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Red Rocks & Sacred Sedona
Sedona is in Arizona’s high desert at 4300ft elevation so it can be pretty cold at night during the winter. When the weather looked good, there was no question whether we should spend the week there. We found a great boondocking spot on Forest Rd 525 in the Coconino National Forest, 15 miles outside of Sedona. Despite the fact that it took 20 minutes to drive 4 bumpy miles to the main road every time we wanted to leave, it was one of our favorite campsites so far! Sedona is a small busy tourist town, even in the off-season. In some places, like Devil’s Bridge, there was a line for…
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White Sands National Park
There are only so many destinations you can reasonably drive to in one day from Big Bend NP. White Sands NP, in south-central New Mexico, looked doable (under 400 miles) and was certainly worth a visit. While visiting, we boondocked just 4 miles away from the park on property that Holloman Air Force Base allows. It was not a bad place to spend the work week! The sky was absolutely amazing every night. Unfortunately, you can’t have any contact with the lake since it’s toxic; and sadly, there were a lot of ducks there that can’t read the posted signs. White Sands NP protects the largest gypsum dunefield in the…
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Bryce Canyon National Park
We weren’t originally planning to visit Bryce Canyon National Park this year because we would then be backtracking for the reservations we had at Zion National Park right before heading east to North Carolina. Located at the top of the Grand Staircase, Bryce is also at 8,000 feet elevation and still below freezing most nights during Spring and some of their trails do not open until the Summer. However, 4 weeks prior we had been able to snag appointments in the nearby town of Panguitch, UT for our first dose of the Moderna vaccine and wanted to be close for our second. So north on US89 we went and ended…
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In & Around Grand Staircase National Monument
After moving every weekend for the past month, we settled into a boondocking spot on BLM land 15 minutes north of Kanab, UT for two weeks in mid-April. Kanab is a really nice small town in a great location. It borders the Grand Staircase Unit of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, is 30 min from the eastern entrance to Zion NP, 1 hour from Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs NM, and 1.5 hours from the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon NP, and Lake Powell. This entire area is a huge swath of public land with endless places to explore. Sometimes our stay here was frustrating because we couldn’t get to some…
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Nature’s Rock Garden: Joshua Tree National Park
We arrived at Joshua Tree National Park a day earlier and left a week later than originally planned. That’s how excited we were to visit and how much we loved this National Park. We also needed more time because a few days were so windy we couldn’t leave the camper for fear it might blow away while we were gone. We had two very convenient home bases provided by the BLM, one 5 minutes from the southern entrance and one 20 minutes from the northern entrances of the park. Unlike the campgrounds inside which are so adorable that they sort of made us want to go tent camping again, these…
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More Arizona Desert Dwelling
With our wheels pointed in the general direction of Joshua Tree National Park in California, we decided to make two more stops in Arizona along the way. We split a week between two different locations near Gila Bend, a town without a grocery store. First, at the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site and Campground, managed by the BLM. For a “campground”, the amenities were sparse – only a vault toilet and dumpster, but with our interagency pass, it was a bargain at $4 per night. And, it’s an ancient archeological site with hundreds of petroglyphs! Petroglyphs (images etched on rocks) from ancient cultures are found all over the world. These particular…
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Ajo, AZ & Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
From Tucson, we made our way further into the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We had some BLM boondocking land chosen a couple of miles south of the tiny town of Ajo, Arizona, on Darby Well Road. This location would put us within a half-hour drive to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Ajo, a former mining town, is surrounded by millions of acres of federal land (BLM, NPS, and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge) and the tribal land of the Tohono O’odham Nation. And, what seemed like millions of Border Patrol agents. The area got even more scenic further down the road, which of course negatively correlated with cell…
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Boondocking at Las Cienegas & The Empire Ranch
Since I am not going to write a blog specifically about the end of 2020, I will just say that the year left us heartbroken because our Golden, Nala, needed to be euthanized on December 22. She had a pathological fracture and several indications that it was caused by bone cancer on x-ray. It was all of the sudden and we miss her like crazy. Right after Christmas and 6 weeks of being in NC for the holidays, we beelined across the country, wanting to take advantage of Michael’s time off from work for long drive days. After 2000 miles, four parking lot sleeps, and completely traumatizing the cat, we…
