Camping at Buckeye Hills Regional Park and a Visit to White Tank Mountain Regional Park

Tuesday, we stayed around camp and put up the Christmas lights on the Creosote bushes. It was really cloudy out, almost looked like rain but the sun finally came out around 2pm. I started a campfire and we enjoyed spending a couple of hours outside throwing the stick for Freya. Around 4:30 the clouds came in again and a cool wind sprang up as well, so inside we went.  At 5:30 Ray went out and hooked up our laser lights and most of my tree lights came on, but with only a little charge time today they did not stay on very long. Oh well, tomorrow is sunny so they should get a good charge with the sun.

Although it seems we are in the "boonies" here at Buckeye Hills Regional Park, the Super Walmart and various other box stores are only a 15 minutes drive away so we have the best of both worlds.

Wednesday, the sun was back out and with it the warmer temps. Ray got some morning shots of our campsite.

Pretty flat area with the I10 and Hwy 85 adding sound effects

White Tank Mountain Regional Park is on the agenda today and only about 40 minutes away from where we we're camped.

The White Tank Mountain Regional Park is a large regional park located in west-central Maricopa County, Arizona. Encompassing 29,271 acres of desert and mountain landscape, it is the largest regional park in the county. Wikipedia

"White Tank Mountain Regional Park offers approximately 30 miles of excellent shared-use trails, ranging in length from 0.9 mile to 7.9 miles, and difficulty from easy to strenuous. Overnight backpacking, with a permit, is allowed in established backcountry campsites. Day hikes can provide some breathtaking views of the mountains and panoramas of the Valley below. Horseback and mountain bike riders are welcome, although caution is stressed as some of the trails may be extremely difficult."At the entrance gate we paid our $6 and carried on up the road. There are lots of "Areas" of day picnic sites. Most of them with a covered picnic table to help with the hot summer temperatures.

They have a horse area to unload and go on trails, several group Ramada's, a youth campground area and a family camp area with 40 sites with water and electric with a sani-dump. Four of the family campsites are used by camp hosts and about 1/3 of them would fit rigs our size for $30/night. We noticed this one camp host motorhome and I had to take a picture of the Christmas Village ... ummmm food for thought! Our Christmas Village was larger and is in storage, but moving all the time would be a pain.

Next we decided to walk the Waterfall Trail up as far as Petroglyph Plaza, a very easy .5 mile walk on a concrete path with minimal elevation gain.

Lots of benches to rest out of the sun if you needed to.

Overlooking Peoria

There are a fair amount of Petroglyphs for such a small area at the Petroglyphs Plaza.

Good rendition of a Roadrunner (meep, meep!)

We walked a little further up the trail but as there was no waterfall to see at this time of year it seemed a waste of Ray's resources for the additional .5 miles, so we turned around and went back to the car.

The path changes to gravel to go up to the waterfall.

The black hole/cave that the water has made.

The picture below shows the path the water would take if it was flowing. As you can see it would be quite spectacular in the rainy season.

After our lovely walk we stopped for lunch on the way back to camp at a Japanese Steak House for sushi, as we love the stuff.

Ray's suffering a few stomach issues (he picked a bug of some sort) for the past couple of days and I have not been sleeping very well. We actually had a nap for an hour once we were home and then spent a few hours outside in our recliners throwing the stick for Freya. I am trying to re-set my internal alarm that the time to get up is 6 am not 4 am! Another great day in the AZ desert.

Ahhgggg. I woke up this morning "with some stomach issues". I guess Ray passed it on to me or it took longer for me to feel it. I guess we must have not sanitized our hands shopping somewhere a few days ago. Fortunately he is feeling better somewhat today, so hopefully it is only a 48 hour thing. :(

Other than me running into Safeway for a couple of things, we just stayed put at camp. We even had another nap ... I could not keep my eyes open even after 9 1/2 hours sleep last night. The wind is up quite substantially this morning and afternoon, so we just stayed inside anyways even though it was 66 F outside. Unfortunately it's too windy for the sat dish so it remained lowered for most of the day.  Ray went outside every hour or so to play with the dog. She was not impressed with our lack of energy. Had to keep her inside as the dust clouds rolled by periodically.

A very bored dog!