Cave Creek, Arizona is a town in Maricopa County, part of the north Phoenix Metropolitan area, located in the Sonoran Desert. Less than 5,000 people live here. Just to the west is New River where we stayed before. It was only about an hour drive from Fort McDowell.
Cave Creek, Arizona
Founded in 1870 by soldiers from Fort McDowell. It is a beautiful area because of the mountains and saguaro cactus. Being about 30 mile north of Phoenix, the population density isn’t bad and feels rural, yet there is a Home Depot and Costco nearby. We went to Costco to stock up. Michael got his flu and COVID booster at the same time, amazingly just injection site soreness.
Cave Creek got its name from the cave along the creek that the town was founded on.
Frontier Town is composed of a few tourist shops.
It appears to be a wedding and event venue. It was fun to walk around, but that was about it.
Cave Creek Regional Park
They had 50-amp electric, good water pressure, but no sewer or internet. They had a dump station and a lot of over the air channels. The Verizon signal was good enough to stream.
Sites were well spaced and private. Even though we were a distance from Phoenix, the night sky was still a bit washed out not allowing for good milky way photos. We had great views out our back. Daily there were coyotes and birds like cactus wren and an Anna’s hummingbird.
There were even a few flowers still blooming.
We had a few nice sunsets.
There were a couple of hiking trails in the park. One led to an old clay mine. Originally excavated looking for gold, it only produced clay. The owner bottled the clay and sold it as an elixir to cure everything. It did help with dysentery.
A couple of the days during our stay there were hot air balloons first thing in the morning. We use to see them all the time in San Diego, but over 25 years as all the vacant land turned to huge housing tracks, there were fewer and fewer balloons. Maybe this is where they all went to.
The Jewel of the Creek hike is a must if in the area.
The trail goes along Cave Creek and the cave. There is water here year-round. The canyon is lined with cactus.
Carefree, Arizona
Carefree is just to the east of Cave Creek, the two towns seem to blend into one. There are so many restaurants and bars. We really liked Pizzicata. They had a nice dog friendly outdoor patio with good food and good prices. We went there a couple of times, especially because Jake could join us, it was never crowded or noisy.
Halloween
We visited Sandy’s cousin Pieter and Monica in Mesa, Arizona. It was fun to walk the neighborhood with all the kids in costume trick or treating.
Quite a few of the homes put out impressive decorations. The kids loved the huge block party and Jake really enjoyed it too.
