Elmer's Way Dispersed Camping

This surprisingly good old farm road leads to a hidden collection of campsites. At the first bend one can go straight or to the right. The right side is the preferred route for taller rigs, but short ones should go straight into the more sheltered of the campsites. When we visited there was a broken down truck tagged for removal in the road, a testament to not enter the area when muddy!

Behind the tree line it again opens up and there is a large site for a solar or Starlink rig, continue along the road to reach the more secluded sites within the scrub pine. The end of the road is a loop allowing medium sized rigs to turn, a larger one should turn in the field.

The area had voice only AT&T and 2 bars of Verizon 4F with 19 megabit download and 0.20 megabit upload.

A nice secluded spot stayed for two nights, was very quiet.

Pros and cons...I was able to access the site fairly easily without high clearance even though the road is quit rutted, after dark, on Friday night in June. However I would not not stay other than for emergency overnight if you like peace and quiet, constant OHV traffic including late, a bunch of atvs after 10.30pm even stopped right next to my site talking, luckily moved in as I was getting protection means ready at this point, sound of ATVs well after midnight, its luck I needed to stay up late. Stream of atvs in the morning too Not super safe. Close to busy city (Show Low and Pinetop are not quaint small towns, its typical hellish Arizona sprawl wanting to be Phoenix and tons of trashy people in the area), also clearly little OHV regulations, never seen anything like that in most other parts of Arizona. For peace one needs to get as far away from Show Low as possible. Access is easy, highway is paved until last mile then some washboard until dirt road turn off (thats why I pucked this option for looking for a site in the dark), but this highway is loud plus loud cattle guard so you hear the road a lot and its modetately busy at times. Also tons of biting no see ums for some reason. Very disappointed in Show Low area

This is an addition to my previous review. I had to stay the second night because didnt want to drive around unfamiliar region looking for campsites on Saturday. No see ums had eaten me alive mid June and I had been on medication for days because of the allergy they caused. I had been bitten by no see ums all over the country before but never had an allergy to them, the ones at this site are different. The are tiny and were active on a hot day after 10am in the shade, but not a bother if one just overnights they went away close to sunset. Also, my peace was disturbed the 2nd night there too, this time it was a group of people or family lingering next to my campsite in pitch black dark close to 10pm. I did have lights on, but they were lingering in one spot (using a bathroom?). I put out my brightest light facing it in that direction and they left. Don't think they were looking to camp, they didn't drive further down the road to the end where there was another campsite. Just weird. Seems to be a hangout spot. Not peaceful neither too safe. Emergency overnight ok I think but one got to be prepared for drive bys and stop bys