Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure!
I'm your host Marc Guido, and welcome to the Prescott, Arizona area. We're going to
spend this episode showing you around all the wonderful things that the
Prescott area has to offer -- some gorgeous lakes, beautiful mountain forests, desert,
and some wonderful hikes. So stay tuned!
So we're boondocking in the Prescott National Forest along South Senator
Highway just south of the city of Prescott by about eight miles. This is a
gorgeous area. We're up around 6,400 feet, so we've made a huge transition here
from desert (that was honestly getting a little warm) up to cool mountain forests.
The daily highs have been up around 60 degrees, lows in the upper 30s. It's been
just beautiful. It has been awfully breezy the whole time we've been here,
but it's been breezy all across Northern Arizona. I really can't blame the
location for that. Now they call it the South Senator Highway but it's really
not much of a highway. It's a narrow, twisting paved road, two lanes until you
get about a mile from camp. That's where it goes to dirt. Now apparently the
Prescott Basin area has been at times overused for camping, so the National
Forest Service has restricted camping to designated campsites along these Forest
Service roads. And to the Forest Service's credit, most of the sites that we've seen
that would be worth taking are marked for dispersed camping. So they've been
very generous in allocating those sites, but they're just trying to restrict use
to certain identifiable sites, and if the area is heavily used I can't blame them
for that. There is no charge, of course, we are just boondocking on Forest Service
land, and one thing they did do in these designated sites is they actually put
metal fire rings with grates, which is kind of a nice touch for a boondocking
site. Easy access to town. If you're an RV traveler, I've got to tell you there is
virtually any kind of product or service that you could possibly need in that
town. Virtually every big-box store known to mankind,
sometimes two. There's a great RV dealership, and we need to give them a
shout out right here. They're called Affinity RV. They have propane fills for
a buck 80 a gallon. They have a free dump station complete with potable water.
Very very friendly folks to RV travelers. They were very helpful when we stopped
to pick up some propane and a part for our entry door that we were needing to
replace, so they've been terrific, and a buck 80 a gallon .. I mean, that's less than
half the price of what the U-Haul dealer here in Prescott is asking for a propane
fill. So very, very, very fair on their pricing. Now as you can hear, there
are occasional ATVs that go by here but it hasn't been that troublesome
and it hasn't been that dusty, so no real complaints from us there. Now there's
easy access to all kinds of outdoor recreation from here. We're in the
Bradshaw Mountains. There's some great hikes we'll bring you on in the Bradshaw
Mountains, There's another really cool hike that we'll bring you out to
northwest of town out near Granite Mountain, and we'll show you around the
city of Prescott a little bit as well.
Boondocking along South Senator Highway comes with the typical U.S. Forest
Service 14-day stay limit. Other Forest Service roads in the immediate vicinity
have similar established dispersed campsites as well.
Eight miles south of our camp with a population of 40,000, Prescott was
designated the capital of the Arizona Territory in 1864 before moving to
Tucson only three years later. After another ten years
Prescott became the territorial capital once again, before ceding that title to
Phoenix. Wyatt Earp's brother Virgil served as a constable and watchman in
Prescott starting in 1878, and Doc Holliday also lived there in the summer
of 1880, too, before the involvement of both in the now infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral
in Tombstone. Many of the downtown buildings in Whiskey Row, adjacent to the
town's past red-light district, have been converted to boutiques, art galleries,
book stores and restaurants. Many Victorian style homes line Prescott's
residential streets. Picturesque Watson Lake, just four miles north of Prescott,
makes us wish that we didn't leave our kayak at home. The city park features
fishing, boating, kayaking, canoeing, hiking, rock climbing, camping, and day picnicking --
something for everyone.
South of our camp, South Senator Highway becomes even less of a highway. We're
using it to hike to the lookout atop 7,979-
foot Mount Union, the highest peak in the Bradshaw Mountains.
Right outside of our trailers dinette window sit several of these gorgeous and
unusual alligator juniper trees, so named for the checkerboard pattern of their
bark that resembles alligator skin. In the US it's native to several
southwestern states including Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas, growing in
dry soils at altitudes ranging from 2,500 to nearly 8,900 feet.
These trees are noteworthy, for we're about to hike to one particular gigantic
specimen of this beautiful tree that holds a special story beneath its boughs.
You may recall the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of wildland
firefighters within the Prescott Fire Department.The 2017 film "Only The Brave"
was based on the Granite Mountain Hotshots and the Yarnell Fire.
On June 30th, 2013, 19 members of the 20- man group died fighting the Yarnell Hill
Fire, which was ignited by lightning just a few miles southwest of here, when the
fire overtook their position. It was the greatest loss of life for firefighters
in a wildfire since 1933, the deadliest wildfire of any kind since 1991, and the
greatest loss of firefighters in the United States since the September 11th
attacks.
Only several months earlier, the Doce Fire erupted near where we're hiking, and
the Granite Mountain Hotshots were tasked with defending this giant
alligator juniper tree. They prepared a fire line around the tree, and cleared
away fuels before moving on to their next task to help extinguish the blaze.
When the fire was finally out and the crew returned to the scene, the earth
surrounding the giant juniper was all scorched, but the juniper was still
standing unscathed. The Hotshots talked about how they
wanted to return to this tree at the end of the summer to install a plaque to
explain how they had saved it. Alas, they perished in the Yarnell Fire before they
had the chance to do so.
But with the help of friends, family, and volunteers, the U.S. Forest Service
stepped in to do what the Granite Mountain hotshots wanted to do, but died
before they could. This tree survived because of the crew's willingness to do
whatever it took to get the job done, and this giant alligator juniper tree now
represents their devotion to the job, and the survival of their memory.
So we truly hope that you've enjoyed coming along with us to Prescott, Arizona!
Hopefully this has given you some inspiration to maybe visit the Prescott
area in your RV as well. Now if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer, make sure
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