On the Road Again (RVing through Arizona)

As we began our first “real” RV road trip, heading across the country, we were both excited to leave the house after staying home for the last year. We have criss-crossed this country a few times since we retired but always stayed in hotels in large cities. This time we plan to seek out more parks and see even more of the great outdoors.

Don’t get us wrong, we love hotels. And nice restaurants. And a good happy hour at the end of a travel day. And so many other great things about staying in cities. But with a pandemic still going strong, a few more months until it is our turn for vaccines (fingers crossed), and a new (to us) RV, we are setting out on a brand new adventure filled with campgrounds where we can safely meet people from a distance, hiking trails, and (hopefully) many beautiful vistas. This time we will be making our own meals and enjoying our own happy hours where ever we stop for the night. Our new motto – small house, big backyard.

So, with all that in mind, here are the highlights from our first week as we traveled from our home in Las Vegas, NV, through our neighboring state of Arizona.

Heading out of Las Vegas we drove past Lake Mead and down along the Colorado River.

We spent our first night camping on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in Wikieup, AZ. This campground was quiet, clean and had potable water at some spots around the campground, though we had already filled up our water tank. There are no electric hook ups or dump station at this location so we relied on our solar panels and RV batteries.

This is a first-come, first-served location and we came early enough to get a great spot with a lot of space between us and the next campsite.

After breakfast the next morning we went for a short hike down to the Burro Creek, which runs under the bridge near our campsite. It was a fairly easy hike though it got a bit rocky near the river.

After one night at this campground we headed south down to Tucson. We stayed at the Gilbert Ray Campground, managed by Pima County, and located right outside of Saguaro National Park. This was a beautiful park with over 100 campsites. We stayed for two nights and enjoyed our time walking around and hiking in the nearby area.

After a couple of days we began to head east. First stop, fuel up and clean the windshield. Joel has figured out that if he jumps onto the front bumper he can reach the whole window.

Our ultimate goal is to head to Florida, however, since we are trying to slow down this time we only drove about an hour east of Tucson to an Arizona State Park named Kartchner Caverns.

Another very nice park. Pre-covid, this park offered tours of the caverns to about 300 people a day. Now, that number is a small fraction and reservations are sold out for weeks. We were still able to walk over to the visitor center once we set up our campsite.

Fun fact: the cave temperature is 71 f (21.6 c) with 99% humidity all year long.

The views were beautiful! It was a clear day and we could see all the way to Tombstone, AZ (in the middle at the base of the distant mountains) and into Mexico (the mountains at the far right). We added a small rock to the pile, sat for a few minutes to enjoy the view and catch our breath, then headed back down. At the top was this sign overlooking the Kartchner Caverns.

Way back in 1972 Joel’s parents loaded up the kids into the family station wagon and drove to Kentucky. Along the way Joel remembers seeing signs for “The Thing”. Over the years, Joel and I have driven along the I-10 outside of Tucson and seen the same signs telling people to pull over and see “The Thing”. The last time we drove through here Joel said that he wanted to stop when we came back this way and see “The Thing”. So, we stopped!

We paid $8.45 for both of us to go in. We were the only ones in there and, as you are about to see, if you come this way you can save your money and time…

So, yeah, I would say drive on by and save your money. Though there were a couple of interesting RV-related exhibits in here.

After seeing “The Thing”, we got back into our RV and continued on to our next state, New Mexico.