Cave Creek Arizona

We've begun our move north by staying at the Cave Creek County Recreation Area (click) just north of Phoenix and just outside of the community of Cave Creek.   The park is one of Maricopa County's parks on the Sonoran Desert.  The park includes a nature center, campground, private trail ride vendor and many trails.  There are 38 camp sites all having full hook-ups (water, electricity and sewer) as well as a picnic area and fire ring.  This has to be one of the nicer campgrounds we have been at, and for $25 per night, the views were worth it.

And all sites come with a real-life camp cook and picnic table model:

We were told by one of the camp hosts that normally the area would be abloom with spring flowers at this time of year.  However, this has been a very dry year a  blooms were not plentiful.  Here is a lonely cactus flower near our camp site:

We initially planned to stay only one night, but the park is so beautiful, we opted for another night.   The real reason we stayed another day, however,  is that we woke up on Wednesday morning to this:

There were 11 hot air balloons hovering over the camp ground on Wednesday morning.   Donna was ready to hitch a ride.  It was quite a sight. 

This is one of those areas we'd like to come to again and spend more time.  However, we left for higher elevations to get away from the impending heat.  The forecast for Cave Creek is for the upper 90s beginning on Thursday, so we will escape further northeast and to a higher elevation.  Stay tuned.