Our friends have been wanting to go camping at Parker Canyon Lake in southern Arizona for quite a long time and we finally made plans for a trip during the first weekend of August. I was really leery about any place in the desert areas of Arizona in August but, checking the weather we found out it would be mid 80’s and nights in the high 60’s.

Once I checked the maps I found out Parker Canyon is near Sonoyta which is about 5000 foot elevation. A coworker told me the areas gets about 21 inches of annual rainfall, so I figured this area would be different than other Arizona destinations. The only place in Arizona I knew of with that much rain is the White Mountains in northeast Arizona so I was looking forward to seeing this area.

The area around Sonoyta is some of the greenest terrain I’ve ever seen in Arizona and it was an awesome weekend except for the last day that was almost 90 degrees. The campground and amenities at the marina were fantastic. We had lots of trails to ride the ATV’s on, all in all a great place!  Even though they says it’s year round recreation area, from now on we will be going in Spring and Fall for the best weather.

On the negative side, the road from Sonoyta to Parker Canyon Lake is some of the roughest pavement I’ve ever driven. The asphalt was horrible even in areas where new pavement was laid, it was like a washboard dirt road but pavement! Even more amazing, the flat screen TV’s I installed in the bedroom and up from survived the trip, I thought the bedroom TV was going to rip out the closet wall!

Parker Canyon Lake is less than 10 miles from the Mexico border, about 10 miles farther north of the lake our phones blurted out “Welcome to Mexico” and we were on the Telcel network all weekend. Once we were at the lake we had no cell service which you either love or hate. Each night at random times between 11:00pm to 3:00am we would receive text messages, what ever messages we tried to send would get delivered and Facebook notifications would be dinging on the phones, pretty strange! None the less it was such an awesome place we will be going back again, I highly recommend despite the road conditions!