this more often!  Thank you RVSue for being such a good influence! For those who have never read her blog...   take note! rvsueandcrew.net  She writes a fun blog about her life choice of life, living in a Casita and boondocking full time!

 

 

 

Headed to Bluff and RV Sue

 

LEAVING T or C AND THE DUSTY WIND

 

SouthWest Bird of Paradise in our alley in T or C.

 

We had planned to leave Truth or Consequences NM on Tuesday May 7th.  It was extremely windy and blowing dust everywhere on Monday so we lost a day of packing The MotherShip, getting her ready for the trip to Bluff and our meeting up with RV Sue. Good thing too! On Tuesday morning Sue called while Chuck was shopping in WalMart. She needed a new inverter, hers had died and she could not get online easily without it.  As luck would have it, WalMart had the inverter Sue needed! If we had left on Tuesday as planned... well, let's just say there are not many inverters for sale on our route to Bluff Utah!

We left late on Wednesday morning headed up I-25N to Socorro NM where we turned West on Highway 60. If you have never driven Highway 60 through NM you should! West of Socorro you end up with the oddest sight.....   huge antennas facing up to the skies! The Very Great Array!

 

The road settles down to wide open spaces when you first see the huge dishes facing skywards for miles! Even in this photo, we were 4 miles away using a zoom lens!

 After passing the Very Great Array, the flat lands gave way to more beautiful mountains. We came to Datil NM and just a few miles past it was the BLM campground of Datil Wells. Boondocking only but beautiful and well cared for. Both back-in and pull through spaces available for $5 for non-seniors and $2.50 for seniors is great rent! We plan to stop for a few days on or way back but for now we were on a mission to get Sue her inverter!

 

 But we HAD to stop in Pie Town NM first!  YES there really is a place called Pie Town!

Entering Pie Town from the East is lots and lots of windmills on display!

 
The next thing you see is the Pie*O*Neer Cafe!  We pulled in for pies! One for Sue, one for us!  Yeah, right!  At $25.00 PER PIE! I settled on 2 slices of apple cranberry pie at $5.00 each! Sorry Sue, she never got a taste!

Leaving Pie Town we saw this sign....

DUH! Ya Think ????

 

 

 When Highway 60 met Highway 191 near Springerville AZ, we headed north to our next night of camping in Chinle AZ at the beautiful Cottonwood Campground at Canyon de Chelly AZ.

 

 

 Chuck and I had been dancing around rain showers all day. Shortly after we had the MotherShip all set up, the showers caught up to us! After a brief rain, the sky cleared and a brilliant shaft of sunlight pierced through the dark clouds and lit up the cottonwood trees like magic!  This is no photoshopping, I promise.  Please realize that in normal light, these cottonwood trees are actually sporting bright green, new leaves! But tonight, with a gift from the sun, they turned to pure gold!

I will never understand why Highway 191 south of Chinle AZ is marked as a scenic highway and north of Chinle is not! Highway 191 north of Chinle is totally mind boggling with beauty!

Layers of colors to surprise the eyes!

Rock Monuments around every corner....

 

 Everything came to a screeching halt as a herd of goats walked leisurely across the road!

We thought they were sheep at first, we had just seen sheep being herded by a man in a car. It wasn't until we noticed the horns that they were all goats!

 

 

 After driving about 2.5 hours from Chinle, passing some of the most amazing scenery, we arrive in Bluff Utah.

RV Sue and Crew arrive to help Chuck set up!

 

 

 Our campground at Sand Island is near Sue.... plenty long for The MotherShip and crew!

Now we are gonna go spend some time with Sue and Crew, taste testing the local restaurants while ya'll eat your hearts out because we are in this beautiful spot and you are not! LOL not really! We all really love you and we will share our blogs with lots of photos about where we are and what we are doing! Sue writes her blog almost daily when she has a good signal, me ??? maybe once a month but I will try to do better! Sue's blog is:

www.rvsueandcrew.com

 

Happy Trails to you from Chuck, Geri, DoogieBowser and Radar!

 

 

BOONDOCKING IN ZION

BOONDOCKING / DRY CAMPING

Our friend Sue ( http://rvsueandcrew.com/ )  is a boondocker.  That is she doesn't have to plug into power because she carries her power with her! She has a very large solar panel attached to her Cargo type van that supplies all the power she needs to run her TV, her computer, her lights and some to spare. This means Sue doesn't have a need for campgrounds. She camps on BLM land, or Forest Service land for free! She can camp on any one space for up to 14 days, then it's time to move on.

Sue is coming here to visit. Yesterday was our day off. We are trying to find suitable land for Sue to camp on here in Zion Canyon. Since this is gonna be hard work, we decided to go to our favorite town, Springdale UT (10 miles east of here) and have a late lunch!

Springdale is the home of Zion National Park! What a beautiful town! To your right is Wildcat Willie's! Our favorite place for yummy food! One of our favorites is the buffalo meatloaf! Yummy!

Everywhere you look in Springdale, you see amazing mountains!

The town is beautiful beyond words.  OK, enough scenery... on to the food!

Stuffed baked potatoes with a yummy chipotle sauce!

My new favorite, prickley pear margarita made with real cactus juice and mmm mmm good!

Lots of local beers made around here too.... this is Chuck's quest... to flavor test all the local beers to find his favorite! So far, Cutthroat Beer is his favorite!

The buffalo wings at Wildcat Willie's are to die for! We are so addicted that we ate more than 1/2 before I remembered to take a picture!

If you look closely, you can see Chuck and I reflected in the window!

FINDING SUE A PLACE TO CAMP

We had heard there was some good camping areas on the road to Grafton! We turned at Rockville and headed towards Grafton. (Grafton area is where much of the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was shot! Remember the bicycle riding scene??? Shot in front of the old school house/ church in Grafton! The road to Grafton is beautiful!

 Scenery peeking through the bluffs and buttes....

Here, we took a left turn off the Grafton road as we saw some possible off road camping sites!

Then we see this sign! 1/2 mile on either side of the road usually means a steep drop off! In AZ they want you close to the road, right?  We found several campsites that folks had used just off the road that would be perfect!

 Good roads and beautiful scenery so far. so we kept going hunting for that perfect spot for Sue! But the paved road left and the rough dirt roads began....

But the scenery continued as awesome!

We found several campsites up ahead, and after using 4WD and one steep climb up a sorta rocky road, and seeing another steep road ahead, I decided we were gonna turn around! The road wasn't real bad, just more than I was in the mood for!

So we decided to head on to Grafton.  There was a sign almost immediately that said no camping beyond here....  Sorry Sue, but the road is beautiful and worth the drive!

We had to laugh at this sign. There was a small community down the hill, so I am sure they had their share of dust from folks heading to Grafton!

The road dead ends at Grafton... it is such a visual journey that we highly recommend you take it.  I will show more about Grafton in my next post, but this post is to show off the scenery in the area and find RVSue a campground!
We got back up to the highway (Highway 9) in Rockville and turned left.

THE ALMOST PERFECT SPOT!

 The reason I say "almost perfect", if you see behind the tent you will see a tour bus and behind the tour bus, another car. That is highway 9! But BUT BUT BUT SUE!!!! THIS IS THE BEST WE COULD FIND!

Nice dirt roads with several good camp sites. There were 3 occupied tent sites when we were here.

 The best campsite was up under that tree, but a tenter already claimed it!

There was even a hiking trail out of this camp area..
this area is known as Coalpits Wash!

 Another good campsite!

And another possibility....

AND NO RUTTED ROADS THERE! Several of the roads where we went looking for campsites were almost impassible without a high clearance 4WD vehicle! Coalpits road might have been near the highway, but most of the camp areas were a bit away from it and the road in and out was easy access.

Ok Sue, and everybody else interested.... here you see some choice as to where you can camp for free near Zion! Most are not easy to get to but the rides to find them are amazing journeys into beautiful wild country! And there is always Wildcat Willies at the end of the day! :-)

Hope you enjoyed the roadtrip with us! Happy Trails from the MotherShip and her crew... Chuck, Geri and the hound herd Scotty, DoogieBowser and Radar!