With the kids on winter break and heavy restrictions in our area due to a major Covid case spike, it was time to hit the road again (in a responsible way that is). The major increases in Covid cases also meant that all state and national parks in California were closed to overnight camping. While I completely agree that certain activities should absolutely be put on hold due to Covid, I’m not sure that should include social distance friendly activities like camping, especially RV camping where people can be completely self contained. Unfortunately I was not consulted by the Governor on this one. So it goes…
Even though there weren’t many options left to us, Lana, being the master RV trip researcher that she is, found us an itinerary of two Arizona state parks, and Joshua Tree National Park. Since Joshua Tree is California, the plan was to stay at a KOA near the national park and head in on a day trip (private campgrounds are still open in California).
At first I was a bit grumpy that we had to drive over 750 miles just to get to our first real destination, but as they say (well at least this is something that I now say), “On an RV trip, the travel is just as much part of the adventure as the actual destination”. On this trip, we also took Lana’s Mom, Marina, with us. This was going to be the first RV trip of her life.
Our first state park in Arizona was going to be Dead Horse Ranch State Park, just outside of Cottonwood. Since that was going to be quite a drive, we decided to once again overnight at the Flying J gas station in Barstow, this was also the first place we stopped to overnight on our big cross country trip, only this time we were able to leave first thing in the morning. Last time we had to stay until 2pm so the kids could finish their remote schooling.
Our main adventure on the way from Barstow to Dead Horse Ranch was neglecting to realize that Google was sending us on a route that RV Trip Wizard was not recommending. We ended up taking Highway 89A into Cottonwood. For those of you (like us) who have no idea about HW89A, this road is basically a glorified donkey trail through Woodchute Mountain, with enough switchbacks to unscrew the needle off your compass (yes, I know that’s not how compasses are made but it sounded good in my head). Although if we hadn’t taken this route we never would have had the experience of driving through Jerome. Jerome is an old mining town (now on the artsy/wine tasting side) which is basically bolted onto the side of the mountain. One second you have a death grip on the steering wheel while making your way through hair pin curve after hair pin curve through the forest, then all of a sudden you have an even tighter death grip on the steering wheel because you’re now navigating those same type of turns but through a town, with cars and concrete curbs making the road feel even tighter. Do I have regrets on our choice of road? Now that we made it through, absolutely not, it was quite the experience! Although my first question to Lana when we hit Cottonwood was if we had to go back that way to our next stop (fortunately the answer was no). Would I recommend this as a shortcut for future RV travel though? Probably not.
Seemingly as usual, we pulled into our campsite after dark and quickly connected to water and electricity. Dead Horse Ranch is at about 6000′ in elevation so it was getting chilly quick. There were actually signs posted about water lines freezing, which ours did at some point on that first night. Fortunately we had some water in our tank so the frozen line wasn’t a big deal. Despite the cold I still did manage to venture out after moonset to take a few pictures of the night sky.
On our first full day at the park we didn’t do all that much. We mostly walked around and explored. There were three ponds in the park that were all stocked with trout. The hike to the ponds was about a mile and via a nice little trail through the hills that was shared with horse back riders. Taking this trail is also how we learned that Boomer has a penchant for chewing on horse poop. To each their own I guess. We fished a bit in the afternoon, but as usual the fish were too smart for us. We were told there would be a trout plant the next day, which did get our hopes up.
Our second full day at the park was a Monday. Lana, Marina, and even Josh had a little work to do so we set up the front of the RV as the “executive business center” for Lana and her mom, and Josh took his video calls outside. Yes, Josh was actually working too, he now has his own Reading Buddy business and had a couple of sessions scheduled that day.
While the others were working, Liam and I walked around the campground for a bit more exploration. While we were walking around I couldn’t help but think that these campgrounds were nicer than the state parks in California, and as I’ve stated in an earlier blog post, charged less for more. Each site was cleaned and the non-RV sites also had nice flat areas designated for tents, which meant there wouldn’t be a need for a lengthy site survey to find the flattest spot for a tent. Maybe there are parks like this in California, but I just haven’t been to them yet.
When Lana and Josh were done working we all headed down to the ponds, intent on catching some dinner. Fortunately for us, the trout that must have just been planted were a bit hungry, we ended up catching three of them. After fishing, we walked back up to our campsite for dinner and a campfire.
On our third and final day at Dead Horse Ranch we decided to do a bit more fishing before heading off to the next state park on our list. This time we caught 2 more trout and before we knew it, it was time to hit the road again. This time it was going to be about a three hour drive to Lost Dutchman State Park, just outside of Phoenix.