Camping in the desert

Payson, Arizona

We stopped at the local tourist information office when we arrived here around three-thirty this afternoon, looking for some information on hiking trails in the area. ‘How about a motel that’s not right on the highway?’ was our second question. ‘All motels are on the highway’, the man replied, ‘but since it’s mostly through-traffic on one of the two highways running through town it slows down considerably at night.’ 

Well, it is not yet as quiet as it was the last few nights on our campground in Lost Dutchman State Park, but it is much better than when we arrived. At that time we wouldn’t have dared to cross the road without using the pedestrian traffic light on the corner. This town is laid out exceptionally generously as far as space is concerned. Roads are wide, and there is a lot of room for everything. It is as if the concept of space present further south in the desert has been carried over into this beautifully forested area where we have decided to stop for the night before paying a visit to Sedona tomorrow. It is nice to have a comfortable bed after three days in a tent, although we lacked very little comfort otherwise in our campground in the Superstition Mountains. 

We arrived there on Sunday, and while many of the RV camp spots were filled there was still lots of room for our tent. It was a new experience to pitch a tent between towering Saguaro cacti and their smaller cousins, the Chollas. Would we have to worry about scorpions? Snakes? Any other critters as foreign to our experience as the cacti? It was unlikely, since nights are still quite cool in the desert; in fact, in that first night the thermometer dropped to four or five degrees Celsius, and we were happy to have brought our good backpacking sleeping bags. 

The sun set in the most vibrant display of colour I have ever seen, shades of vermilion, fuchsia, burning orange softening to peach and cream where they melded with the darkening night sky slowly filling with stars. Mountain ranges in the distance and the spread arms of the Saguaros close by were sketched in in black ink, and yesterday evening the first glimpse of a waxing moon, no thicker than a blade of grass, completed the scene. 

Coyotes sang their evening song when we crawled into our sleeping bags, and during the night two owls had an ongoing conversation not far from the tent - a perfect way to rest up for a hike in desert mountains.

Once again it is late, and these mountain hikes have left me in need of some rest. I'll be back with more when the opportunity arises and I have internet again.

Afternoon hike in the Payson area