Best Tent Camping: Arizona. Kirstin Olmon Phillips
has camped or maybe not, with no fee, no facilities, no trash—strictly pack in/pack out. The wilderness is at your doorstep, and you may be all alone.
Again, we leave it to you to discover Arizona’s backcountry on your own. USFS rangers tell us that many campers just want to know where they can camp for free and don’t care about amenities or ambience. While such campers aren’t our target audience, we have included a number of free campgrounds and a few dispersed camping areas.
We narrowed our choices among Arizona’s many great campgrounds based on a number of factors. We divided the state into regions and looked for campgrounds that made an effort to give tent campers something special, whether it be walk-in sites that have great lake views, tent-only sections separated from the RVs, or other possibilities such as tenting on the beach. In some regions we found too many great options, but we did our best to distill them to the ones we felt would be best for tenters.
We looked for smaller campgrounds—the smaller the campground, the less likely a 30-foot fifth wheel will be your neighbor. Of course, the pioneer spirit is still alive and well in the West, and that means there’s no road so long or so rough that someone won’t drag a trailer down it. You may find the modern equivalent of a Conestoga wagon almost anywhere, complete with a satellite dish and a patch of Astroturf by the door.
Alas, there are some areas of the state that we really wanted to include but couldn’t: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Havasu, Canyon de Chelly, and the Colorado Corridor, among others. As special as these places are, the campgrounds within them either violated every criterion in this book’s subtitle or simply didn’t have designated camping that met our standards. (Waterfall-studded Havasu Canyon actually offers fantastic tent camping, but because that destination is accessible only by helicopter or an 11-mile hike or horse/mule ride, it didn’t make the cut.) Tenters looking for solitude in these areas might want to rent a boat and camp on the shoreline or find a dispersed spot in the surrounding wilderness.
Finally, note that while the various managing agencies work hard to keep their websites and print information accurate and up to date, in updating this edition we found that a few campgrounds from the first edition were closed. It’s always a good idea to call the park or ranger district before you go for news on current conditions and unexpected events such as fires and floods.
We hope that Best Tent Camping: Arizona will take the legwork out of choosing the campground that’s right for you!
THE RATING SYSTEM
As with all books in the Best Tent Camping series, the authors personally experienced dozens of campgrounds and campsites to select the top 50 locations in Arizona. Within that universe of 50 sites, the author then ranked each one according to the six categories described below.
Each campground is superlative in its own way. For example, a site may be rated only one star in one category but perhaps five stars in another category. Our rating system allows you to choose your destination based on the attributes that are most important to you. Although these ratings are subjective, they’re still excellent guidelines for finding the perfect camping experience for you and your companions.
Below and following we describe the criteria for each of the attributes in our five-star rating system:
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The site is ideal in that category. |
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The site is exemplary in that category. |
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The site is very good in that category. |
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The site is above average in that category. |
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The site is acceptable in that category. |
INDIVIDUAL RATINGS
Each campground description includes ratings for beauty, privacy, spaciousness, quiet, security, and cleanliness; each attribute is ranked from one to five stars, with five being the best. Yes, these ratings are subjective, but we’ve tried to select campgrounds that offer something for everyone.
BEAUTY
Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, but we gave higher marks for panoramic views or proximity to a lake or river. A campground that blended in well with the environment scored well, as did areas with remarkable wildlife or geology. Well-grown vegetation and nicely laid-out sites also upped the ratings.
PRIVACY
For this category we looked at the number of sites, the amount of screening between them, and the physical distance from one site to one another. Other considerations included the presence of nearby trails or day-use areas, along with proximity to a town or city that would invite regular day-use traffic and perhaps compromise privacy.
SPACIOUSNESS
Spaciousness is both a matter of actual space and of the feeling of having elbow room. We checked the separation of tent spots, picnic tables, cooking areas, and vehicles. We adjusted our marks based on whether activity areas and tent pads were defined or bordered and scored higher for the potential to spread out. We also gave campgrounds with plenty of space between the sites a higher rating than more crowded campgrounds.
QUIET
The quietness of a campground of course depends on who your neighbors are and when you’re visiting. We took into consideration our experience at the campsite, the nearness of roads, the proximity of towns and cities, the probable number of RVs, the likelihood of noisy all-terrain vehicles or boats, and whether a campground host is available or willing to enforce quiet hours. If we heard that a campground had a reputation for rowdiness or if we heard or witnessed a ruckus ourselves, we removed it from consideration.
Note that some of these campgrounds have no specified quiet hours; nevertheless, you should use common sense and be considerate of others.
SECURITY
Determining a campground’s level of security depends on what you view as the greater risk: other people or the wilderness. The more remote the campground, the less likely you are to run into opportunistic crime, but on the downside, the harder it is to get help in case of an accident or confrontation. The security rating takes into consideration whether the campground has a host or resident park ranger, the proximity of other campsites, how much day traffic the campground receives, how close the campground is to a town or city, and whether there is cell coverage or some type of emergency notification.
CLEANLINESS
This often depends on who was camping right before you and how your visit coincides with the campground’s maintenance schedule. In general, we gave higher marks to campgrounds with hosts who cleaned up regularly; we also gave high marks in the rare case of odor-free toilets. At unhosted campgrounds, we looked for trash receptacles as well as evidence that sites were cleared and that signs and buildings were kept repaired. We didn’t necessarily mark down for a single visitor’s garbage left at a site, but we definitely did for trash deposited in shrubbery or along trails, indicating infrequent cleaning.
THE CAMPGROUND PROFILE
Each profile contains a concise