We picked Benson, Arizona as our RV winter home base for many reasons – not the least of which is how much we love SKP Saguaro Co-Op RV Park. It’s a great place to leave Zephyr behind and rejoin up for winter adventures.
Benson itself offers all of the basic amenities you might need in a small town – a grocery store, Walmart, hardware store, several restaurants, ice cream, a small hospital, basic medical services and so much more.
And within an hour you can get to Tucson or Sierra Vista for more shopping and provisioning.
We also love the hiking trails right behind the park, which makes it easy to keep active.
But within just about an hour of Benson, there’s lots to explore.
As we wrap up our winter here, we wanted to share with you some of the things local to our SKP Saguaro Co-Op Park that we’ve been exploring these past couple of months.
Video Version:
While this is a video centric post, here’s some of the highlights:
Kartchner Caverns
Back in the 70s, a couple of university students discovered a large cavern network. They spent decades working with the owner of the land and the state to properly preserve it before making it known.
The result is an amazing well preserved but accessible cavern experience at Kartchner Caverns State Park.
We highly recommend this adventure and taking one of the guided tours.
Tombstone
Just about 25 minutes south of the co-op is Tombstone – a ghost town turned tourist destination.
Where you can experience a reenactment of the shoot out at the OK Corral. It’s a fun little town to wander and shop at, and we enjoyed an overnight at the Tombstone Dry Camping lot with easy access.
Bisbee
Take a beautiful mountain town, and shut down the mining industry that supports it .. and then let it be taken over by hippies and artists. And you get Bisbee. Just about an hour south of the park, we’ve fallen in love. Great shopping, dining and roaming quaint streets & stairs.
We also really loved the Queen Mine Tour, where you take an old mine train to experience a bit of what the miners did.
Sonoita
This little area west of Huachuca City has a few wineries, eateries and a meadery.
We enjoyed a couple meetups with friends here, sipping a lovely beverage while catching up in a gorgeous location.
Forever Home Donkey Rescue & Sanctuary
On the northside of Benson, we were invited to join friends for a private tour of this rescue and sanctuary for donkeys.
These guys are so personable and cute, and the propietors really love what they do taking care of these animals. Worth calling up for a tour, and making a donation.
Saguaro National Park
With two parts – one east and one west of Tucson, it’s so lovely to drive and hike through thousands of saguaro cactus.
Absolutely breathtaking.
Patagonia Lake State Park
After a couple months in the desert, we really appreciated a quick van getaway to enjoy some lakefront camping and hiking.
And the town of Patagonia is another eclectic mix with some great dining and art options.
Chiricahua National Monument
Friends visiting our park invited us for a Christmas Day hike with them at this amazing otherworldly location. We did the Echo Canyon Trail, which was a moderately difficult 3.5 miles.
Absolutely stunning. We’ll definitely be going back for more.
There’s still so much to explore in the area, and we look forward to checking more attractions off the list in future return visits to our homebase.
If you have any favorites we should check out, please let us know!
Real Time Update
We just returned from a couple weeks out in Quartzsite and Lake Havasu City where we attended both the Xscapers New Years Eve Meetup and Annual Bash.
With Omicron peaking, it was definitely a risk to go – but we opted to just keep socially distanced and not participate in larger group or indoor activities.
It was a bit of a surreal and subdued experience with far more time ‘at home’ or taking breaks away from the events on our own. Bittersweet to reminder what it was like 2 years ago and what really can’t be again quite yet. But we’re still thankful for the opportunity to reconnect with friends.
The bus is cleaned and back in storage in Benson, and the van is loaded up to start our journey back to Florida. We aim to be back to the boat by end of this month.
Great to hear from you again. Thanks for all the amazing opportunities to explore near the Tucson area. I will definitely check some of them out whenever I get back to the Tucson area. Love the video of Kiki walking on her leash. Love you guys. Be well and be safe.
Did Chris lose weight? He looks great….I love that area of the country. We camped at huge copper mine in Bisbee that I can’t remember the name of. Right in the city. My wife and I are Cowboy Shooters. We can wear our costumes and wear our guns in Tumbstone….Great fun!
We absolutely adore Bisbee! It was my husband’s first gig when we hit the road (smallest bar in the US!), and we felt so welcomed by the locals. Made friends, invited to a First Friday after-party…we had an incredible time and if it weren’t for the heat would have been tempted to consider it as a home base. Only thing we didn’t like in 2016 was how slow the library wifi was. 🙂
We were at Kartchner SP last week and loved it. We visited the Amerind Museum and so many other great places near the park. Really enjoyed the Horse Shoe Cafe, too. We thought about reaching out but decided things are still too … weird. Thanks for all you do.
Nice to see you RVing in the desert once more. We are snowbirds this year and are loving being in the sun and enjoying life outdoors.
Thanks for the nice precis of our local attractions! Mi Casa is my favorite restaurant – Mike and Santa do spectacular things with Mexican food. What a surprise to open your blog to see it right there in front of me! ;->