Boondocking in Arizona, Day 7: Owl Creek BLM Campground

 Today I displaced out of the Hot Well Sand Dunes Rec Area, detouring through Safford for errands, and now am dry camping in the Owl Creek Campground managed by the BLM.

Small campground, seven sites in all I think, and it's perhaps 1/3 full...the sites are pretty well spaced apart and there's some privacy provided by large sage brush bushes.

Once I got camp set up, and not finding any fee payment envelopes available, I rode out on Yagi, my TW200 Dualsport for a quick recce of the area.

Here's a view of the "canyon" cut by the Gila River, it's right next to the campground in fact.  I simply walked through campsite #1 (which was empty) to access the view:

The bridge you see spans the Gila River and was built in 1918

Here's a view of the Gila River from the midpoint on the above bridge.  That's not dust on the lens, that was a flurry of leaves being blown from the trees by the mild winds.

I did an extended police call around the campsite and neighboring areas, only managed to fill one small plastic bag with trash, not too bad.  

Sunset itself was obscured by the clouds, but the afterglow was quite nice:

The campground is located within the Gila Box Riparian Conservation Area.

I had to look up the definition for Riparian:

Google: Riparian zones are the areas bordering rivers and other bodies of surface water. They include the floodplain as well as the riparian buffers adjacent to the floodplain. Riparian zones provide many environmental and recreational benefits to streams, groundwater and downstream land areas.

Whatever, this is apparently one of only two officially designated Riparian Conservation Areas.  So there.

The main reason for staying here is its within 30 miles of the Apache National Forest and its two campgrounds.  The campgrounds are run by the US Forest Service and are reported as having only small sites so I didn't camp there.

I'll be checking out both campgrounds, probably tomorrow.  There's some cool rock formations in the area around them as I mentioned before, and I'm hoping for some good scenic shots.

It's best to have a suitable watercraft (nothing motorized I think) to explore the conservation area, but I'll see what trails can be ridden as well.

Maintenance Note.  It appears that I swapped out the wrong O2 Sensor the other day.  Doh!  The check engine light came on as I was driving around Safford, much to my disgust.  A quick check with RichardM resulted in me checking for, and discovering a second O2 sensor (on the driver side, I had replaced the one on the passenger side by mistake). 

I took out that sensor, and put in the one I'd taken out from the passenger side.  Ran the engine for 35 minutes while parked, no more check engine light!  (I'd tried clearing it before in Safford and it would usually reappear within minutes).  Fingers crossed this will remedy this particular issue.