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Friday, November 13, 2015

White Tank Mountain Regional Park

To break up the drive from Cottonwood to Yuma we spent a few nights at a new-to-us Phoenix area regional park: White Tank Mountain Regional Park. This park sits on the far western edge of Phoenix, well away from the hustle and bustle of the metropolis...It's 6 or 7 miles to the nearest grocery store...perfect!

The biggest draw for us was the 25 miles of shared use trails and 10 miles of mountain biking on a competitive track, all in the beautiful Sonoran desert.. We did a great 9 mile loop hike one day using the Ford Canyon and Willow Canyon trails, walked a 5 mile loop on the lowland/easy trails and biked the competitive track on our last day.

Sunrise our first morning.
Cool and a little cloudy, perfect for a long hike into the nearby hills.

As we hiked up Ford Canyon we began to understand why it's called White Tank Mountain...white granite boulders line the canyon bottoms creating tanks to hold rain water long after a storm.
See little Hans on the left?

Would these be called cactus hips???

There was some fun scrambling as we continued up the canyon 

It had rained in the last week so we saw dozens of full tanks in the canyon.

The competitive track has some pretty easy trails, though we did not do the Technical Loop.
 
White Tank Mountain Regional Park has 40 water/electric sites. Roads are paved and sites are gravel. Each site has a picnic table and fire pit. Some sites are somewhat slanted and privacy is varied. We always use Google Maps along with the campground map to choose our site and site #31 was excellent. Good privacy with only one neighbor a good distance away on our docking station side.

There is one restroom/shower building for the 40 campsites, and only one shower for men and one for women in that building, fortunately the campground was not even a quarter full. We had okay Verizon signal, it was kind of slow midday. The dump station had two stations and looked pretty new. In fact the water and electric utilities at each site looked pretty new.

This is a nice place to stay in the Phoenix area, comparable to many of the other Regional Parks. We'd stay here again if the West side of Phoenix made sense in our travels.

Lovely site 31.
About 10 feet beyond the rock border is a small wash, great for watching small wildlife.

The huntress in her element.

Gilded Flicker.

Such a lovely site as the evening shadows slowly overtake us.

Cactus Wren.



20 comments:

  1. Looks great. Looks like we will have to drive over there and check out the mountain biking soon.

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  2. It rained a lot when we were there last year so we hiked up the canyon but didn't get to bike. Looks like the competitive track trails were pretty good.
    Maricopa County has really done an excellent job with their regional park system.

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  3. Pretty! What a pretty RV park. I love pictures of Rosie, stalking.

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  4. Another great spot to call home for a few days. The picture of your RV in the evening shadows is so pretty. I love watching the cactus wrens..one of my favorite birds. I am sure Rosie was in her element!

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  5. Nice bird photos! Looks like you found another winner of a camping spot.

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  6. Looks like more good hiking! We may have to check it out in the spring when we go through during spring training on our way to Las Vegas.

    We love Lake Pleasant Regional Park and stayed there twice in spring 2014.

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  7. BTW...if you're still there, did you know White Tank is having a Black Rock Archaeology Walk on Saturday, Nov. 14?

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    Replies
    1. Susan, we missed it, as we moved to Yuma.

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    2. Susan, we missed it, as we moved to Yuma.

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  8. Beautiful sunrise picture. LOL at "cactus hips". Perfect timing to catch those tanks with water in them. Well done. Thanks for the information on this park. Looks like a perfect spot near but not too near to the big city. Fabulous cactus wren photo. He could jump off the screen.

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  9. That does look nice. We wondered about that park last year. I use to go there in the evenings when I lived in Peoria. Years ago.

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  10. Oh I wish we didn't have to be closer to town for meeting up with several friends next month - I love this park!! Great pic of the cacti in the rock wall. I'm sure looking forward to getting back to some time in the desert after seeing all these beautiful photos :-)))))

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    1. You really can't go wrong with any of the Maricopa County Regional Parks! Perhaps one of them would work for your visit!

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  11. Great park and awesome hike!! Parking among the saguaro is heaven for me:) Love that wonderful site. Lucky you three:) Rosie looks quite content with her own wilderness playground.

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  12. Wow, another beautiful Maricopa County Regional Park! Love parks with both hiking and biking trails. I think we need to start checking out sites via Google Maps -- it certainly seems to serve you well in choosing the perfect campsite. :-) "Huntress Rosie" is so cute -- makes me miss our kitty, who used to do exactly the same thing.

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  13. Oh so that is why it is called white tanks!
    Too bad this park was fully booked when we realized we have to move down from Prescott. We would have love this spot.
    The huntress is really in heaven. Hope she caught something that moved :)

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