January 2024 – Roosevelt Lake is a beautiful lake in Central Arizona that was created by damming up the Salt River, and it is one of our favorite places to go winter RV camping in Arizona. When a warm “January thaw” swept through the state, we took advantage of the spring-like weather and spent a few days at Windy Hill Campground.
Mist rises from Arizona’s Roosevelt Lake in view of Four Peaks at dawn.
There are several campgrounds around Roosevelt Lake, but our favorite is Windy Hill Campground. There are quite a few campground loops at Windy Hill, and each is lovely. Some campsites can be reserved, but we always take our chances with first-come-first-serve because there are usually dozens and dozens of empty sites.
This year we had an entire campground loop to ourselves. What luck!
We had an entire campground loop to ourselves at Windy Hill Campground.
Many of the campsites are near the water’s edge. This year the lake level was quite high, so it was just a few steps down a short trail to get to the water from our campsite.
At sunrise the world was very quiet as wispy clouds painted pastel shades of pink and orange across the heavens. Reflections appeared in the water below.
Sunrise at Roosevelt Lake, Arizona.
In the distance, we could see the winter snow on Four Peaks in the early morning glow.
Pink everywhere.
The light was constantly changing and once the mist cleared, the mountains took on a fiery hue for a few moments.
“Morning has broken…”
Roosevelt Lake is especially loved by fishermen, and there are fishing tournaments year round. There weren’t any fishing tournaments going on during our stay this year, but there were plenty of anglers out on the water.
What a place to fish!
Hiking trails hug the water’s edge around several of the peninsulas just below the campsites, and we happily hit the trails each morning and evening. The campground hosts had done a great job of keeping these trails clear.
All the campground loops are paved while the campsites themselves are gravel.
One day while returning to our campsite, the shadow of Buddy’s inner wolf suddenly appeared in the road.
On a late afternoon walk, Buddy was stalked by his inner wolf.
Despite the shadow monsters out there, we felt a wonderful peace in the air and just hung out and relaxed.
Soaking up some winter sunshine in our campsite.
Just chillin’ on the sofa.
Sunsets are just as dramatic as the sunrises at Roosevelt Lake, and they were a bit easier to enjoy since we were already up and out of bed!
Sunset!
Wow!
For such a beautiful RV camping area in such a scenic setting, it has always bewildered us that very few of Arizona’s thousands of winter RV snow birds ever go there. Oddly, even fewer locals have ever heard of it!
The US Forest Service recreation areas around Roosevelt Lake were built decades ago with great anticipation that hordes of campers and boaters would flock to the lake from both Phoenix and Tucson, each about 100 miles away. There were hundreds of campsites built on both sides of the lake in all kinds of pretty settings.
Although the campgrounds at Roosevelt Lake, including Windy Hill Campground, are dry camping only, the loops are paved, the campsites are spacious, each one has a shaded picnic ramada and campfire ring, there are ample water spigots around each loop and there are bathroom buildings with flush toilets and showers.
But the expected crowds never came.
Roosevelt Lake is 2 hours from both Phoenix and Tucson, and it is just too far for a family to go for a Saturday night camping trip. Lots of people come for longer stays like Spring Break and the big three-day weekends, but not at any other time. As for winter RV snowbirds, most want hookups, and who can blame them in January when the onshore lake winds pipe up and temps turn chilly?
But if you choose a campsite that isn’t waterfront property (I know, it’s hard to do that!), then there’s little wind and it’s a lot warmer.
The USFS has allowed the Roosevelt Lake campgrounds to fall into decay, and they are deliberately letting several loops at Windy Hill Campground sites “return to nature” as one camp host put it. The picnic tables and campfire rings have been removed and the campsite pads are disappearing under the weeds.
Yet, at the same time, they installed a major upgrade this past year: a new RV dump station! They rerouted the road on one of the closed campground loops, and although it’s not the best dump station layout we’ve ever seen, it’s there and it’s open and it’s a lot more convenient than going to the other RV dump station at Roosevelt Lake located 10 miles away at Cholla Bay Campground.
In 2024, campsites at Windy Hill Campground cost $25/night ($12.50/night for seniors with the Federal Interagency Pass).
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One big surprise this year was that they now allow winter RV snowbirds to stay at Roosevelt Lake for as long as they wish. In the past, they wanted RVers to leave after the standard 14 days. During our stay we met several RVers who had been there for a few months and were planning to stay for a few months more. For seniors, at $12.50/night or ~$375/month, it’s a great deal for monthly rent in a scenic spot with paved loops and good sized campsites.
Roosevelt Lake isn’t near anything, and that may be part of the reason that most Snowbird RVers don’t flock there. The bustling town of Payson, Arizona, is 50 miles away to the north and the mining town of Globe, Arizona, is 80 miles to the east.
However, right across the street from Windy Hill Campground is a wonderful ancient Indian cliff dwelling ruin, Tonto National Monument. Even though we have visited several times before, we decided to go there once again during our stay this year.
A paved path heads up to the Lower Cliff Dwellings cave at Tonto National Monument.
This is across the street from Windy Hill Campground.
The fun thing about these ruins is that you can go right inside the pueblo and get a feeling for what life might have been like for the ancients living high up on this mountainside.
There are two sets of ruins, the Lower Cliff Dwelling and the Upper Cliff Dwelling. Each set of ruins was found very much intact by the settlers in the 1800s, and there were fabulous artifacts strewn about as if the former inhabitants had just moved out last week.
In the 1940s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built a hiking trail to each ruin, and the Navajo Mobile Unit that had worked on stabilizing the massive ruins at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico were brought in to stabilize these ruins.
The paved half-mile trail to the Lower Cliff Dwelling is very steep and has lots of switchbacks. But between our huffs and puffs as we tackled this vertical hike, we paused to soak in the fantastic views of Roosevelt Lake behind us.
We enjoyed sensational views as we ascended and descended the trail to Tonto National Monument’s Lower Cliff Dwellings.
It’s worth it to hike up to the cliff dwellings just to see the views!
Roosevelt Lake didn’t exist 700 years ago when these cliff dwellings were built, but it sure is pretty today. Back then, the Salt River meandered through the valley below but its flow was temperamental during droughts and floods.
The ancient Indians didn’t have these mesmerizing lake views…
Saguaro cacti leave exotic skeletons behind when they die.
The hike to the Upper Cliff Dwelling is 3 miles long and you can only do it on a ranger guided tour (the tours are free).
When we did that hike a few years back, the ranger explained that current theories about the Salado People who lived on these hillsides and in the valley 700 years ago were that the valley dwellers arrived and built homes before the cliff dwellers did. They farmed the flat lands by the riverbanks and in the river’s flood plains.
Ancient farmers raised crops in the valley before the cliff dwelling builders arrived.
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As this modern theory goes, the cliff dwellers arrived at a later date, and because there was no room to set up housekeeping on the valley floor, they built their homes into the cliffs. It is also thought that the cliff dwellers were tradesmen and made pots and other things for trade with other peoples elsewhere (macaw feathers from Costa Rica have been found in this area, perhaps traded for a pot or two!).
So, you had two groups of people living here, farmers in the valley and artisans on the mountainsides.
Today’s theory is that these cliff dwellings in the mountainside caves were inhabited by artisans while farmers lived on the valley floor.
There is even a theory that the Salado People manufactured clay pots specifically for trade and the pots were warehoused in structures built just to store them.
Dogs are allowed on the Lower Cliff Dwelling trail, but only up to a certain point which is marked by a trash can. That is the holding area where you can either tie up your pooch and take a quick peek at the Cliff Dwelling or leave him with another member of your party and take turns roaming through the ruins.
We took turns, and Buddy patiently — but a bit nervously — waited for each of us to go up to the ruins and have a look around. He wasn’t keen on having his pack separated!
Other dogs arrived and had to wait too, so we all chatted together. The wonderful thing is that we could take our dogs on the trail at all and enjoy the hike together. It is understandable that they don’t want any peeing or pooping mishaps inside the ruins because that would attract wild animals into the ruins when no one is there.
The front of the cave was originally walled in.
Photos from over a century ago show these walls extending much higher.
For me, one of the most interesting tales related to these ruins is that of Angeline Mitchell who rode her horse five miles through the brush, tied him to a tree and then scrambled up the mountainside to “the caves” with five friends, Melinda, Clara, Tom, Frank and Bud, in December, 1880.
She describes the mountainside as being covered with debris from the ruined walls and says she and her friend found traces of 33 rooms, 18 of them in “fair preservation.”
She describes the ruin as seven or eight stories high, or more, and says there was originally no opening in the outer wall and that the people got into the pueblo via the second story.
This cave is not seven or eight stories high, so perhaps Angeline Mitchell was writing about a different cave nearby (there are other ruins in the area that are inaccessible).
She mentions that another person who explored the ruins found the skeleton of an infant and that the fingerprints of the builders were as “perfect as the day ages ago when the hands were pressed into the plastic clay.”
A metate for grinding grain sits on the ground today. Angeline Mitchell wrote in 1880, “The floor is formed partly by a big rock…and in this rock were 1/2 a dozen metates hollowed out of it and varying in size, depth & shape.” Again, I’m not sure she’s writing about the Lower Cliff Dwellsing or about another cave in the vicinity.
In another cliff house, she and her friend found 22 rooms of which 16 were in “fair order, three of them and a hall…as perfect as the day they were finished.” That might be the Lower Cliff Dwellings as there appears to have been a hall at the front of the cave.
While marveling at the “fine state of preservation” of these rooms, her friend Clara suddenly fell through an opening to a lower level and landed in a pile of cholla cactus. Ouch! Removing just one barbed cholla cactus thorn will pull out a hunk of flesh with it. I can’t even imagine falling into a pile of chollas!
Nonetheless, Clara was eventually freed from the chollas and the group reconvened in another room.
It seems many of the rooms were fully intact when the ruins were first explored. Here there’s a hint of a roof.
Angeline later writes of the reactions they all had to this unbelievable adventure:
“It seemed so strange to be chatting and laughing so gaily in a house built unknown centuries ago by people unlike us in appearance but who had known joy and grief, pleasure and pain same as our race of today knows them, and who had laughed, cried, sung, danced, married & died, mourned or rejoiced their lives away in this once populous town, or castle, or whatever one would call it! It made an uncanny feeling come over us as we rested till moon rise and talked of this long dead people and told the little we knew concerning them.”
A few relics lie on the floor today. Whole pots and other treasures were in abundance when the dwellings were first explored.
Even though the ruins and the experience of seeing them today is nothing like what it was for Angeline and her friends in 1880, those sentiments of wonder about the people who “had laughed, cried, sung, danced, married & died, mourned or rejoiced their lives away” are still very much alive today.
We heard exclamations of “This is incredible” “Wow” and “I had no idea…” from everyone who came up into the ruins from the steep path.
We’d had a great adventure too, and as we left, I spotted two saguaro cacti waving goodbye to us.
“Happy Trails to you, until we meet again…”
For some reason, I instantly thought of the song sung by Roy Rogers and his wife Dale Evans at the end of every episode of the Roy Rogers TV Show, “Happy Trails to You!”
I didn’t see the TV show when it aired 60-70 years ago, but I heard this song when we were at an Escapees RV park a few years back and some folks were watching the Roy Rogers Show on TV in the common room.
Its simplicity and sincerity touched me, and as you can see by the YouTube comments, it is beloved by thousands who grew up watching the Roy Rogers show:
Lyrics to the song “Happy Trails to You” (here) — There’s a cool surprise in the last verse!
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More info about Roosevelt Lake, Windy Hill Campground and Tonto National Monument:
- Windy Hill Campground – Official USFS Website
- Reservations for Windy Hill Campground – Not necessary, but here’s the link anyway!
- Tonto National Monument – Official USFS Website
- Writings by Angeline Mitchell who visited “The Caves” in 1880 – Official USFS Website
- Where are Windy Hill Campground and Tonto National Monument? – Google Maps
More from our travels to Roosevelt Lake and Tonto:
- Catalina State Park & Roosevelt Lake: RV Camping in AZ
- Fall Color in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert near Roosevelt Lake
- Roosevelt Lake – Lakeside Camping in AZ
- Roosevelt Lake, AZ – Desert Oasis
- Spring Has Sprung! – Sweet Days at Roosevelt Lake, Arizona
- Tonto National Monument AZ – Lower Cliff Dwellings
- Tonto National Monument AZ – Workamping with the Ancients!
Other blog posts about ancient ruins:
- Aztec Ruins National Monument – Whispers from the Ancients in New Mexico!
- Mesa Verde National Park, CO – Life on the Edge with the Ancients
- Montezuma’s Castle & Schnebly Hill – Sedona Heights!
- Oaxaca’s Monte Alban – Mysterious Ancient Zapotec Ruins
- Palenque – Ancient Mayan Ruins and Terror in the Jungle!
- Ta Prohm Temple – Exotic Ancient Ruins at Angkor Wat Cambodia
- Tonto National Monument AZ – Lower Cliff Dwellings
- Wupatki Nat’l Monument – Ancient Indian Ruins & Great Camping in AZ!
- Yaxchilan and Bonampak – Haunting Ruins & Ancient Art in the Jungle
Other special campgrounds we’ve enjoyed:
- Boondocking at Big Bend National Park – Cheap & Scenic RV Camping
- Catalina State Park & Roosevelt Lake: RV Camping in AZ
- City of Rocks State Park, NM – RV Camping in the Hoodoos!
- Dead Horse Ranch State Park + Tuzigoot and Clarkdale
- Goblin Valley, UT – Where the Ghosts Are
- Lake Pleasant & Canyon Lake – Waterfront Camping in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert
- Lost Dutchman State Park Campground – Arizona Gold in the Superstitions
- Lost Dutchman State Park: GORGEOUS scenery & RV campground!
- Lynx Lake, Arizona – Great RV Camping Near Prescott!
- Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, New Mexico – A Dog’s Eye View!
- Roosevelt Lake – Lakeside Camping in AZ
- RV Camping with the Rock Art Petroglyphs in Gila Bend, AZ
- Sand Hollow State Park, Utah – An Oasis in the Desert!
- Valley of Fire, NV – A Cauldron Cooled
- Wupatki Nat’l Monument – Ancient Indian Ruins & Great Camping in AZ!
- Zion NP, Kodachrome Basin & Snow Canyon, UT – Great Red Rocks!
Our most recent posts:
- Beehive Trail in Arizona – A “Mini Wave” hike by Lake Powell 07/19/24
- Reese Goose Box Review: 20K Gen 3 TESTED + How to Hitch 06/27/24
- Lake Powell – Heart of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area 05/10/24
- Quick Release Pull Pins for Fifth Wheel Landing Jacks – YES! 05/03/24
- Sheep May Safely Graze (in the Mountains with Dogs!) 04/26/24
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My humble opinion only, but I believe that U. S. Forest Service campgrounds are underrated and unappreciated by many people due to their lack of amenities. But most provide wonderful access to our public lands, a peaceful solitude and a little slice of heaven for outdoor enthusiasts. Alan and I are big fans. Last fall, we camped at Sharp Creek, outside of Payson. That particular USFS campground has no dump station, but the gorgeous location more than made up for the little bit of extra planning required to manage our holding tanks. Please give Buddy (and his inner wolf) an ear and belly rub on my behalf!
You are so right about the wonderful USFS campgrounds, Mary, and the BLM ones too. So many are in beautiful settings and the simplicity of no hookups and no dump station are just part of “roughing it.” We’ll have to check out Sharp Creek.
Buddy perked up and rolled over with his paws up for a little more of that belly rub just now. Thank you for the that and for the camping tip, and “Happy Trails” to you and Alan!!
What a wonderful time you had seeing these ruins again. We love Windy Hill and the Tonto National Monument. So breathtaking. It is a huff and puff hike! Sorry to hear about the decline of Windy Hill. We also thought that the inaccessibility of Roosevelt near any major towns keeps the visitors down. Good for us though who love the peace & tranquility. We once saw paratroopers jumping from planes training over the lake.
Paratroopers over the lake — that must have been quite a sight! Twice we watched a plane with pontoons land in the middle of the lake late at night. It was met by a powerboat. After they met the plane flew off and the powerboat went to the far shore. Not sure what that was all about!!
One of your best posts !! Gorgeous photos, charming narratives…quoting another long-ago hiker and closing with Roy and Dale, this easterner’s ideal reps of “the west”. Love, Mom
Thanks, Mom. We love that area and hope it showed. And I’ve become a great fan of the old westerns. Roy and Dale had a great show. There are so many others too. It was such a different time…both when the shows were recorded and the eras they depicted as well…
I finally found some time to read this article. Excellent work, and such beautiful photos. One thing I do remember well from our brief time living in Arizona is the sunrises and sunsets and the beautiful skies.
Arizona has gorgeous skies, Pete, and we just love the play of light and shadow. Whether it’s sunrises or sunsets or storms blowing through, there’s always something exciting going on in the sky. I hope you get back here to enjoy them again!!!