Emily & Silent Partner

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Evening, Peeps.

It’s that time of the year again. You know the time. The trailer’s been in hibernation – the days are getting a little longer and that tiny light behind your eye begins to blink drawing you northward. Along with all the other RVers we felt the clarion call as well, so today I bring you a live blog from Prescott, AZ.

Booking

For our stay in the high country we are blogging to you from White Spar Campground just south of Prescott, AZ (locals pronounce it “press”-“kit”). This is a fairly large campground and availability can be searched and booked on the federal portal.

Sites are spacious and deeply forested as the campground lies just inside the Prescott National Forest boundary on U.S Route 89. Traffic is moderate to high and all pads are located on high-quality tarmac. Water is available at strategic locations as are vault toilets and dumpsters. There is no sewer or power, cellular service was middling (even with the booster) and noise highly variable (though no surprise, things calm down during the week).

Amenities & Activities

City of Prescott

The city of Prescott is a rather astonishing 40,000 souls but much of that habitation is in the northern reaches. We prefer to wander around the southern courthouse plaza area where delicious ice cream, pizza and shopping is found aplenty. Conveniently laundry can be done at The Cleaning Machine just a couple blocks east on Gurley St.

Not as convenient, though free, a dump station is located at Affinity RV Service, Sales & Rentals north of town. Propane can be filled at Prescott True Value and we shop at Safeway located at the corner of 89 and Copper Basin Rd.

Goldwater Lake

Goldwater lake is located south of Prescott. This lake offers picnicking, kayaking, mountain biking, horseback riding and hiking. Via the Goldwater Lakes Trail #396 the lake can be reached on mountain bike in less than an hour.

Mountain Biking

Ah yes, mountain biking – my favorite topic. We’re only here a few days and sadly I was sick two of those days. Still, we managed to squeeze in a couple rides on several of the local trails.

I prefer to begin at White Spar Campground heading south on Goldwater Lakes Trail #396.

This trail is rated blue and I agree with that assessment due to fitness, as some of the climbs here routinely reach 13%. The views close to camp are worth the pain.

Further on the trail snakes its way through scenic creeks and small canyons.

Spring hasn’t quite sprung here but it made for great photography.

Though steep the trail is not technical.

The lower Goldwater Dam peeks through the denuded forest.

Past upper Goldwater Lake I cut into Feldmeier Trail #330.

330 is tame and enjoyable on the downhill.

At the bottom I take a very brief right on Banning Creek Trail #81, cut into Apple Blossom Trail #373 then finally Twist & Shout Trail #372 completing the loop.

What Could Go Wrong

The Airstream behaved pretty well on this trip. As of late one of the decorative finishing strips has been separating so I’m going to have to install a replacement finish. I think the torment of the Arizona desert heat did its worst.

I have also been blowing through a suspicious number of converter controllers in the Airstream. The fine folks at Airstream of Scottsdale agreed to install a 3rd party controller from Best Converter that is gentler on the batteries owing to its four-stage charging strategy.

In particular I settled on the BD1260HW.

 

The service technician also recommended against using 6 volt batteries in the Airstream as well as discouraged running the Airstream’s 1000W inverter while hooked up to shore power. Hopefully these recommendations will stop the long run of converter controller failures.

Recommendation

We’ve been to this campground several times and we highly recommend it primarily due to its access to unbelievable mountain biking, proximity to town and fair price. This campground definitely has “it”!