Chiricahua National Monument

October 27 -30, 2025

It's a short camping trip to Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona in our new Integra Arc Camper Van.  We have thankfully rid ourselves of the mice from our previous trip.  The Chiricahua Mountains are a unique volcanic mountain range with amazing rock hoodoo spires, balanced rocks and great hiking trails.  We camped inside the Monument at the primitive Bonito Canyon Campground, no hookups with a maximum vehicle length of 29 foot.  The monument has a scenic, curvy paved road from the park entrance to its highest elevation at Massai Point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiricahua_National_Monument 

We had a great campsite

 We park, it's so nice to have nothing to set up, and then go on a short hike from our campsite on the Silver Spur Meadow trail to Faraway Ranch.  A very easy trail through the forest along a dry creek bed with distant mountain views.

View along the trail

This is basically the view from our campsite

The CCC had a camp here that built it all

Sue posing in front of an old fire place

What is this rock structure on a hillside with a bared opening ?

We then took the slightly scarry narrow road to Massai Point,  and then wandered a while on the Massai Nature Trail loop.

Very cool views everywhere

We have no hookups here and are running off the house batteries to power the refrigerator, a few lights at night and the water pump intermittently.  There is a campground rest room with running water, so our fancy cassette toilet is not getting hard use.  Also we are not running the heater at all and are using a compact Butane fuel cook stove for cooking.  In spite of our low usage, the battery voltage discharges to 2/3 overnight, but we can run our generator to recharge. This rig is already solar prepped, so I see a solar panel in the future.  

We have an issue; the Van has a bed configuration that is (to us) very awkward to use and poorly designed. It works by removing all the couch cushions and then sliding the couch frame out from the wall on its slides and then positioning the removed couch cushions on top as the bed.  This sounds good in theory, but really doesn’t work so well in practice.  After setting it up and using it a few times, we have decided that it is more practical for Sue to sleep on the couch and for me to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag.  I know this sounds weird, but it’s so much easier to do this way.  

On day 2 we drive to the Echo Canyon parking area and hike the Echo Canyon Trail.  It was a great trail of moderate difficulty with fantastic views walking amongst the towering Hoodoos and balanced rocks.  The trail traverses from the upper rock formations down to the creek level near the bottom and then gradually back to the top for a great cross section.

  

The campground host had told us to watch out for the Mexican bluejays if eating meals outside.  He said they will take food right out of your hand and possibly even take a chunk of your hand.  We didn’t have a problem at all, but we did see many of them and they are definitely aggressive and noisy, but beautiful.   

We also had another visitor, a Coati with a great long tail who on two occasions wandered through our campsite.

The Coati was checking us out

On day 3 our plan was to drive to the nearby town of Portal, New Mexico which we have heard much about, however when we started down the road, the washboard surface was very rough as in shaking the van apart. As it was going to be a 40 plus mile round trip we decided to turn around, but the road is definitely very scenic.

We then reversed direction back to Willcox, Arizona where we walked around the Main Street area and stopped for lunch at the Big Texan BBQ. 

This is a great museum

This is a crazy Halloween story

An added attraction is the bar at the other part of the building

Dead Peoples stuff

Back at the campsite, we took a short ride to the visitors center where we went on a short hike on the Lower Rhyolite Trail which was moderate and very scenic.

Lots of nice acorns

We head for home in the morning making one stop at the Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery.  It contains many very interesting old gravestones.

We then drive straight back to Tucson.  It was a very short but successful road trip with perfect weather.            

Prescott Valley, Arizona 

September, 29 - 30 - October 1 - 2, 2025

Sue and I are off on a shake down run with the new Ram / Entegra ARC Camper Van to Prescott Valley, Arizona.  We have a reservation at the Lynx Lake Campground in the Prescott National Forest.  We drive I-10 west into Phoenix and then take route 17 north with moderate traffic flow, the flow through Phoenix seems to be much improved with minimal construction and added traffic lanes.  The drive up route 17 is always a little crazy with the steep hills, curves and trucks tying up the slow lane in places.  Driving towards Prescott Valley on route 69 takes you through beautiful country but as you enter the valley it quickly goes from open country to city with all the shopping malls, strip malls, businesses, hotels, fast food and restaurants.   Prescott Valley was incorporated in the 1960’s by a Phoenix real estate company and it shows, the city is booming.  

We find the Lynx Campground easily a couple of miles off route 69 and drive to our campsite.  This rig basically requires no setup, that’s the beauty of it.  It’s small and very compact with no space to spare, some might even call it claustrophobic, but I prefer to call it minimalistic. I’m of average height and I have bumped my head several times already and have added a few bumpers.  For the sake of domestic relations I am trying not to complain, but there are several things about the Van, we call it the ARC, that I don’t like, such as the excessive use of overly complex control panels to control the hot water heater mode, fuel or gas function, water temperature, fan speed and clock settings. 

We head out immediately on a hike around Lynx Lake which is something less than half full at present due to a problem with a drain valve malfunction.  It’s a nice hike of about 4 miles around the lake, but the trail down to the river is steep and not well marked.  As a result we kind of bushwhacked our way back uphill.  Later research indicated that gold was discovered in the Lynx River in 1863 which continued into the 1930’s which was quite productive.  I had noted much quartz along the hiking trail which is an indicator for gold. 

Lake level is very low

We have no hookups at this campsite so we are running totally off of our house batteries which hold up well overnight, in the morning we run the generator for a while to recharge. During the night, I heard some chewing sounds under our bed, I am a very light sleeper which Sue is the opposite, she heard nothing.  I didn’t want to say anything, I thought it may be a critter under the Van.
On our second day, we go to the nearby Lynx Creek Ruin Trailhead which is through an area that has sustained a forest fire years ago, but is still very scenic.  It goes to an ancient pueblo Indian site called that appears more like a few piles of rock, but I’m sure has had some archeological activity.

Burnt tree trunk 

View from the trail

Artistic depiction of the Pueblo

Scattered remains of the Pueblo

We then travel to the Smith Ravine Trailhead for another hike adjacent to a former forest fire burn area.  It eventually climbs uphill into a beautiful forested area with huge Ponderosa Pines, Oaks and lots of Manzanita. We now have satisfied our hiking passion and its back to the campsite.  On our second night, I am now sure that some critter is in our van and Sue hears it also.  As we slide the bed frame back in we see the telltale signs, also looking under the hood there are more of them.

On the edge of the burned area

Heading into the deep forest

Manzanita shrubs are everywhere

It’s now our third day and we drive about 10 miles away to the  lake and hike on the Peavine Trail with a slight detour to the Watson Woods.  We then exit the Peavine Trail and take the scenic Watson Lake trail.  It’s a beautiful trail winding through giant boulder fields with a great lake view.

Sue posing in front of a massive Cottonwood Tree

Watson Lake is beautiful

Afterwards, we drive to the historic downtown Prescott area where we walk around the Whiskey Row area, do some shopping, have pizza and ice cream.

I'm always drawn to the Jersey Lilly Saloon

That's how cowboys take a break

Historic Fountain in Courthouse square

It’s now our third night and our mouse is still with us.  Due to the size of the droppings, we now believe it to be a mouse, but we are wondering if it has traveled with us from Tucson to Prescott or has joined us here.  Sue claims that the seed residue left behind looks like the seeds on a shrub near our Tucson driveway, the mystery continues ! 

It's eating well on the top of engine 

 I had some concern about our house battery voltage overnight, but I thought that as we drove the van in the morning, the batteries would recharge from the Ram engine alternator.  After stopping in Phoenix and looking at the invertor panel, I see that the house batteries have not charged and the inverter is showing a fault code.  Back home, I learn that the code indicates that the batteries were overly discharged causing the inverter to shut down.  The solution is to plug into 120V shore power to recharge the batteries or run the generator, however the generator will not start because the batteries are dead.  I plug into a household outlet at home and everything corrects itself, but I’m still not sure about the function between the Ram alternator and the house invertor.

Another mystery, but probably simple electrical stuff, I’m more of a mechanical guy ! 

Overall, it was a successful shake down run, but much remains to learn, it has so much technology.