Camping in Paradise

Last weekend I went on a very spontaneous camping trip with our friends down here. We figured it all out in a few hours, and put everything together the next day and headed north to the high country! The original plan was to camp at a campground, with only 13 sites (and this is spring break, so of course many people had the same idea). So obviously that didn't work out because it was completely full when we arrived. BUT, 2 of our friends, about 20 minutes ahead of us in a 4wd jeep decided to do a little off-roading/exploring since the rest of the group was behind, and found an AMAZING spot on a creek. You have to have 4wd to get to it, so not many people actually know about this spot. We camped right on the sand on the bank of the creek, where there was a rope swing, superb hiking, and beautiful cliffs around us. It was like another world. No one else was around so we had it all to ourselves.





The creek, called Beaver Creek, runs right from the mountains, where they do get snow in the winter. So pretty much all of the water in the creek is snow-melt, leaving for a very very cold swim! But we did it anyway!! At night we heard a Great Horned Owl in the tree across from the creek most of the night. Considering how cold it was that night, listening to the owl's call made it so much more pleasant to fall asleep.

The hiking we did was just behind the cliff, in a wash created during the monsoon seasons. The wash goes on for miles, with walls on either side of us, where every once in a while we would come across caves. Some of us would be brave enough to explore the caves... but I made them holler before entering in case there was a not-so-welcoming animal inside! This is prime cougar country, but did not see any evidence of them. Lots of coyote and elk evidence though!


After we left the site we went to Montezuma Castle, a National Monument nearby. It was pretty amazing to still see the ruins of an old village built in the side of a cliff! They were built and used by the Sinagua people around 1400 AD. The five-story stone and mortar dwellings contain 20 rooms and once housed about 50 people, and they used ladders to get from the ground up.

After the ruins, 3 of us traveled yet another hour north to Meteor Crater outside of Flagstaff, which is a very famous and popular site to see in the world. The crater is a meteorite impact crater in the desert, which happened about 50,000 years ago. It is almost a mile in diameter, 570 ft deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises 150 ft above the surrounding plains. I felt like I was standing on Mars when overlooking the crater!


The more I have explored down here, the more I like this state. There is really a lot of beautiful places. So much hiking, and some really amazing spots. (But no,this does not mean I like it better than Oregon and California!)