Live among the saguaros at this Pima county campground

There are two Tucson-area campgrounds that I hear raved about all the time, and funnily, they couldn't be more different. The first is the Tucson Lazydays/KOA Resort, boasting all the amenities you can imagine and more. Want a patio area with a roof deck? You got it! A pool? Two actually, or so I hear. Of course KOA Resorts will cost you a pretty penny, but most campers say it's totally worth it.

Then you have the other side of the coin, the nature-oriented county campground located a stone's throw away from Saguaro National Park's west entrance: Gilbert Ray Campground. Less than half the cost of the KOA, but you're forfeiting the amenities and full hookups. Reviewers can't get enough of these simple but beautiful campsites. Now, it probably goes without saying that we love a good KOA and would even like to visit the Tucson one at some point, but we would be experiencing the Arizona desert and mountains for the first time. We wanted to be totally immersed in nature.

Gilbert Ray Campground has both reservable and first-come, first-served campsites, but I wanted to ensure that we'd have a nice spot to enjoy our surroundings. This is one of the few sites I booked months in advance, during a year where we decided to fly by the seat of our pants a little more. Booking was a chore. Each campground loop is listed separately on the website, and when looking for sites, I wasn't sure which ones we'd fit into. I remember pouring over the website for an hour and even satellite viewing the sites on Google Maps. Eventually, I chose site C22, which I thought was a pull-thru and had measurements bigger than our rig size.

It was all just so odd. I had this campsite pegged as one we might struggle to get into, but when we arrived, it was totally different from what we expected. It was a back-in, not a pull-thru, and while it was fairly wide it was also quite short. The two nearest sites were both pull-thru so it's possible I misread the map, but I could have sworn I was more diligent than that, given how much time I spent choosing a site. Nevertheless, this was what we got. Typically when we book, I say our trailer is 34ft even though it's 28. This gives us a better chance that the site will at least fit our 6ft tongue, and if we're lucky, our patio too. We were certainly not using our patio this time, but that didn't matter because our picnic area was fantastic. We just needed to finagle our trailer in a way where we could put our steps down on one side and park our truck on the other. It was a tight squeeze and we only had inches to spare, but we got in. (I took site photos before Anthony backed the truck in so you can see the patio, but that empty space next to the trailer was just wide enough for the truck).

As we were parking, one of the camp hosts stopped and asked us if we'd potentially need a different site. At that point we were 99% of the way in, so we knew we'd be fine. He did tell us that, while they don't condone people playing musical sites, they do have a couple of vacant sites available in case something happens. This is always something we like to hear at a campground. Whether it's a rig that can't fit, an issue with the hookups, or anything else, campgrounds that offer emergency spots get a big thumbs up in our book. More places need to do this.

Perplexed by our extra tight site, I later went back onto the Pima County website to take another look at the campground reservations. I'm not sure if the webpage had changed in the past few months or if my memory completely failed me, but this site now clearly looks like a back-in on the booking map, and the site dimensions state 30x22ft, which is really close to what I'd estimate it to be in real life. 30ft long gave us 2ft to spare on the trailer and technically not enough room for the tongue, but we parked at a slight angle to fit it. 22ft is the site width. Our trailer is 8.5 and our truck 8, which means we had a spacious 5.5in to spare, at the widest point of the site where we weren't angled. Good thing we can fold our side mirrors in!

Our site had 30amp electric only, and given the way we needed to park, we had to run the electric cord across our site, behind where we parked our truck. No big deal, as that's also where we set up our Starlink. As for our picnic area, we're not exactly sure how it came to be. Perhaps it was once a communal pavilion, but now it seemed designated for our site only. We had a grill, covered patio, and two giant picnic tables that probably could have fit 20 people. Too bad we had no friends around to enjoy it with! The pavilion had electricity too - a light and an outlet. This more than made up for the fact that we couldn't put our RV patio down!

The site wasn't even the best part about this campground, though. We wanted the nature feel and we got it! We had all the beautiful desert vegetation right at our doorstep, but the whole campground was the most welcome introduction to the saguaros and the mountains. Gilbert Ray is right in the middle of Tucson Mountain Park and some of the hiking trails can be accessed right from the campground. The campground also has its own trail. We were only minutes from Gates Pass Road, one of the most scenic drives in the area, and Saguaro National Park West was a little more than a 5-minute drive away. Attractions in this area include the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the International Wildlife Museum, and Old Tucson, a country-western themed amusement park. Downtown is only a 15-20 minute drive, so while we felt totally remote, we could easily head into the city to resupply.

Our daily walks helped us orient ourselves in the campground, and we discovered just how huge it is! I believe I read somewhere that there are over 130 sites. Some are just big enough to fit a tent or small trailer, but many are quite large. We saw a lot of rigs bigger than ours fit with no issues. Loop A seemed to have a lot of larger sites, and the ones on the outer edge of the loop had incredible mountain views. Loop H is the first-come, first-served section, and while we don't know how crowded it gets, we can say that RVs lined up bright and early to get a spot. We did see a truck camper successfully grab a spot at 5:45PM one day, but if you have a larger rig, you probably want to get in line with the early birds. Check-out is 11AM and rigs were already filling the "waiting room" (overflow lot) at 9AM.

The size of the campground could mean a lot of disorganization, but this isn't the case here. There are tons of central spigots for filling your water, but the campground roads are narrow, so filling at them could mean blocking cars for a while. If it's a quick fill, those spigots are most convenient, but the best area to fill is down the road that leads to the dump station. There is a pull-off with multiple spigots. We used this area before we checked out, as well as the dump station. There are two stations which help the line to move along, as there can be traffic jams. Be sure to pay close attention to the arrows, because the dump station on the right side requires you to go clockwise around a cul-de-sac, which is counterintuitive for us Americans. We witnessed poor newbies in their Cruise America rental trailer go the wrong way, realize the error of their ways, and need to wait patiently for a giant 5th wheel to finish dumping. We could feel their overwhelm; it was probably their first dumping experience and not going very well. We've all been there!

Something that we always hear RVers complain about is the lack of recycling areas at campgrounds. For whatever reason, we've stayed at a ton of campgrounds that have recycling, and this campground did too. They also advertised it on the registration packet. At the entrance was a convenient place to divide and recycle different materials. There was also a dumpster at the entrance, as well as dumpsters located at the intersections of the different loops. This was helpful for keeping the campground clean. We were never more than a short walk away from a trash receptacle.

What would a nature-filled Arizona campground be without the famous Arizona sunsets?! You can't beat having a gorgeous, vibrant sunset right outside your window...unless you go to the trails to see it set over the mountains! We also were blessed to see the beginnings of the convergence of Venus and Jupiter, as they slowly made their way closer to each other and danced with the waxing crescent moon. We had been paying special attention to the night sky since our rendezvous at Big Bend, and here they were shining bright right over our trailer.

If this campground sounds like a dream come true, it is, but don't let that dream become a nightmare. We were nervous before going because I had read stories about pack rats being a huge problem here. Being new to the desert, we weren't sure if this was the case everywhere, or if Gilbert Ray was just a pack rat magnet. In the desert, there are things to watch out for that we simply don't have in New England, like scorpions and rattlesnakes and plants that embed themselves into your skin. Pack rats are another. Many reviewers advised to prop the hood and throw some lights in your engine. The pack rats are seeking a place that's warm and dark, so make your engine cool and bright. We took this advice seriously and bought rope lights for under our trailer, plus propped our hood using a wood block and threw some of our battery-operated lights under there. On our first night, we walked around to see what our neighbors were all doing, and the campground was lit up like a discothèque! We don't know if there's evidence to support it, but somehow word got around that flashing colorful lights were the way to go. Our lights weren't colored, but one of them did have a flash setting, so we set that up and joined the club.

Are these extra steps actually necessary? Well, a few days into our stay, one of our neighbors told us that someone had gotten a rat nest in his engine a couple nights prior. It was his first night at the campground and he hadn't gotten the memo. It kind of makes me feel a little guilty for what I said to Anthony on our reconnaissance walk that first night: "We just need to do more than what our neighbor does." Of course I didn't mean that specific neighbor; we don't know who he was. We just meant, if you're a pack of rats looking for warmth, you're choosing the best, most convenient option. So as long as we're lighting up our engine better than the next guy, we should be safe. And we were.

It's surprising to us that there aren't signs posted or notes in the camper registration packets about this issue. Unless you're really good about reading reviews, you could totally camp here and have no clue. I may have been less diligent choosing the specific site than I thought, but I definitely researched enough to be aware of the pack rat problem. I don't want it to be something that steers campers away from here, though, because this campground really is special. If anything, this is a quirk that shows just how immersed in the desert you really are!

Gilbert Ray was the perfect jumping off point for our Tucson adventures. We wanted saguaros and we got saguaros! In our next post we'll share the stories of our excursions among these beautiful cacti.

Campground:

• Gilbert Ray Campground, Tucson, AZ
• Site C22, 30amp electric only
• Large covered picnic pavilion with grill, no firepit (wood fires not allowed)
• Campground recommended? Yes
• Site recommended? Yes for rigs smaller than ours!