Southwestern RV Trip – Days 55-56 -esort, AZ, and Crusty's

On Tuesday, we made the three hour round trip to the Phoenix Airport to drop off Cindy for her fight home then we began making preparations to leave on Thursday so not much else planned for these final two days at Camp Verde.  

This seems like a good time to comment on two things beginning with the campground.  The Distant Drums RV Resort is owned and operated by the Yavapai–Apache Nation and I consider it to actually be a resort with 158 spacious sites – we were in #89. The roads are all paved and the sites contain a concrete RV parking pad and a concrete car parking/patio area.  The in-between areas are covered in small red rock which are raked each time someone moves out.  The utilities and cable TV all worked well and the WiFi was better than most.  Amenities included an 86F pool, a 104F hot tub, basic store, workout room, dog park, showers, laundry, and free shuttle to the casino.  

The check-in process was efficient and very friendly and they did a first for me.  I had booked for two weeks but when I checked in they advised they could not give refunds so they only charged me for the first week in case we changed our minds and wanted to leave after it, then I just extended and paid for the second week.  Most campgrounds do not do that.  The resort is convenient to Sedona, Cottonwood/Jerome and sits along I-17 with no road noise.  This is one of the nicer places we’ve parked and I would stay there again and I passed my views on to the manager.

And now for Arizona – I was very pleasantly surprised.  While we have been to the southwest before, this was our first extended stay and I was all prepared to not like it, being from the green mountains of the east.  First I was surprised at the number of mountains as I was expecting table top flat West Texas like terrain and then I was really surprised by the amount of green vegetation which I assume is more brown in the summer.  

While Tucson was tolerable, I would not enjoy spending anytime in the highly populated Phoenix area – 1100 person Greenback is just right for me.  I can easy see why AZ is such a Snowbird Mecca and if it were not so far, I’d likely come back, but we’ll need to find winter warmth closer to home – I’m sure I would want no part of this area in the summer – maybe Flagstaff would be okay.

Wednesday was pretty much just preparing for the trip home except Bev had to cash in her winning tickets at the casino – we broke even – then we went to Crusty's (in Camp Verde) for pizza.

We really enjoyed our pizza and it had plenty of toppings – also really good next morning for breakfast before we hit the road.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

3/5 – 3/6/19 event date