Dancing In The Buff – Cottonwood, AZ
We find ourselves today, yet again, in the boonies. Our new spot is just east of Cottonwood, AZ and has a sweeping view of the valley with afternoon glow to the red rocks of Sedona in the background. It’s a tad closer to the road than we like, but the views and location make it a pretty darn nice spot. Plus we’re all alone…our kinda spot.
We actually had to work a bit to get here. There’s a rather well-known and fairly easy boondocking spot about a mile away from here but there were over 25 RV’s there when we went to check it out a few days ago…yikes! Right across the way is a gnarly forest service road that bumps and ruts its way into the wilderness. This road is not for sissies and thus no beast goes there. Guess where we are?
We’ve been here several days thoroughly enjoying the higher elevations and thus near-perfect temps. This is the time of year our flip-flop barometer keeps us heading higher and northwards, warm enough to bask in a T-shirt but not so hot that we’re forced into air-conditioning (or so the plan goes). The paws have been frolicking in the grasses, we’ve been on some pretty neat outings (more on that in the next post) and we even…finally…finished our taxes, an event that got us so excited we danced naked around the RV. Well, we may not exactly all have been naked (in fact it’s possible the paws were the only ones essentially in the buff), but the point is we could have. When you’re boondocking and happy, the possibilities are endless.
This afternoon we’re being joined by our buddies Sue & Dave who are celebrating their one-year-on-the-road anniversary. It’s a momentous event and they’re bringing some rather sumptuous food to share with lucky us (love those kinds of visitors!). We will be contributing to the party with a Peruvian cocktail (Pisco Sour) and my famous flourless chocolate cake. This will also mean a reunion of Polly and her bestest buddy Lewis. Lucky dogs! It’s a good thing we’ve got lots of space ‘coz I predict exuberant pooch craziness all around.
I leave you with a few shots of our little spot and will be back to report on dog reunions and outings soon.
congrats on the taxes!
Looks lovely out there!
Thanks..and yes it is lovely!
Nina
We can hardly wait to join you there next year. We start our journey next year’ and our dream started 15 years ago. We sold everything and went on a 4 month road trip. Slept in a tent in Cottonwood.
Oh how very cool! You guys probably know the area well. Bet you could find some even better boondocking spots than the one we’re in!
Nina
Fabulous pictures. I simply must try this boon docking thing!
Beware…it’s addictive once you start 🙂
Nina
Welcome to our neck o’ the desert! Brace yourself for some of our famous Spring wind tomorrow!
Yeah, we’ve been eyeing that forecast. We’re ready to hunker down!
Nina
Nina,
You do know how to turn a phrase!!!
Thanks..I enjoy the turning 🙂
Nina
We need to get our taxes together too…..been reminding someone of that for a few weeks. I told him about the whole dancing naked thing upon completion…….he’s out gathering receipts and documents as we speak…..thank you!!!!!
Glad I could give you the right “push” to get started LOL! Enjoy the taxes..or rather the dancing 😉
Nina
Looks like the perfect spot! So excited to hear Sue and Dave are heading your way. Polly will be just thrilled. Enjoy!
We’ve had waaaay too much fun with all of us in one spot. Too bad we have to part ways again.
Nina
So how bad was the road to get to this spot? It sure am purdy!!
Be careful dancing naked now – those balloons overhead may have people with binoculars.
This road is very rutted and for that reason we didn’t go as far back as we’d like. Don’t think we could get much further without damaging stuff. A smaller rig or truck camper would be able to get much further.
Nina
Just finished my taxes; getting $2k back. I’m dancing naked too!
Nice!! Congrats on both events!
Nina
We enjoyed Cottonwood and several hiking areas. Did have to watch out on some of the BLM land for gun owners target practicing when we were walking alone the river. Have fun.
We did notice a couple of casings down by the river.
Nina
I have to say that you have been finding some nice spots lately !! Great work getting the beast where no beast has gone !
It takes a bit of doing to get “the beast” out here. Sometimes i do rather wish we were a tad smaller. But once we’re here, it’s always worth it.
Nina
We loved the Cottonwood area, Jerome and Sedona last spring, little envious as we are making our way back to Canada this year along the wet coast. May you find a nice positive energy vortex.
Ray
So far (today) we’ve got all kinds of vortexes going on, but it’s mostly the windy kind!
Nina
OF Course you’re not dancing Nake around the RV in the boonies…CERTAINLY it would only be the 4-pawed “animals”… (Wink and grin) Not that I’d know anything of such….ummm…behavior… (More winks and grins)
Congrats on taking the chance to get into such a perfect boondocking spot. Now that I can attest to with first hand experience. 🙂
About them thar Pisco Sours – I’ve been to Peru – and bought some extra to bring home on the plane. Be Very Cautious! (Even more winks and grins!)
Yeah we got hooked on Pisco Sours during our visit to Peru a few years back. Powerfully delicious cocktail. We’ve been carrying round our bottle of Pisco ever since. Figured it was finally time to use it up.
Nina
Enjoy the anniversary party…congratulate them for me…be careful dancing naked outside…wouldn’t want to get stuck with the cacti 🙂
Thankfully very few cacti around here…it’s a good dancing spot 😉
Nina
The Cottonwood, Sedona, and Jerome area is one of our favorites in AZ. The boondocking is great, too.
This is an entirely sweet spot. We spent several weeks here our 1st year RVing, but would love to come back and spend a whole month. Just so much to do in the area.
Nina
Hmmm. Dancing Naked. Do we need to keep our shades pulled down?
LOL…we’ll try to warn you if the urge takes us
Nina
Why not dance naked in the boonies.
Indeed! Nina
Ha. Finishing taxes might be a good reason for dancing naked around the RV. But so are a million other good reasons that occur with greater frequency.
I love the description of the FS Road — but hey, it IS a FS road and beasts should be allowed in the forest, right? 🙂
Cheers,
Peter
A retired photographer looks at life
Life Unscripted on WordPress
Indeed…opportunities for dancing in the buff should be readily embraced.
Nina
Dancing in the buff? I could have enjoyed that…several years ago. Looks like a lovely hideaway out in the open.
We’ve got a pretty sweet spot, I must say 🙂
Now you are in a great area, look out for Oak Creek Canyon, just north of Sedona, in your tow vehicle, real nice places to hike, especially if you can find the west fork of Oak Creek. Also, slide rock, which if it gets warm is fun place to cool off.
We were in Sedona a few years back and totally enjoyed all the hiking in the area. Slide Rock was pretty cool, but very popular!
Nina
Howdy~ Been “lurking” at your blog and finally subscribed to follow your adventures. We (Becky and I) are also out on the road with our motorhome. I worked on the Prescott Forest for 12 years, lived there for 21. Beautiful area, but never realized there was a boondocking area East of Cottonwood until now, thanks 😉
I guess technically we’re SE of Cottonwood, but the boondocking is along Thousand Trails Road (147A) and also on the other side down FS 360. In fact there’s quite a lot of the FS roads in Prescott NFS that allow free dispersed camping. The trick is just finding an accessible and reasonably flat site 🙂
The easiest reference for all this is the Prescott Motor Vehicle Use Map. It shows all the roads that allow dispersed camping. Very handy to have! You probably already know about this resource, but for others reading and looking they can download it here:
http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/prescott/home/?cid=STELPRDB5343602
Nina
Here’s a handy centralized list of all the national forests that have published MVUMs: http://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/programs/ohv/ohv_maps.shtml
Ahhh. Hey, that balloon looks mighty familiar! Did it say “SNOOOORT”?
Actually it did not, but funnily enough Polly did. She went quite banana’s when she saw the balloon and was rather incensed that it invaded our boondocking spot. Much snorting all around!
Nina
Sounds like you two bare-ly contained yourselves until taxes were done!! As seemingly always, great pictures…. Prescott, Sedona, Cottonwood – are some of our favorite get away spots for short trips… (while still doing the 9-5 gig). We would make four day weekends out of a run over from San Diego.
It amazes me some of the places you two get The Beast into. Do you find the need to raise the rig some to clear the tail? Our first rig was a T-28 Bounder on a F53 chassis – small enough with short enough rear hangover to really surprise me where we could take it with careful driving.
Be good, have fun,
Smitty
So far we’ve never need to raise the back except to level. We’ve got a fairly short overhang, and it slants upwards too so we’ve actually got pretty decent clearance for our size. Still we have to be careful…if the road gets too rutted we can’t do it.
Nina
Glad to see you are enjoying your time in the red rocks.