Description
Friday, 03 May, Meet at the Alica Pkwy Target at 0530 and leave at 0600
It will take about 7.5 hours without traffic to get here >> 34°54'29.9"N 111°38'38.4"W
Here is the suggested itinerary from our host Jake who lives out there:
I would suggest we camp at the dispersed area on top of Schnebly Hill Road on Friday night. There's a big group area up there right off i-17. Then, we could pack up and drive down Schnebly Hill Road, stopping at Merry Go Round Rock. That's essentially a fire road. It's pretty bumpy, but you can get a stock Jeep or stock light 4x4 truck up it without issue, and it's even easier going down, of course. The camping area on top of the hill is also large and right off the freeway, so it would be easy to find if anyone needed to pull in late Friday night. Also plenty of huge group sites with cell service.
From there, I'm not sure; if we broke camp by 9, we'd be at the bottom and back to pavement by noon-1pm. Right up the road from where we hit pavement is Broken arrow but that's technical with moderate crawling. It's the trail I did in this video. It would take a half day, and then we could drive back up Schnebly Hill rd or head up 89A through Oak Creek Canyon.
The rest of the trails are out to the northwest side of town, which takes 30 minutes on pavement to get to, and then there's no good camping out there at the end of the day. If you'll recall me bitching about camping in Sedona Valley in my platform video, All the west side trails are in that area.
If we skipped Broken Arrow, We could head out to the Edge of the World (also known as East Pocket Knob) for our second night. The drive from the bottom of Schnebly hill rd. to the turn onto FR535 to head to Edge of the World is like 40 miles of pavement so we'd have to air up, but that drive up Oak Creek Canyon on 89-A is beautiful. At the top of the Canyon is an overlook that's probably worth a stop, and a place or two to get expresso/ice cream along the way.
From the top there's 25ish miles of dirt from 535 to East Pocket Knob and there are a lot of big open spots and plenty of side roads to find a good group sites if we can't find one at east pocket. Lots of ferns and pines out there if we get rain in the spring and nice easy forrest road driving. We could be at camp in an hour or take our time exploring.
This itinary is just a suggestion and can be changed when we get there.
UPDATE:
Just received an email from Jake, our "guy" in Arizona that per his email, "My only concern with it that it’s a lot of pavement after Schnebly Hill road and then heading out to east pocket, we’ll likely have to look around a bit for a spot big enough for 8 rigs. I highly doubt we get a spot with a view but there should be something out there and we can always head to the edge for a look either before setting camp or in the morning as the crowds clear out."
That being said, we may not be able to camp where he was initially thinking, but not an issue.
I encourage anyone interested to review his YouTube videos and maps, especially this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFLfIcvJE30
Location
Rendezvous @ 23861 Bridger Rd, Lake Forest. CA
Google Maps from Target to Schnebly Hill Road, Arizona.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/24500+Alicia+Pkwy,+Mission+Viejo,+CA+92691/34.9083056,-111.644/@34.9090893,-111.6453625,582m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m5!1m1!1s0x80dce92048703f77:0xa4eb9f3c9e5505e!2m2!1d-117.6880337!2d33.6063136!1m0!3e0?entry=ttu