Sunday, November 18, 2012

Campground Review: Usery Mountain Regional Park

We moved just 30 miles SE from McDowell Mountain Regional Park to the lovely Usery Mountain Regional Park. You can read our experiences at McDowell here and here. McDowell is a mountain bikers mecca and Usery is a hikers heaven! Just the kind of places we like best.

Usery is less than 5 miles to the closest grocery store and gas station in Mesa, AZ. At night you can see the lights of Phoenix in the distance and hear the white noise of the city faintly as well. The access road to the park, while pretty busy during the day, is very quiet at night. Being so close to the city, this park can be very busy on the weekends and holidays.

Usery campground has paved roads, gravel sites, water and electric only, with dump station on site. Clean and convenient restrooms and showers. All sites seem to be pretty level and the perimeter sites are the most private. Sites have a table, fire pit and BBQ. We had fast 4G internet service here!

The park includes 30 miles of multi-use trails, an archery range, picnic areas and playgrounds and a nature center with many scheduled programs. We attended a talk about the venomous reptiles in the Sonoran desert.

There is also a shooting range about half a mile away from the park which you can hear during the day. When we arrived on Friday the shooting was sporadic, but on Saturday it was continuous all day long. Luckily it did not continue long after dark.

This was a beautiful park, close to services, with excellent 4G internet signal. We might stay here again, though we really liked the more peaceful feeling at McDowell.


Our site #12, a back in opening to the desert with a big, private sitting area.

Our view from our door. No campers in sight, and the road to the park is a good third
of a mile away and out of sight due to lush desert plants in this park..



4 comments:

  1. We agree, Usery Park is nice, but the shooting got to us as well. Glad you enjoyed your time there.

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    1. Yes, so pretty, but the shooting gives me negative vibes. It didn't help that we stayed for a Friday and Saturday night...the busiest time, Wind Cave trail was packed! Now that we are retired we can generally avoid the crowds, and had so far, but not so this weekend!

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  2. We use Usery :)) every year... a couple of times, to and from Tucson. The shooting is trumped by everything else.
    Box Canyon Mark

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    1. It sure is a beautiful place! If we stay again it probably won't be on a weekend...and we won't hike the most popular trail!

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