Saddle Mountain background
I was exploring a new area southwest of Phoenix the winter of ’25/’26. My first spot over Christmas had been pretty good, but before the new year hit it was time to dump and get water. I was about to find out the main downside of this area: water is hard to come by. But there are some great areas to boondock down here, making it worth a little extra travel for water around here. I also had some other unexpected inconveniences. Join me as I deal with water and scout out a new spot west of Buckeye!
Spot the RV.
I had been perusing the usual apps for boondockers looking for water and dump stations: freecampsites.net, iOverlander, Campendium, rvdumpsites.net and of course, the googles. As of late 2025, iOverlander is going down. The website is still fine, but the original app has been depreciated. The new app sucks in both usage and money greed. I have a certain tolerance for paying for these apps, but when they get expensive they immediately become useless no matter how good they are as most people are cheap and will not pay for these things. Now that you have few people using the app, there is no more crowdsourcing knowledge of areas, leading me to stop using the app even if it’s free at that point. Campendium used to be more for campground type RVers, but they have expanded to have a decent selection of boondocking plus dump station sites. The other two are old standbys that have not changed much in the last few years. Between these, you are likely to find 90% of the boondocking and boondocking resources out there.
I had come to the conclusion that east of Phoenix is not the best for dump and water. Buckeye covers pretty much everything else, but no dump station. Water may be had but I didn’t dig for every business that might have a water spigot you can borrow. You can go down the highway into Phoenix to find places, but it is a surprisingly long ways to the first decent spots. I’m not fond of the gas stations along the I-10 that have their water tap right by the dump station. Corporate liability makes them say the water is ‘non-potable’ which is technically correct. The reality is that tap is hooked up to the same city water everything else is (but not always!) . You can take a chance on these taps – inspect and clean/sterilize the tap as you never know who was spraying their sewage around cleaning it up just before you got there.
My normal goto is an RV park in the area if there are no formal dump stations. Most are happy to take $10-30 to have you dump and fill up water at one of their empty sites. It would seem that every RV park east of Phoenix (not that there are many) no longer allowed dump/water fill. That left exactly one spot east of Phoenix for water/dump: Saddle Vista Ranch. They are a bit of a mixed bag. On the good side, they have an easy access sanidump and water site, the water is tasty and the fee is $20 + 0.25 per gallon of water. Larger rigs will be charged more for dump. They have a dumpster to get rid of your trash too. On the other hand, you have a long crappy gravel road to get into the site, there is NO signage beyond the entrance confirming you’ve found the place. You need signs here. This business does livestock feed, pet boarding, plant sales, among other things.
My first time coming there I drove around all over the place, finally finding the sewer dump. There was no one who came and directed me to the dump station. While I was setting up to dump, David came over a let me know their water pump was broken so I might not be able to get a full tank of water. He directed me to their water tank, that I might be able to syphon a full tank for my RV from. I went ahead with the dump, gambling I’d be able to get enough water from them. While the water took forever (I had to drop my hose to the ground and collect water by the bottle for the last gallon) I was able to get my tanks full. If I were to recommend improvements in order of ‘bang for buck’, it would be 1) directional signage for dump/water/store 2) Grade access road to smooth/widen 3) upgrade sewer dump from a pipe sticking out of the dirt to a small flush concrete pad. On the cheap, at least grade the area to direct any spillage and throw a bit of gravel down to keep things cleaner.
As I had been into Buckeye for groceries already, my plan was to checkout a potential spot on the way back from dumping / getting water. I had scouted it on the googles – it was the end of pavement where the road makes a turn north, with branch gravel roads going off several directions. I could see what looked like a parking area. While it was a bit of a detour going back it looked promising enough to go look at. I was on the north side of Saddle Mountain. There is a bunch of boondocking marked on most of the apps there. You could boondock there then hit Saddle Vista Ranch on the way in/out for dump/water services. The road I was checking out at the end of pavement was at the southeast corner of the Saddle Mountains. The main gravel road continues north then west passing the south side of the mountains. I’d be checking that out later.
You drive by this solar on the way here. It goes on for miles.
I arrived at the end of the pavement, parking first in what was a big dirt parking lot. It looked like a staging area for ATVs as roads went off into the hills around there from here. Exploring down the long ago maintained road heading west, I just managed to clear one V-wash coming up and seeing the next V-wash was not clearable. But there was a little cart path going off onto the desert pavement, going over to a pipeline right of way (ROW). I crossed over to that, and find a level spot just at the edge of the ROW. It looks pretty good. A quick walk around confirms that shooting has been minimal in the area so I setup my camp for the week here. It looked like a good area to ring in the new year!
A half hour into my stay, I notice I’m not as level as I thought when I parked. I thought nothing of it until I went outside to deal with unloading the bike. I see that my front right tire is completely flat! I was thinking at first I picked up a nail exploring the boondocking area, then I remembered my drive all around Saddle Vista Ranch. It’s not the neatest place – there is junk all over and the leaking tire had likely picked up something there. This ‘something’ looked a lot like a shotgun shell, which made no sense. Shotgun shells don’t have sharp pointy bits to puncture tires.
My first instinct was to throw on the spare, but thinking about it a bit relegated that to plan B. I jacked up the tire and got the compressor out, pumping the tire back up to 55 psi. Monitoring the tire for an hour confirmed that I had a slow leak. I’d hear something going click-click-click-click… driving down the pavement – that was probably my “shotgun shell” hitting the road as I was driving. The leak was slow enough that I might be able to drive back to Phoenix and have the tire repaired at Big-O. Yes, I have free tire service with them; I could have gotten the to come out and fix the tire but if all I had to do was drive into town to have them do it I’d rather do that than go park on the side of the road and wait for them to show up here. (Pro-tip: rescue services usually won’t go off-road to rescue you).
A shooting target. It goes ‘ping’ when you hit it.
So I left the tire mostly jacked up, which had the side-effect of leaving me level again in the rig. I’d fill it up again when I left and see if I could make it back to town. In the meanwhile, my next issue reared its ugly head. A group had come into the parking lot back at the pavement end and started shooting. Too late, I see a dirt pile that is being used for targets over there. Once the shooters left, I wander over and see lots of shooting evidence. This is the main spot people come to shoot at around here. I was off to the side at a 45 angle, *just* far enough that I wasn’t too worried about stray shots. Normally at this point I’d have moved as I had not setup completely, but with a flat, it was easier to stay put.
Shooting spot. Try to avoid these unless you want to shoot things.
My spot turned out to have shooters pretty much everyday and several groups coming through on the days off. It wasn’t too loud; the dirt pile blocked at least some of the sound. The annoyance factor just wasn’t high enough for me to decide I was going to leave and deal with my flat tire now rather than a week from now. In the meanwhile, there was the “Rose” hill to hike to and some smaller hills around, plus some interesting rock hounding in the area. I’d make the most of it and celebrate the new year with some gun fire nearby!
A view of the solar from the top of Rose Hill
The hill closest to my rig was called “Rose” on the topo maps for the area. It was an easy hike to the top without any rock scrambling involved. Rose is the last major hill between you and the Gila River to the east. You have a great view of all the solar farms that have gone up in the past few years, as well as a partial view of the Palo Verde Nuclear plant not too far away, one of the largest nuclear plants in the USA. To add to the power view, you have a natural gas generating station within view too. As all that power is clean, the view stays clear for many miles too.
I could see what I presumed was an abandoned farmstead from the hill to the southeast of me, so I explored that direction another day. I wander into what remains of the farmyard, seeing only some much neglected barb wire fencing around the place. Getting to the abandoned building, I finally encounter a ‘no trespassing’ sign. Checking Cal topo, I see that I have wandered from BLM onto private land. Too late now. Might as well get a few pictures of the abandonment. The sign reminded me that locals are the main thieves in an area too. Barbed wire fence isn’t on my list of colectables.
The nuclear plant produces enough steam from its cooling towers that it often forms its own cloud sitting over the plant. Sometimes this is the only cloud in the sky.
While I had been photographing, I was hearing a very insistent cow mooing in the distance, slowly coming closer. Looking over the little berm separating me from the building, I see a cow approaching me, mooing away in the most emphatic manner. I wasn’t sure if I was dealing with a cow in distress or a guard cow. Not being able to do anything about potential distress, I decided caution was the better part of valour and high tailed it out of the area, counting on what remained of the fence to keep the cow away.
A larger more elaborate Chalcedony, about the size of a golf ball
Safely away from the cow, I wandered back through the desert to my rig, following the BLM-private land border for a while. I had been coming upon white rocks you see in the desert a quartz related class called Chalcedony. Pronunciation is KAL-SED-DOH-NEE, which I’m still trying to keep straight in my head. I had wandered across a ridge with a particularly rich collection, keeping a larger interesting shaped piece for my rock collection.
Partial view of Palo Verde Nuclear Plant
Grass was growing thanks to the early winter rains
There is a lot of this rock around, especially south of Saddle mountain, as I found out on an exploratory walk down the gravel road. I was looking for boondocking spots farther away from the shooting and I was not disappointed. Every half a klick there was a cart path heading north towards the mountains that had boondocking spots on it. Further down, the road branched, with the side branches leading to more boondocking spots. I saw one rig in the whole area, so finding my next spot was not going to be a problem.
But first, I head to go deal with my flat as part of my resupply. Join me next time as I find out if I can drive a leaking tire 75 kilometers back to Phoenix.
