Arnett Road Dispersed Camping

You may want to park your rig in town and come look if it has been raining recently. The road does not get much maintenance. There's a sharp dip in the middle, so we camped on one side of it once and then came in from 177 the other time we stayed. We liked our spot nearer 177 better-it has almost no traffic noise and great T-Mobile. You're not supposed to camp along the paved road south of the high school but anything past the OHV staging area seems OK for camping. We camped near Rd #4, which is closer to Arnett Canyon trail and there was good OTA television there but not much cell.

People seem to target shoot at the OHV parking area, which is a bit disconcerting. There was lots of trash. We took three truck loads of trash to the transfer station, which is open on Friday and Tuesday 8-2. Guillermo let us dump without getting a permit. He even gave us trash bags. We took four mattresses.

We had no trouble with security, being gone most days rock climbing in Queen Creek or hiking at Picket Post. We heard coyotes most nights and had hummingbirds at our feeders.

T-Mobile was either 5G or fast LTE.

We are on spring break & suddenly it's snowing up north so my 15year old & I were looking for a spot somewhere not as snowy. Someone on a group mentioned Oak Flat (which is up the road), but Arnett looked to be near water. Negatory. It's not. So it's not far from Superior down 177. Once you exit the highway you're on dirt roads. If you don't have clearance, I'd skip this spot. The farther you go back in the less you will see people. The "roads" do get narrow. I got my 2019 4Runner back there pretty well, but there were a few turns I didn't make on purpose. Found a spot finally (bring a saw for jagger branches) along the creek (it's dry). Built a fire ring from creek rocks & pitched our tent after kicking a few dry cow patties out of the flat area. Sawed down a few small trees to put up my pop up & grabbed a drink. We hiked the hilside across the creek. We just did about a mile loop up & back down. Looks like there were some cottonwood croppings farther up stream that I wish I'd seen. Night fell. There was a ton of fallen firewood that we used. We saw a few fire pits around - all hand made. Once night feel a few planes were overhead from the nearby Superior Airport, and we heard some vehicles nearby. I didn't see anyone at all in the evening. Overnight coyotes were pretty loud howling in the distance, and it was a bit windy. This area is really dirty too. Obviously people have used it as a dumping ground. Not everywhere but enough to remind you of it. There are no shade trees. Shrub trees, high grasses, rocks. Mountains around were gorgeous. What else? I don't think I would be back. Wasn't my cup of tea. Pics attached.

We can't truly recommend this forest service camping area for a variety of reasons:
1. Sites are not very accessible for tow vehicle/trailer rigs. We pull a 21-foot Winnebago with an F150 4X4 and even with high clearance on both the truck and trailer, navigating the ruts and "entrances" to sites was tricky. There is really just one, good flat site that happens to accommodate multiple rigs, but the more private sites are hard to drive in and out of with a trailer.

2. We didn't feel particularly comfortable all alone on Arnett Road. There's a shooting range nearby as others have noted, but the noise from guns firing died down at dusk. The uneasy feeling we had was primarily due to being the only RVers out on this stretch of road - and the many vehicles that traveled up and down the road until well after 10 p.m.

3. The cell service was spotty. We us AT&T and have a Nighthawk hotspot device. While our devices consistently showed three bars, it was slow service (not throttled as we had many GB of use available).

So while we can't recommend overnighting on Arnett Road - if you're in the mood to hang out and watch the sun set -- and if you have some neighboring RVers to make you feel a little less isolated -- then check out this free camping area.

We were a little skeptical about this spot from previous reviewers but decided to try anyway because we wanted to ride our OHV.
Coming from Phoenix we missed the turn because there is no Mary St. It’s been changed to Panther Dr. We went through Superior to the Hwy 177 entrance. It was much smoother than Panther Dr we found out later. We found a nice spot about 3/4 mile in. There was a little liter and some broken glass but we cleaned it up. We did see a few spots that were really bad with garbage. We arrived on Friday morning and there were no other campers, when we got up Saturday there were more campers. The trails for riding were great. Lots to see. We left our trailer and ATV all day Sunday to visit friends and everything was fine when we got back.
We did hear some shooting but it was during the day. Some ATV noise.
All in all we had a nice stay.

We have stayed here 2 other times with no major problems. There was lots of broken glass and gunshots during the day. This time, everything was great. We had a perfect spot with a great view. There were gunshots throughout the day and even early morning and late night. A couple of times we had vehicles slow down and drive by slowly but thought nothing of it. Once someone looked like they were going to drive into our site, but backed up and left. We had just woke up on the last morning we were there, and the same car that started to come into our site the day before drove into our site. We went out to see what they wanted. One guy and one girl got out of the car. The guy who had tattoos on his face asked if we mind if they put gas in their car. We told them no problem not wanting to start any problems. Once we were back inside our camper, they threw the gas can at us, went to turn their car around. We couldn't see them from inside the camper for about a minute. We heard them steal our bbq grill and peeled out of the area. Needless to say, we quickly packed up and left not wanting to wait to see if they would come back. With this camping area within 3 miles of the town of Superior, I'm sure these were locals coming to cause trouble. Too bad, we used to love coming here.

We had a terrible experience here. While there is one nice site, the rest are pretty bad so it's a gamble whether you get in. Lots of litter and broken glass in the area, and there was shooting LATE into the night right outside the good campsite almost every night. It also seemed to be a popular party spot for kids on the weekend, there were multiple nights that we went to bed and woke to the sound of loud music and partying far down the road.

I didn't find a source for water in the area so we had to fill 6gal jugs with the RO water dispenser at the gas station.

The nice site turns into a swamp with a little rain, as does the road in. The rut near the entrance required some road building to get the trailer through on the way out.