After Devils Bridge, we headed towards Mesa, AZ to visit some of Enoch’s relatives. We stayed with them for about 4 days. During this time we relaxed for a bit, cleaned Yogi and ran some errands that we had been putting off. It was great to meet and hang out with his family too. Once we were well rested we started making our way to Box Canyon before heading to Saguaro NP.
We had some great bbq at Caldwell Country BBQ. If you’re ever in Gilbert, AZ we highly suggest getting some good food there.
Arizona requires an OHV permit to go off-roading so we had to acquire that before going into Box Canyon. We put the address to Box Canyon into Google and we’re on our way. Unfortunately, the entrance to Box Canyon that Google took us to was closed, so we had to do some more research and found another way in.
While driving into the canyon area we saw a bunch RVs camping on the side of the road and some ATVs coming out of the canyon area. We were excited! When we got to the start of the off road area, we aired down the tires (learned from last time) and began the trip.
The road had a bunch of Saguaro cacti and had a couple of obstacles. There were also cows on the sides grazing and staring at us as we drove by. I realized during this trip that cows don’t give a f*ck about people as long as you don’t disturb their grazing.
We were headed towards what we thought was going to be a waterfall. Not the waterfall we were thinking. It turned out the “waterfall” was an obstacle of a wall of rocks that we had to go down. We planned the route, stacked some rocks and Enoch started driving while I guided him. We made it to a point where we had to take off the cargo hitch. Enoch successfully went down the waterfall and Yogi incurred zero damages #success. But we had to carry the cargo hitch down the waterfall and attach it back to Yogi #fail (it’s really heavy..). We didn’t get to see a real waterfall. Bummer.
We continued on the road as we still hadn’t hit Box Canyon yet. While driving, we decided yet again we would take a different road to a different destination. This time we drove to and area called Five Points. It passed some rock crawls and abandoned mines. Pretty cool stuff.
The sun was starting to set and and so we finally decided we should go into Box Canyon proper. We started heading down box canyon road and the walls next to use started getting narrower and narrower. We were in! Enoch has a Pixel 3 phone (#teampixel) that takes amazing night shot photos, so we had a couple of photoshoots with Yogi in the canyon.
We drove all the way through the canyon and then realized that google was taking us back to the closed entrance from earlier in the day. We prayed that there would be an alternate exit as we drove parallel to some railroad tracks. We saw a car coming towards us towards to end of the road and that gave us hope that we would be able to exit on the same road instead of going all the way around. Success! We found the exit and realized this road wasn’t even on Google Maps (either the road is brand new or Google Maps needs to update their app).
We drove out into town, aired up the tires at a gas station, ate some Taco Bell (a majority of our food consumption happens here) and decided to drive through the night towards Saguaro National Park and stay out there. We found Agua Blanca Ranch (BLM land) outside of the national park and fun fact: right next to the CIA airport. We stayed there for a couple of nights before heading into the park.
Saguaro National Park is made up of the West Side-Tucson Mountain District and the East Side-Rincon Mountain District. We entered through the West Side and drove the Bajada Scenic Loop to hike Wasson Peak (the highest peak on the West Side of Saguaro NP).
After descending from Wasson Peak, we finished up the Bajada Scenic Loop and drove to Old Tucson Studios, where they used to film American western movies.
We drove back to Signal Hill to look at some petroglyphs and watch the sunset.
We stayed in Reddington Pass that night which we found out is a popular road for off roading. We decided not to do the pass as we wanted to finish up the East Side of Saguaro NP the next day. When we entered the East Side of the park, we noticed there were a lot more people on the West Side as that’s where all the Saguaro cacti are. The East Side is more for mountain biking and backcountry hikes. We were pretty tired after hiking Wasson Peak the day before so we opted to just drive the Cactus Forest Loop and take in the views from there.
We were headed to the state of New Mexico next and during this time, White Sands National Monument became a National Park, so we had to stop by!
MoLeisureXventures 