So we hit the road on January 26th. It was a brisk 5°F when we set off on our way to Arizona, with our first stop just outside Tulsa. We decided to take it nice and easy on our way down, and we were glad we did. It gave us plenty of time to get to each site, set up and take down, stress-free.
Our first site was in Claremore, OK, at the Claremore Expo RV Park. It was a pretty standard rv park, but it served it’s purpose, and was only $17 for the night (electric only). Of course we forgot to take a picture of our first campsite, but it wasn’t anything spectacular anyways.
The next night we made it to Lake McClellan Campground just east of Amarillo, TX. This was a wonderful site, and we got in with enough time to walk around the empty OHV trails. It was sunny and mid-50’s – we were already happy to be heading south for warmer weather!
The next day we headed down to Alamogordo, NM, where we had booked a KOA for 2 nights. Now, KOA definitely isn’t our style, but it was easy to book, fairly reasonable, and had full hook-ups. Perfect since we needed to de-winterize and sanitize our tanks/lines.
While we were in Alamogordo, we managed to fit in a visit to White Sands National Park for an afternoon/evening. Established in 1933 as a national monument, it’s a fairly new to it’s designation as a national park, set in 2019. There isn’t a whole lot to do there yet, but the sunsets are spectacular and they allow dogs!
After we finished up in Alamogordo, we headed down the road to a boondocking spot called Indian Bread Rocks. It was just over AZ/NM border, near Bowie, AZ. The spot was beautiful, but wow has dispersed camping changed over the years.
We started using dispersed campsites around 7 years ago, and they were almost always clean, quiet and deserted. But the “secret” is out now – free, dispersed camping is known by the masses. We were lucky to find a spot here on a sunday afternoon, and it was truly in the middle of nowhere. But it was beautiful, and relaxing.
After two nights at Indian Bread Rocks, we hit the road to our first reserved campsite in Arizona – 5 nights at Kartchner Caverns State Park. What a spectacular place!
The campground itself was beautiful – nice, level sites with power and water and plenty of room for each site. It also had very nice bath houses as well. Also, there were a handful of nice hikes that led right from camp. Always a fan of that!
But the big draw was the caverns. We booked a “Big Room” tour a couple months back, and were so glad we did. I’ve been in a handful of caves, but have never seen anything like this. The amount and diversity of formations was staggering, as was the size of the cave. I highly recommend this to anyone in the area – plus it’s wheel-chair accessible.
While we were at Kartchner Caverns, we heard that the town of Tombstone/Bisbee were worth visiting. So we did a little research and decided to watch the movie “Tombstone”. It was a pretty good western covering the history of the O-K Corral shoot-out with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and crew. So the next day we set out to see Tombstone, and while touristy, it was fun seeing it right after watching the movie.
We also snuck in a little mountain bike ride, it was alright but fairly windy. The views were good.
So far, loving Arizona! We’ll cover our stay in Tucson in the next post.
-Kyle