After a wonderful stay at Gilbert Ray in Tucson, AZ, we headed up the road to White Spar Campground in Prescott, AZ. White Spar is a National Forest campground without hookups set at 5,641 ft. above sea level in the Prescott National Forest. The location is absolutely perfect for us, just a few minutes south of town, set in a ponderosa pine forest. Best of all, there were trails for hiking and biking right out of the campground!
We stayed at White Spar for 2 weeks, and it was absolutely lovely. It was the first long stay for us without hookups, and went great! Our solar kept up just fine despite the site only getting 2-3hrs of direct sun a day.
The biking in Prescott was pretty good! It was nice to get a “break” from the desert and get some time and miles in in the woods. I can’t remember exactly how many times we rode in the 2 weeks, but I would guess maybe 6 rides total.
These images were from an out-and-back that started just across the road from the campground on the Wolverton Mountain Trail, ~10mi.
This next picture was from a small, 2.5mi loop right out of camp. We rode it with Moz after our ride on Wolverton Mountain Trail. Back when Moz was 2-3yrs old, she could do 8-10+ mile rides with us. But now at 8yrs old, 2.5mi is about all she wants to do at biking pace. But she has a lot of fun at it! She loves to chase after us on the downhills.
This next ride is a pretty popular one in the area, called the Goldwater Lakes Out-and-Back. We added a little to it by continuing past the typical turn-around point on the Ranch Trail, making it a ~16mi ride.
The ride was beautiful through the tall pines, a must-ride in our opinion.
Another ride we did was over in the Painted Hills area of Prescott. We really enjoyed the trails and scenery over here. Another must-ride for sure – we ended up riding over here a couple times while we were in town, making different loops ranging from 8-12mi.
And finally, we rode up the Goldwater Lakes trail out of camp, then looped back on some different trails – mainly the Feldmeier Trail – and I think this trail was probably the most fun out of all the trails we rode in the area. It followed a ravine/creek, and that typically makes for a fast, rowdy time!
While in Prescott, we got to do a fair amount of hiking as well. Almost every day we would do a few miles right outside camp with Moz, but one notable hike we did was west of town up to and around Thumb Butte.
While in Prescott, we hit my birthday. Hooray for 32! We ended up going climbing that day over in the Granite Dells. It was really fun! There were a lot of climbs in the area, but this is the only day we made it over for there.
We also had some fun with meals, making some asada tacos and khao soi. It’s a little more difficult to cook in the camper, but we make it work!
All in all, Prescott made for a wonderful 2 weeks and I can see us definitely coming back. We were in site 31, and it worked out great, but I think next time we might go for site 13 – however, solar would have been worse in that site – but more private. As usual, here are some random pictures (mostly of Moz) to close it out.
After Prescott, we headed up to Zion National Park for a week – that’ll be our next post!
-Kyle
