May 2025 – Sunset Crater National Monument is a little jewel near Flagstaff, Arizona, that showcases the remains of a massive volcanic eruption that happened around 1085 AD.
Next door to Sunset Crater is one of our all-time favorite campgrounds, Bonito Campground. This was our “go to” campground when we lived in Phoenix and escaped out of the city every weekend with a popup tent trailer. Bonito has paved loops and is set in a forest of beautiful towering ponderosa pines growing in ancient volcanic cinders.
Best of all, something really exotic happened at the campground while we were there!
Always expect the unexpected!
Bonito Campground is next to a wonderful scenic drive that takes you to several overlooks and hikes through the lava flows in Sunset Crater National Monument. Although the volcano erupted 1,000 years ago, in many ways it looks like it blew its top last year.
This scenic Loop Road also takes you to some well preserved ancient Indian ruins at Wupatki National Monument.
The Loop Road through Sunset Crater National Monument offers some fantastic views.
After repairing all the problems that had happened on our first three “shakedown cruises” with our new 2024 Alpha Wolf 17CB travel trailer and also installing a solar power system, we decided to take a fourth shakedown cruise to Bonito Campground which offers only dry camping campsites.
It was a wonderful 8 day getaway and the solar power system performed beautifully (I’ll write more about that in another post). However, the plumbing system sprang three leaks under the bathroom sink on the very first day. That kept Mark busy doing repair work for most of that day. Sigh.
On the bright side, it’s a very cool area. We explored the woods and meadow where we had views of the San Francisco peaks. And we saw a beautiful sunset over the volcano one evening.
In late May the San Francisco Peaks still had snow but Buddy and I were warm in the sunny meadow. The tallest peak is over 12,000′ in elevation!
Looks like it blew its top just a while ago!
Even though we’ve visited this campground many times, we discovered a fantastic area of cinder lakes and lava rocks right off the far back end of the campground that we’d never noticed before.
When the volcano erupted, molten lava was spewed everywhere. When it cooled, a vast field of super sharp and craggy black lava boulders was left behind. In between these jagged rocks and on the edges of the lava flow, black sand cinder “lakes” were formed. The land looks like a moonscape!
A flat area of cinder sand resembles a lake in many ways.
Outcroppings of lava rocks poke through the cinder lake sand.
It was really fun to prowl around in this area.
In some places the molten lava formed into huge boulders. They were piled haphazardly and were surprisingly loose and unstable. When they wiggled and rocked as we climbed over them, they clanged with a metallic kind of sound! We had to be super careful because many of the lava rocks were unstable.
The rocks are super sharp too, so we had to keep our hands off of them. So much for stabilizing ourselves as we moved from wiggly rock to the next!
In between the lava rock piles there were black sand trails that seemed to have been naturally created as the wind blew and sand shifted. Buddy loved exploring all of this too and wisely stuck to the sandy paths.
With carefully placed footsteps you could get through the area on natural black sand trails.
Some areas were quite forbidding and required slow and thoughtful movements!
Buddy was on the lookout for Mark and after searching around he finally found him. The sun was high in the sky and the black cinder sand was getting hot underfoot. So they sat down under a tree and had a nice chat!
Buddy scans the area for Mark.
Buddy listens intently as Mark explains how volcanoes erupt and create lava flows.
Or maybe they were just discussing what to have for lunch!
Back at our enormous campsite in the campground, Buddy insisted on a game of “Chase the Frisbee” and Mark threw it all over the place.
Catch that frisbee!
He also started digging to China in the cinder sand. He looked up at us for a moment and we laughed. He was a little Cinder Fella!
Our little Cinder Fella!
In the campsite next to us a big family with 7 kids showed up. They strung up three hammocks, one above the other, and had a ball climbing in and out of each one. It looked like so much fun!
We thought some of the kids might bed down in the hammocks for the night since the family had set up just one medium sized tent. But they all ended up squeezing into the tent!
“Hey, whatcha doin’ down there?”
Two of our favorite things we look forward to seeing at Bonito Campground are the Steller’s jays that flit about all over the place and the Evening Primrose flowers that bloom all night and close up when the sun rises. Sure enough, they were there and didn’t disappoint.
A Steller’s jay keeps an eye on me.
The evening primroses are completely closed by midmorning!
One of the highlights of Sunset Crater National Monument is the Lava Flow Trail. This is a paved trail that goes through part of the lava flow.
It is the only area in Sunset Crater National Monument where dogs are allowed. So Buddy was very pleased to be invited. The trail is only about 1/2 mile, but we saw quite a few dogs out walking with their owners.
“Are you ready to go for a hike?”
“Yes!”.
The Lava Flow Trail is a sidewalk that winds through the landscape. Both dogs and people love it!
The Lava Flow Trail has some gorgeous views of the cinders. Several hillsides are covered with a layer of cinders and sparse vegetation. Some of the cinders are black and some are red, and in one spot there’s a little bit of each. This made for a very cool image.
Red and black cinders on the Lava Flow Trail.
A huge forest fire in 2022, the Tunnel Fire, swept through the area and there are a lot of burnt logs and stumps as well as the remains of beautiful ponderosa pines. One tree skeleton in particular caught my eye because it looked like a person raising his hands before him in welcome or perhaps in reverence.
This ghost of a tree looked eerily like a person with raised arms.
One afternoon when we were lounging in our campsite we heard a cowbell. That was odd!
The cowbell got louder and louder. We looked up and were shocked to see two people riding camels!! What on earth?!
The guy in the back was dressed in a Civil War officer’s uniform! We instantly grabbed our cameras and began running after them as they cruised around the campground loop.
Two people came riding through the campground on camels, one dressed as a Civil War officer!
It turned out that they were doing a campground presentation for everyone and the cow bell was meant to get our attention so we’d follow them to the amphitheater area.
The original amphitheater appears to have been destroyed in the huge 2022 wildfire and/or flooding aftermath. Fortunately, the rangers still do their talks, but rather than the audience sitting on benches in the amphitheater, everyone brings their own camp chairs to a small hillside to listen. It was wonderfully spontaneous as everyone in the campground gathered together for this talk.
We’ve seen several really good talks at Bonito Campground, and this one about the 1850s US Military Camel Corps was no exception.
We were given the most wonderful ranger talk about the US Military Camel Corps of the 1850s and 60s!
The man in the uniform was impersonating the military officer who, back in 1855, was appointed by the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, to sail to the Mediterranean and buy a bunch of camels to be used by the US Military as beasts of burden for operations in the Southwest!
The idea at the time was that camels were perfectly suited to the dry and hot conditions of the Southwest, and the plan was to form a US Military Camel Corps.
As our lecturer pointed out, the officer had probably never seen a camel before! However, he managed to procure 33 camels from various Middle Eastern countries and brought them back (there was a bonus calf born during the voyage to America too!).
We learned that there are two types of camels, the double-humped camel from Asia and the single-humped dromedary from Africa, and they had brought one of each type for the talk. Because of their different humps they had different saddles on their backs!
The single-humped African dromedary is on the left and the double-humped Asian camel is on the right.
They made funny faces at us as we listened to the lecture by the Civil War military officer (actually a camel expert and handler in disguise!).
The dromedary made an old grandma face at us.
Not to be outdone, the Asian camel did a good teenager sneer!
The 1850s US Military Camel Corps was gradually expanded to over 1,000 animals and many camel handlers from Arab nations came with them. However, even though multiple long distance “test” journeys proved that camels were far superior pack animals in the desert Southwest than mules and horses could ever dream of being, in the end the experiment was discontinued and sadly recorded in history as a failure.
In part, this was because Jefferson Davis, who backed the US Military Camel Corps wholeheartedly, defected to become President of the Confederate States of America in 1861. In addition, the outbreak of the Civil War diverted the entire US Military budget to funding the war effort.
It was also clear from experiments that camels would perform terribly in traditional combat situations, making them useless for the Civil War. Lastly, they were notorious for being ill-tempered animals. So, in the end, they could only be used for exploratory expeditions under the watchful eye of patient handlers. Ultimately, the camels were rounded up and sold off and some were released into the wild.
As many RVers know, one of the Syrian handlers who cared for the camels ended up staying in the United States and lived out his life in Quartzsite, Arizona. His name in Arabic sounded like the words “Hi Jolly” which became his nickname.
There is now a plaque and small pyramid in Quartzsite that commemorates this handler and this unusual piece of American history.
This monument in Quartzsite Arizona honors Syrian camel handler “Hi Jolly.”
He came to America in 1856 to be part of the US Military Camel Corps and died in Quartzsite in 1902.
During the talk we learned about how camels store water in their fat-filled humps. That’s why they don’t need to drink water very often and actually had no thirst whatsoever during the long experimental journeys they made across the desert in the mid-1800s.
We also had a chance to see the dromedary’s teeth! Yikes!
We learned about camels and about their experimental use in the Southwestern American deserts
We also got a quick glimpse of the camel’s teeth.
Everyone loved this unusual lecture, and when our lecturer took questions from the audience the eager hands of both kids and adults shot up!
Lots of hands went up during the Q&A afterwards.
Last and best of all, the kids were allowed to come up and meet the camels face to face and pet them too.
The camels knelt down so the kids could pet them.
Dogs had been openly invited to attend the lecture as long as they were on a leash, but not everyone got the memo. On our way back to our campsite we passed a van whose owners had left their beloved dog behind while they took off and learned about the US Military Camel Corps.
The dog patiently waited for them behind the wheel of the van and watched the whole event through the windshield. I couldn’t resist taking a photo!
The owners were walking right behind us, and they said that’s where their pup likes to be whenever they’re go somewhere — right in the driver’s seat!
On our way back to the trailer we saw a dog who’d watched the whole thing from the driver’s seat of his van!
If you have a chance, go camping at Bonito Campground and spend some time in the lava flows at Sunset Crater!
Sunset Crater National Monument is a fun destination.
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More info:
- Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument – NPS website
- Bonito Campground – USFS website
- US Military Camel Corps – military.com website
Other blog posts from the Pine Forests of Arizona:
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- Grand Canyon – A Winter Wonderland with Snow!
- Grand Canyon History: A Navajo & a Mule Link Us to the Past
- Grand Canyon South Rim RV Tips + Lesser Known Overlooks!
- Grand Canyon South Rim RV Trip – Views, Views, VIEWS!!
- Grand Canyon’s North Rim – Breathtaking Bright Angel Point!
- Grand Canyon’s North Rim – Its Better Half?
- Grand Canyon’s North Rim – Magnificent & Intimate by Day or Night!
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- Lynx Lake, Arizona – Great RV Camping Near Prescott!
- Mogollon Rim, AZ – Cool Pines & Peaceful Willow Springs Lake
- Parowan UT, Las Vegas NV, Williams AZ & Sycamore Canyon AZ – Wow!
- Petrified Forest NP and Mogollon Rim – Cool pines & hot rocks in AZ!
- Point Sublime – A Wild Ride to a Stunning Overlook in Grand Canyon!
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Emiily
Just a note to tell you that I love your stories from “Roads Less Traveled’. I have subscribed for years and followed your adventures vicariously. I write a similar travel log called “The Adventures of Old Scruff and the Princess”. It comes out as an e-mail not on line like your series. Your style of writing and the different stories have given me additional ideas about things to describe from our journeys. Our travels have transitioned from the fifth-wheel to a small Class C, to a ship (cruising). I can add you to our list if you wish.
Thanks again for the stories.
Skip Pratt
Florida Escapee CoOp – Wauchula
skip.pratt49@gmail.com
PS Are you interested in joining Elks, I can make that happen remotely.
Thank you so much for following our adventures all these years, Skip! Sharing our stories has enhanced our travels immensely, and knowing that we’ve inspired you both in your travels and writing makes it even more special. I’m always looking for unique tales to tell, and when things like a pair of camels show up and I say we grabbed our cameras and ran, you can be sure that much of our excitement is that we’ll have a fun story to tell! It’s wonderful to look back on special moments we remember by ourselves, but it’s even better when we know we’ve put a lot of smiles on our readers’ faces!
From fifth wheel to Class C to ship…fabulous!! Once that travel bug gets inside you, isn’t it true that it just keeps bugging you to get out and see new things via any vehicle you can dash away in. We’d love to be added to your email list. I’ll send you an email to put that together. We’ve pondered the Elks over the years but haven’t gotten the urge to join just yet. Thank you very much for the offer!
Great article. We never got to this area while we lived in Flagstaff many years ago. I remember the volcanoes and the cinders though! Beautiful pics! I remember those peaks too.
You’d love it all, Pete! Snowcapped peaks yet 75 degrees in the campground and this massive exotic lava flow. You’ve gotta come back to Flag and check it out…all these years later!
That would be great to see. When I was at NAU, three of us climbed Mt Humprey. I believe it was August. We used a compass and charted our own route to the top…that was in 1977 I believe, possibly 78! It was a bit windy up there too.
Wow!! What a change 50 years makes!!! There’s a popular hiking trail to the top now, no compass needed! There’s also a ski lift that goes up to 11,500′ with a ski lodge up there. You have to hike the last 500′ to the summit, though. Kudos to you for scaling the mountainside with a compass!!
Excellent excellent pictures!! What a great place. Loved the camels!
Wish you’d been there to see them, Annie. It was a great surprise and a lot of fun!
Emily,
Of all the Civil War era history books I’ve read, not one mentioned the US Military Camel Corps. A significant oversight on their part. 😉
Bob
Gosh, that’s a huge oversight!! I’m really surprised. It must have been quite an operation. After seeing the handlers working with just two camels at the campground, I can only imagine what was involved in building accommodations for them on the ships of that era, sailing back and forth across oceans to get them, figuring out the right contacts in the Arab world for obtaining them, and ultimately importing 1,000 camels over the course of a few years. Not to mention getting them from the shipping ports out to the western states! Egads!!