Camping on the Edge of a Volcano: Two Weeks at Arizona's Cinders OHV Area
There are places that impress you with dramatic scenery, and then there are places that make you feel like you've stepped onto another planet.
The Cinders OHV Area outside Flagstaff was one of those places for us.
We spent two weeks here at the end of March and beginning of April, just before heading to our Arizona ranch for the season. While we'd seen photos beforehand, nothing quite prepared us for what it felt like to arrive and find ourselves surrounded by volcanic cinder cones, black lava rock, and a landscape shaped by an eruption that changed this region forever.
It felt otherworldly from the moment we pulled in.
This wasn't the Arizona most people imagine. There were no towering saguaros, no red rock cliffs, and no sprawling desert valleys. Instead, we found ourselves camped among the remnants of a volcanic event that occurred nearly a thousand years ago, in a landscape that looked more like the surface of another world than northern Arizona.
Our Campsite Among the Cinder Cones
We chose a spot with a great view of Sunset Crater, one of the youngest volcanoes in the continental United States.
The camping area itself was surprisingly accessible. Roads were in good condition, and while the area is popular with off-highway vehicle enthusiasts, we found it to be much quieter than expected.
