Mongollon Rim, AZ - 9/17/2011

As we have never heard of or thought we were interested in visiting the Mongollon Rim in AZ, we decided we would give it a whirl.  But before arriving in that area, we made a stop at Montezuma Castle Nat'l Monument, which is really one of the Indian cliff dwellings.  Being in this area, kinda means that you need to recognize the Indian culture and enjoy their history.  While not the most impressive cliff dwelling that we have visited, it was a nice representation and still amazes us that they were able to move about in such precarious surroundings.  Certainly with my fear of heights, I could not imagine myself, scrambling up ladders to head for home.

Arriving again in a bit of rain, we took the first campsite that we found open for the night.  The Mongollon Rim is the edge of a 7500' mountain range that looks over miles and miles of forest.  Having only spent time in arid desert type environments of AZ, I was amazed to see the vast lands of forests.  What we enjoyed the most about this stop, was the bike ride that we took for several miles on a path within feet of the 2000' drop off.  The views were outstanding as well as the wildflowers along the path.  It looked more like spring than the approaching fall weather we were anticipating.

We found out that you could actually camp in what the NF calls Dispersed Camping along the cliff, but by then all the folks from Phoenix had occupied the spots for the weekend getting away from the heat.  This camping is actually free and there were large groups enjoying the freedom and lack of typical campground rules and confinement.  Hello California, why is it so difficult for us to have this kind of access to lands that we pay taxes for?  In AZ in the National Forests, you can camp without facilities pretty much anywhere along dirt roadways.  It is cool!

Jack & I decided to go back along the rim for sunset and a little vino.  Not sure we can beat Baja sunsets, but this was certainly nice and different.

 One of the cool things about staying in NF campgrounds is the price.  Since we are 65 years old, we bought what is called the "Golden Pass", which lets us camp for 1/2 price, so at $7 a night it is a deal.  The bad thing about this NF campground, is that since there were no hookup (which is fine with us), everyone runs generators.  There are some quite ones, but most are pretty loud and there seems to be a need to run them most of the day.  What happened to peace and quiet?  I remember when our family did old fashion tent camping that we really did not like the RVs for this reason, so Jack & I added solar panels to our RV and we can listen to the wind and the birds.