From Casa Grande, we headed northeast towards the Tonto National Forest and Tonto National Monument. The Tonto National Forest is huge, and seems to cover most of the public lands from just east of Pheonix to about 40 miles out, and a good 40 miles south to north. That area isn’t all National Forest and contains a few towns and private ranches, but you can’t drive too far in any direction without seeing the “Entering Tonto National Forest” signs. We had looked on iOverlander for a good place to camp, and found a disbursed camping area just west of the town of Superior. We didn’t really know what to expect, but found an area near the Picket Post Trailhead with very clear camping spots, some in groups, and some individual sites by the side of the road. Since cows were wandering the area freely, and lots of people were camping with horses and dogs in the other areas, we picked an individual site on the side of the road so our dogs wouldn’t make everyone crazy barking at everything passing the camper. We found that the area has a lot of trails through the desert, but it also has nice dirt roads without too much traffic, so we were able to get the dogs out for a good long walk and scope out other sites in case we came back.
We pulled out the next morning and headed for the Tonto National Monument, which was about 50 miles away through a few towns and over a few mountain passes. It was beautiful drive, and we easily found the park. Tonto National Monument is another National Park site featuring cave dwellings. We were very lucky because the site contains two cave dwelling areas, with one up a paved trail very easily accessible from the Visitor Center, and another larger dwelling up a mile-plus dirt path which is usually only accessible with a park ranger as a guide, but on that Sunday the were allowing people to walk to the larger dwelling on their own. We visited both dwellings, and enjoyed talking to the rangers and archeologists on site. We also enjoyed seeing the local flora and fauna, and spotted a few lifer birds as well as some very fat squirrels.
Our plan had been to leave the Tonto National Monument and head to a campground closer to Phoenix near Tortilla Flats. However, in talking to one of the rangers, we discovered that although that campground is only about 25 miles from the National Monument, a landslide had closed Rt. 88 and the detour around the landslide meant it would be more like 90 miles whether we went north or south around the landslide. In looking at the map, we realized that the southern detour took us back through Superior and the area where we had camped the previous night. But, we needed water and wanted to get some laundry done, so we called a campground in Superior to see if we could get in that night. They didn’t have any full hookup sites open, but they said they could give us access to water and they didn’t care if we dumped our gray water in their gravel parking lot, so we went to the Box 8 Ranch RV Resort and parked in their parking lot and both got our laundry done and filled with water.
The next morning we went less than 5 miles back down the road to the Picket Post disbursed camping area. We went to one of the spots further off the road that we had scoped out on one of our walks the first night we stayed there. The second spot was quieter with fewer people around, but was still in a spot where we could easily access both hiking trails and the back roads for dog walks. We stayed there two more nights while Tom did some maintenance on the camper, we took the dogs on a couple of long walks, and we took a couple of hikes by ourselves through the desert.
We left the Tonto National Forest after a walk with the dogs on Wednesday morning because we had made arrangements to meet friends Michele and Gino in Phoenix for dinner that night.The Tonto National Forest is less than an hour outside of Phoenix, but it seemed like worlds away as we drove back into civilization.