Blank sign at the Co-op Grill
There is always some excitement coming to a new area of the world you have not explored, but some trepidation as well. How good are the roads? Can I go offroad to camp without getting stuck? How is the resupply in the area? Are there local party or shooting spots nearby? But you also are hoping to find that kickass boondocking spot that no one else knows about, with the perfect setup for surroundings, resupply and solitude. Join me as I explore about the area on my quest for the perfect boondocking spot.
The Salome native is looking for boondocking too
When I first rented an RV, my first camping experience had been west of Phoenix at a paid campground in White Tank Regional Park, just west of the last of the Phoenix ‘burbs. So I knew just a little about the area west of Phoenix, having continued down the I-10 to Quartzsite from there. This time, I came to the area with years of experience under my belt. There would be no paid camping, I would be boondocking, a little further away from Phoenix. I was hoping to use Buckeye as my resupply area. Buckeye is the last suburb town you hit west of Phoenix. I had already seen there was a brand new Fry’s grocery store on the edge of town. I hit that, finding it to be not very busy (yet!) with lots of room to maneuver around in. The parking lot is a little small – it’s OK now while the store is not too busy but the area is being filled in with housing so it will only get busier as time goes on.
I am on a frugal budget, but keeping my camping costs to zero means I do have a little room for some grocery luxuries. But that means you need to find a nice grocery store, something you don’t have anywhere around the Quartzsite area. This new Fry’s is as nice as it gets for a mainstream grocery chain down here, other than some of the premo-brand stores that charge too much for my budget. I can get some harder to find treats at Fry’s without breaking the bank on all my regular groceries. You do need to use the Kroeger’s member card, any of the stores under the brand will do (like Smith’s). I typically save $10 on a $100 shopping bill, so it is definitely worth it. You’ll still spend a bit more than your Walmart experience, but the discount at least brings your bill down closer to that pricing.
I finish my shop, happy to have such an easy in and out route to points south and west for boondocking. You do have to drive a few miles through agricultural lands first. I was headed for what is termed the Agua Caliente Trail Staging Area, not the closest area to boondock in (that would be checked out later), but far enough away that I felt it to be unlikely I’d be camped with a zillion other people. I had good paved roads until my last turn right onto the road of the same name. The staging area marked on the googles isn’t more than a dirt patch at the side of the road. Seeing the “Welcome to Public Lands” sign confirmed my mapping that public lands were beyond – it was time to start looking for spots.
Boondocking as seen from the main road
I saw a promising turn off both left and right only a few hundred meters down from the sign. I parked on the side of the road and walked down both ways a bit to see if there was anything worthwhile. It turns out both sides of the road have some spots you can boondock at, but the right turn leads down to some groundwater monitoring wells, with a nice parking spot close to a wash with some trees. It definitely looked good enough, so down to the right I went, finding myself fairly level and sunny, with a road that ends at a gate that looks to be rarely used. I wasn’t expecting people to come down my way, which almost panned out – I did have a hunter come walking through following the fenceline one morning!
M*A*S*H reference anyone?
I was pleased with my spot. It was far enough from the main road that there was no dust and minimal noise. I was close enough to civilization that there was even a country bar/restaurant I could walk back up the highway to visit. About the only thing I was less pleased with is that I was still pretty far from the hills so the hiking would not be that great. I spent Christmas ’25 in this spot, cooking up a brined turkey breast I had found at the Fry’s. I do like that turkey, but it is an example of something I’m more likely to find in a nice grocery store. That was part of my reason for being in the area, I wanted a nice store to resupply at and get myself lots of Christmas goodies.
Jagow Tank (watering holes are called tanks out here)
It was an easy ride down Agua Caliente Road with the motorcycle to explore deeper into the BLM area. The road is an A-class gravel road with smooth grading and relatively gentle slopes and curves. Any RV can go further down the road to explore the boondocking that exists. There even are a few spaces easy to get at that any sized rig would be able to go offroad to. I explored down a lesser track called Woolsey Wash that was still pretty good. You could make it all the way to Jagow Tank, with boondocking opportunities all along that road.
Random junk example at the ‘O. A.T. P. Society’
Agua Caliente Road travels through the wilderness, eventually coming back out west of Gilla Bend, a good ways towards Yuma. I wasn’t going that far, but I did go to a pin on the googles marked “Old Arizona Territory Preservation Society”. I’m not giving you a map link as it turned out to be a bunch of junk at the end of a sandy road you might get stuck in. Past that was the railroad whistle stop of Craig, where I hoped to be able to shortcut back to civilization to the north. I was hoping to find boondocking spots that I could access from the north, but in my whole time there the only roads I found making it to the BLM land were not RV navigable.
Cotton combines. Probably surplus with the decline in cotton farming in these parts
Interior of the bar section of the the Co-op
I took advantage of my closeness to civilization to walk over to the The Co-Op Grill. This country bar/restaurant turned out to be quite good, well worth the two mile walk from my camp. The interior is simply decorated in a modestly country theme. The menu is simple too – you won’t be spending ages contemplating your choices. What they have is good, basic food. The fries were perfect, my steak special was done right. I acted as banker for some locals playing pool next to me. Yep, we are in the country where people trust you with a look. While it wasn’t busy for a Saturday night, it was between Christmas and New Years, a generally dead time for the restaurant word. Overall, the place was quite good, I would return later.
Gillespie Bridge. The dam remains are just beyond the bridge
Abandoned stockyards
I took the Grom motorcycle over to Gillespie dam and bridge, which is a bit of a tourist stop. Unfortunately, it was a dull grey day so my pictures didn’t do this long span of Truss Bridge justice. The bridge does show what they need to engineer for here for river / wash crossings. If you are going to go over, you need to make your bridge many times larger than the normal river flow to handle the maximum water and debris flow you would get with a flood event. It’s partly why a lot of washes here are crossed with just a dip in the road, re-enforced on the sides to keep the road from eroding away. For the few times water flows, it is much cheaper to just pour a bit of a concrete lip along the road rather than building a long bridge. The amount of time the road is impassable due to flooding is comparable to what I see up north with the worst winter storms rendering the roads impassable for short periods until the snow ploughs catch up. I’m sure people here bitch too when the roads are briefly impassable, but remember: building for that last 1% availability is 1000% more expensive.
Gillespie Dam remains. You can just see the right side of the remaining dam.
The area around the dam did have some people around, fishing and enjoying the water. The dam’s destruction is relatively recent: flooding in 1993 resulted in the breach you see in the picture above. Rather than rebuild the dam, a diversion dyke has been built to channel what remains of the Gila river at this point into a canal. I can only assume the plan is to let the river wash the dyke out in the event of a flood and just rebuild the breach after.
I explored some lands south of the bridge and west of the canal, hoping to find some boondocking. Access was a challenge with many roads being private and marked ‘no trespassing’. When I finally got far enough south to find a road that punched through to the BLM the other issue was climbing up out of the main Gila River channel was probably not doable in my RV at least where I had found a road. The BLM land I had found did have an old firepit camp, but I can see why it is no longer used: a new house down the way on a private land hill overlooks the camping spot now. As I was already quite a ways down the gravel road I gave up on boondocking explorations. There are plenty of other areas to boondock around here.
Sunset at Agua Caliente
I was ready to move on to my next spot. I had initially thought I would camp at a spot down the road from where I currently was, having scouted out some good spots with the Grom. But my browsing of the googles aerial had yielded another potential area at the end of a paved road going to seemingly no where. I’d be checking that out on my way to dump and get water out in that area. I’d also pick up an unexpected hanger on along the way. Join me next time and I’ll tell you all about it!
