Travels to Arizona: A Graveyard & Tombstone

With the days flying by, it was time to officially start our Eastbound journey and leave California. Our next big destination was Tombstone, Arizona, about 500 miles away, so we split it into two travel days, covering most of the distance on the first day.

Leaving San Diego via Interstate 8, we crossed more mountains, reaching summits of just over 4,000 feet, and cruising downhill back to sea level, then up again. It was entertaining to see the fuel mileage gauge reading 99 miles to the gallon on those 5% downhill grades, though! Some parts of the interstate are close enough to Mexico we could see the border “wall” and our phones were picking up on Mexico towers.

We stopped for the night in Maricopa, Arizona, just as the sun was setting for the night. The time just changed the weekend before, so we hadn’t yet adjusted our travel schedule for those shorter days. Maricopa is just south of Phoenix, and we stopped at Wild West RV Ranch, a campground that we found listed on our Harvest Hosts app. For $45 a night and full hookups, the air conditioner and a shower after a long travel day and 90 degree temperatures were welcome. It was pretty quiet, not far from the interstate, and we got to see their many emus on the farm!

The next day we circled around Tucson to get a view of “The Boneyard”, Davis Monthan Air Force Base’s aircraft graveyard. You’ve probably seen it if you’ve watched the Transformers movie since it was the location of one of the scenes. They were no longer doing tours, or we would have stopped for longer and camped at the base campground before moving on.

From there we worked our way to Tombstone, Arizona, after a quick stop at Wal-Mart to restock groceries. Our “home” for the next four nights was at Tombstone RV Park and Campground, about a mile from the downtown Tombstone area. Rates for a full hook up pull through spot were pretty reasonable, and we were able to get some work, repairs, and exploring done while there.

Downtown Tombstone, AZ has been preserved as a Wild West town, including, dirt roads, horse carriages, gunslingers, saloons, and many options to immerse yourself in the experience, including old time photos, historic carriage tours, renting a gun and belt to walk around, and ghost tours, as well as all the merch you can imagine!

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If you aren’t familiar with Harvest Hosts, it’s a camping membership that allows you to overnight at local businesses all over the country for a small fee. We’ve stayed at wineries, breweries, restaurants, museums, farms, drive-in theaters and many more, all as part of our membership. If you are interested, you can sign up and earn us credit towards next year’s membership at no cost to you using our Harvest Host Referral Link (Boondockers Welcome is a part of this and if you like golf, chat with me before signing up)! You can also check out other ways to save on our savings page at https://barnesonmove.com/savings/

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