Alamo State Park, Arizona

It's been a while since we posted anything. So, rather than post something new, I found this post from about a year ago that never made it to the web. Thank you lack of internet.

January ??, 2011

The past few weeks have been full of driving. Between house hunting in South Carolina, to finishing up work in Tn, to Christmasing in Tx we traveled over 6500 miles in less than a month.

We were searching for a park, trying to guess which one we should check out next, and with minimal access to the internet we had to just guess­­­­­­­­­­­. On the promise that Alamo State park was the “Hidden Jewel” of Arizona we pulled off the highway and onto what looked to be the road to nowhere. Although the roads are in excellent condition and are well maintained, I would be leery of diverting 75 miles off the nearest interstate in a vehicle that has potential to breakdown. We saw only a handful of cars pass by us and I would say that 98% of those cars were people who were leaving the state park. The other 2% probably worked at Del Monte.

Cell phone coverage was about what you would expect in the middle of the desert and would require about a 20 mile trek through burning sand to get a signal. There are few inhabitants out here, which is not surprising when considering the terrain and the weather they have most of the year. I would never come to this park in the summer for fear of overheating the family or the truck while driving through the desert.

So this ‘Jewel’ of a park was a bit of a letdown. We arrived to find a sign that said to lock up your stuff at night because there have been a rash of late night thefts. And if you had seen how far out in the middle of nowhere this park was, you too would be asking yourself….who would come all the way out here to steal stuff from campers?

So what can you find at Alamo State Park? You can find a lake that says it is abundant with fish; we didn’t check it out too closely. Instead of scavenging squirrels or raccoons, you will find coyotes that hang around waiting for scraps and wild burros that apparently just walk around pooping on all of the campsites. There are also these crazy little birds that look like a combination of quail and pigeons. They run all over the place and there are LOTS of them.

The facilities were ok. The sites weren’t completely level, but they weren’t terrible. There was a loop of about 20 sites that had full hook-ups which was about 60% occupied with snow bird season in full swing. Each site was paved and had picnic tables, and some even had small tree/bush things that won’t provide any shade at all. I didn’t go into the bathrooms but Steve described them as ‘cleaner than he expected’. He also suggested we shower in our own trailer.

All in all I would give the park a 5 out of 10, I can’t speak for Steve. It wasn’t the worst park in the world, but I was disappointed, and I don’t know that I would really want to come back any time soon.