Castle Dome Dispersed Camping

We spent the day at the ghost town at the end of the road. It’s a fascinating little place and affordable ($15 adult) if you self guide, the guided tour into the mines is $80 per person so we skipped that.

With such a long, rough, wash boarded road we were happy to pull over and camp off road. The area is flat but extremely pretty. It was peaceful and lovely. We got set up and breathed that deep sigh you do when everything is perfect. Then a bomb or some sort of explosion went off. Distant, but quite a contrast to your nature experience. You couldn’t see anything, and it was not close enough that you felt it, but it certainly changed the experience. Looking up we saw a giant blimp directly overhead. An internet search told us it was a military blimp that used radar to scan the borders for electronic devices bringing drugs into the US. The area is near a military proving ground thus the strange random noises.

We still had a lovely evening but I would camp elsewhere next time.

About 10 miles of gravel road in (hence only 4 stars) with a nice open area to throw up a tent or park. The area is filled with giant saguaro cacti. We didn’t hear any noise despite being so close to the border. The ground is gravel with a few fist sized rocks but flat.

Note on getting here: Google Maps may tell you to go down a road with a sign saying authorized vehicles only. Don’t take that road - go a little further and you’ll see a park entrance. You can follow the GPS from there.

A 4x4, high clearance road meandered off into the distance, ocotillos and saguaros waving their invitation for us to spend an evening watching the sun flirt between their spiney arms in a way we simply couldn’t resist. After dragging the back end of our Ford E350, extended, in a couple of deep washed we found a perfect spot just off the trail and proceeded to allow the hummingbirds and, I believe, cactus wrens help us decompress the afternoon going evening away. Several Jeeps and side by sides interrupted an otherwise perfectly peaceful spot in the desert, rock domes and the sun’s set and rise sandwiching our sleep.

And then there were the bombs. The road in warns that this is some type of military testing zone, and so every twenty minutes or so the boys in green were blowing something up, presumably what you do when you own explosives.