Driving the Infamous DEVIL'S HIGHWAY (SUV Camping/Vanlife Adventures)

[Applause] good morning everyone I'm at my campsite here in Southern Arizona beautiful spot and it's surrounded by a huge variety of really interesting desert plants here before we start on the day's Adventures let's take a look at some of these around here here we have some Ocotillo and choya and Palo Verde we have of course the iconic saguaro cactus you can see just a ton of them out on the hillside over here but there's one type of cactus that's found only in one little sliver of Arizona and that sliver is in this area and it's called the Organ Pipe Cactus and there's a National Monument here called Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument we're going to be going through a sliver again a sliver of that National Monument here today and I have one of those cacti right here next to camp this is an organ Pipe Cactus it's basically a cluster of small saguaros all bundled up together and it's a pretty decently sized plant [Applause] and then finally before we get out of here here is a look at my campsite itself nice spot it's fairly popular I'm outside of the town of Ajo in Southern Arizona and lots of people camped along the main road here but I found a quiet little side road with no one on it the plan today is to drive a road and I'm near the start the Eastern end of that road here now the road is called El Camino Del Diablo or The Devil's Highway and it's 130 miles of dirt road through the desert here remote country along the U.S Mexican border and this road has been used for centuries first by Native Americans and then by the Spanish and then by miners like 49ers going to California it's been in use for a long time and this road follows part of that so there's a lot of beautiful scenery we can expect today a lot of interesting history should be a lot of fun I do have a few question marks about this drive today uh really there's one big one and that is the weather it's been raining recently and rain in the desert is a little bit unpredictable I don't know if they're going to be flowing streams that we have to cross or I don't know if some of the the Sandy sections oh my camera is slowly slowly drooping here let's try to fix that I don't know if the Sandy sections have turned to quicksand or what so it'll be interesting to see what the conditions are like worst case scenario we'll have to turn back not a big deal uh it's all just part of the adventure right it'll be fun to just see what conditions are like and see what the road with the devil's Road The Devil's Highway has in store for us here today [Music] thank you foreign [Music] 10 or 12 miles into the drive now and I wanted to stop at this point here I've got a kind of a nice view of this this broad plane in front of me here or this Valley between these couple of mountain ranges here this Valley or plain right here so out here in July of 1980 there was a group of of people from El Salvador who were who had illegally crossed the border and were you know Crossing into the United States it was July and as you can imagine July out here middle of the summer very hot so hot in fact that 13 of them died from thirst and other heat related issues out there in this Valley between here and the the road that goes down to to Rocky Point in Mexico and another 32 were rescued by by Park Rangers and uh and border patrol agents so rough country out here and this area still has a lot of illegal traffic and so that doesn't think we're gonna of course be on the lookout for today I'm gonna try to avoid any issues but for now let's get back on the road the first thing that I wanted to stop and show you guys apart from this is another couple miles down the road here [Music] foreign [Music] and our next stop is another spot of historical interest for us this is called Bates well and Bates Ranch and People ranched Cattle out here raised cattle out here starting in the early 1900s although a well was dug out here in the late 1800s we have the Old Ranch House here that was used until the 1970s and then we have a windmill here and let's go take a look inside the house and the sign here says entry is not recommended there's all kinds of dangerous stuff inside but we should be okay for our brief little visit here kitchen obviously what is this mug huh some Polo players on horseback interesting and then this large room at the back would have been I guess the bedroom slash living room area and then out behind the house here we've got some some relics this looks like a well here it's locked and capped I think that's about it for this spot I think there is another historic well and Ranch site further down the road that we're going to stop at but for now let's get back in the car head on down the road okay so this is where things get interesting we are at the boundary of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and there's a little kiosk here that I think we have to register at so let's go take a closer look one thing that makes this drive this journey a little bit tricky is that it goes through several different kinds of land several different jurisdictions so on the map here we have basically all of the road all of this is well actually it continues on over in this direction but this is the Wildlife Refuge portion of the road we started over here by Ajo went through BLM land then we crossed over the corner of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument we're now right here at the boundary between the national monument and the wildlife refuge and so this is what we're going to be doing here going along the U.S Mexico border just within you know half a mile or so of the Border you can see it's called El Camino Del Diablo Road and then at the Western end of the Wildlife Refuge we're going to cross into the berry M Goldwater range West and then continue on from there and so we're gonna need to fill out a permit or at least a registration card I actually already got the permit I got that online a couple days ago and so visitors need to fill this out and keep it in their car keep it displayed on their dashboard while they're in the National Wildlife Refuge and back behind me there I don't know if you can see those buildings but that's a border patrol station of some sort so I've seen one border patrol truck out here already I'm sure we'll see more as we continue on and speaking of continuing on let's continue on also filming this today is going to be a little bit tricky for several reasons first of all I can't fly the Drone anywhere here today no drones allowed second I want to keep my eye on the amount of fuel that I use I need to check I need to keep an eye on my gas tank because again this is a long dirt road I do have five gallons uh five spare gallons of gas on the roof here but again I I'd like to be safe you know be conservative with my my fuel usage as far as filming that means that I'm not going to drive back and forth to like set up the camera outside the car you know back up and drive a stretch uh you know a couple times to get that perfect shot and so I'm going to be filming as I drive but I'm gonna keep that kind of to a minimum because a lot of the scenery is is you know Sami samey out here uh and so we're gonna focus on filming the points of interest along the way rather than the drive itself I'm still going to show you you know some of the drive itself between the points of interest but really the focus today for the sake of gas is going to be on the points of interest once we've stopped does that make sense no this is interesting and this is something that I've seen a couple of times here along the road there are these long flag poles with blue flags on the end and these Mark water caches you can see uh you can kind of see through the bushes there there's a blue water barrel right there and these are for the uh the illegal immigrants who come through here to give them some water to help them not die about 30 miles into the drive now and I wanted to take a break and show you guys a few things around here in this area it's beautiful rugged empty country out here I'm loving it and there's a hill over here that I just drove by this little Hill the road goes right by it I don't know if you can see it but right in the middle there's um it's like a big heavily armored truck up there with a giant antenna or something sticking out of it I was gonna stop there and hike up that hill but I decided against it I don't want to interfere with whatever is going on over there but that Hill is a spot where Smugglers used to uh you know they they'd camp out up there they'd they'd sit up there and and watch the border patrol agents go by they'd keep an eye out on the border patrol and from here if you look to the north these mountains over here these are the granite mountains in May of 2001 14 immigrants died over there when their Smuggler abandoned them so again just a very very harsh unforgiving landscape I figure I'm about a quarter of the way through the drive now and that's good because I am down about a quarter of a tank of gas and I do have a gas can up here like I said this is different from the normal one that I have up there normally I have one of those flat Roto packs gas cans up there you know it it lies flat along there so it doesn't stick up too much this one definitely does stick up a lot I bought this a few days ago when my roto packs gas can and by the way I'll talk about this thing in a future video at some point when my roto packs gas can started to leak that was annoying I just filled it up with gas and then I put it on top of the car and I saw gasoline dripping onto the top of my car not great I thought maybe at first I had just put the gas cap on wrong but then I figured out that no the the O-ring in there the the thing that seals the the cap was kind of warped and messed up and so that's why gas was leaking out I've had Cassie I messaged Cassie my wife and told her to order a couple packs of the replacement O-rings so those will be waiting for me at home when I get there but for now I needed a better intermediate solution and so I bought that that gas can that's on top of there at a gas station pretty annoyed with that actually but you know all is well that ends well I guess all right let's get back on the road once again and see what lies in store for us 10 or so miles on along the Devil's Highway here El Camino Del Diablo [Music] so I've pointed out and and talked about a couple of spots where larger groups of people unfortunately met their end and now I'm at a spot a gravesite of one man this pile of rocks here is called O'Neill's grave and this is the final resting place of A Man Named Dave O'Neal who died here in the early 1900s and as you can see it's right along the road just right by the road here and apparently he died of exposure when his Burrows wandered off his Burroughs who had his water and supplies and everything they wandered off leaving him stranded with nothing and he he died a couple of his friends were were I think were with him or came along shortly thereafter they buried him here and then The Story Goes that a couple of weeks later those two friends of his ran out of tobacco but they remembered that they buried O'Neill here with his tobacco and so they returned to the gravesite dug him up took his tobacco took the Tobacco off of the the dead man and then re-enterred him in the ground and apparently his graveyard has been has been looted a couple other times uh so who knows what other secrets are still buried there but um yeah interesting story here and not too far back there may be a mile back I passed a place called Camp grip and that's basically like a a border patrol Outpost I didn't want to film there but it's just like a collection of a couple of buildings and several border patrol trucks uh parked in front of it there all right having a great time hope you guys are enjoying these little little tidbits of History here there's a lot of history about this road about little incidents that happened along this road and we're exploring just a handful of them today the number one resource that I found for planning this trip was a website it was basically a uh a book that's online uh that details so many things about this place really really great resource I'll put a link to that down below hopefully I can find it again but for now you know what we're doing heading back to the car getting back on the road [Music] foreign the landscape has definitely changed now the ground is darker this is volcanic lava flow that we are standing on here and you can see these these Cinder cones these miniature volcanoes out here and out here and then to the South over this way you can see these over here so these are in Mexico that's how close to the Border we are in fact you can see the Border right over here and we'll be able to see the Border even better from the top of this cinder cone because that is what I want to hike up now so we are like a mile or two from the border I think and uh this cinder cone is about halfway between here and the Border but while we're here there's something else that I wanted to show you we have another grave site this one is for namir and no one knows who namir was you can see here n a m e e r with a cross and then 1871. again apparently there's not really any context around this we just know that someone else is buried here let me get my backpack ready here toss some food and water and camera batteries in there and I think I'm actually going to drive a little bit further down the road find a better place to park it's a little bit farther off of the the main road here and then we're going to start our hike over toward that this thing right here [Applause] oh well that was unexpected I just had the camera in my hand and I was pointing it down on my feet to show you know the little path that I'm following here the the tire tracks that I'm following and then the the dark Rock to the sides and then I saw as I was looking through the camera screen I saw a little multi-tool along the side of the the road here let's check it out see if it still open see if it still works so it's a DeWalt multi-tool let's see if it opens yes it does oh it's spring-loaded that's nice I've had you know like a Leatherman before but it's never been spring-loaded so that's cool do these still open up the knives and the yeah it needs a good washing a good scrubbing it's just got dirt in it nothing looks rusted kind of cool nice found myself a new little multi-tool I've made it to the base of the side of this thing of this cinder cone here and I think my plan is to just go uh go straight up I'm gonna go a little bit further this way and then just head straight up the side of it also while I was playing with the DeWalt multi-tool I was taking the little tools like the knives and screwdriver and everything out and seeing what kind of shape they were in and um the only thing I noticed is that this one I don't know if you can see that but it's cut off it's like Snapped off I think that was the um the little ruler like the two and a half inch long ruler I don't know if there was also like a saw or it looks like there was a file attached to that too actually but uh that has been snapped off but everything else seems to be and uh pretty decent or at least usable condition [Applause] well I made it up to the top here the view is amazing what a what a an impressive landscape here let me show you around so this is looking back the way I came you can see actually the Land Cruiser parked off to the left of that that mound right in the middle there that small Cinder cinder cone right in the middle and from there I walked over here and then up the side and this is looking over to the east just a whole lot of Barren volcanic landscape and then this of course is the Border see the Border fence or wall right there I'm I'm less than half a mile from the border there that is the the U.S Mexico border of course early hits home just how arbitrary these borders are doesn't it I mean there's nothing about this landscape that says oh yeah there's a clear line of delineation and yet here we are it just goes off into the distance to the West over there and as far as that can see over to the east and at the bottom of the the cinder cone that I'm in here the bottom of the crater so this is the crater the actual top of the cinder cone the summit I think is right here so I'll go I'll go there in a second but uh let's go explore this there's a there's a large Cairn down at the bottom do you see that that large stack of rocks right at the bottom of the crater I want to go check it out by the way I don't think I really explained why this is a National Wildlife Refuge what kinds of animals this place protects I think the main reason this is a protected space is that there is a an endangered subspecies of of Pronghorn here it's called I think the desert pronghorn if that's not right I'll put the real name of it on the screen but you might have seen pronghorn antelope in the deserts of Nevada Wyoming Utah I see them fairly often the ones that live down here are separate from those they're genetically distinct and they are rare they are endangered and so that's why this place exists there are probably also bighorn sheep here in other desert animals but the that desert Antelope is the desert prong horn is the the main one now isn't this interesting this thing's probably five feet tall I don't know I'll go stand next to it in a second but it's this pile of rocks here and then there's this triangular little line of rocks around the base of it huh and it looks out if we look to the South here there's a gap where the lava would have flowed out of this volcano and that flows toward Mexico you can see the wall the Border fence right there very strange no idea what the purpose of this thing is or the significance of this thing is but I think this is as far as I go from here I need to climb back up over the the wall of the Caldera here the wall of the the crater here and then I'm gonna hike back to the car and from there we'll continue on our way our merry way down El Camino Del Diablo so I'll see you back on the road [Music] foreign [Music] I get so caught up in what I'm doing whether that be driving or filming or or whatever even just enjoying the scenery of the place I'm in but I forget to eat so while I'm thinking about it now I figure I should have a snack it's three o'clock so this is a little bit of a late lunch snack I've got a few different clam shells of fruit here I've got a little bit of mango left some blueberries and some blackberries and uh this is a a wild place I mean it is so empty there's so much emptiness here and so much ruggedness it's it's a really neat place I'm obviously only just scratching the surface here today I've actually had to to bypass some things that I did that I did want to see and show you guys just because this time of year you know in Winter the days are short I don't have a ton of time here but of course this is the time of year you want to be here you don't want to be out here in in August you'll you'll die or car will overheat and they'll be picking up your bones out of your car um speaking of that as kind of a grisly segue there's something related to that over here that I want to see but let me finish this first so this here is called the grave of eight you can see that number eight right there and yes this is another grave site of some unlucky Travelers this was in the late 1800s and a family of eight Mexicans were traveling through this area and their water jug or their water container broke and as a result they all died of thirst out here and from here we have a look at this uh really interesting Mountain so first of all I love how it's kind of jagged and pointy this one is I'll have to come back and climb that on a future Adventure there are a lot of interesting off-trail hikes to do here but look at how the the color of the mountains change look at that it goes from this darker volcanic rock maybe that's more recent this lighter Granite over here which is also a volcanic rock but yeah pretty neat looking around we have our friendly ocotillos here this is my favorite desert plant I love these things I think they think they're so cool looking they're so unique and in the spring they bloom and are beautiful and then just uh these kind of ominous mountain ranges all around especially to the South here Beyond The Land Cruiser look at those mountain ranges and I have to admit that I'm a little bit captivated by it I love The Emptiness I love the barrenness I love how Stark it is um you know like I said I've been kind of rushing today a little bit you can camp out here I've chosen not to I've chosen to just drive it in a day in large part because I want to just you know see what the whole thing is like and then I can I can plan future trips to this area based off of that knowledge so we're we're just kind of glancing through here today just going right on through but um you know that's fun too it's fun to take your time exploring wandering around but it's also fun to uh to cover as much ground as you can and see a lot of different things in a short amount of time and speaking of a short amount of time like I said we're running kind of short on daylight here you know we've got two and a half hours about of daylight left and I got quite a bit of driving left to do I don't know how many miles I've gone I stopped keeping track but um I think I have probably 30 35 miles left in the road here so I've gone most of the way and I think I'm going to stop recording the actual driving footage or maybe I'll do some time lapse driving footage that doesn't take me long to do I'm okay on gas but I'm running short on time so I'm just gonna go to the last couple of places that I wanted to see while here while in this area and uh yeah let's get back in the car and I'll meet you guys at our next spot [Music] foreign which means High tanks in Spanish there's this kind of wall of mountain here and it's all rock this is all Bear exposed rock in here really an impressive sight I mean you can you can just drive right up to this and then somewhere back in here are the tanks and these are natural potholes in the rock that hold water for a long time long after the water has dried up and evaporated in other places so let's set out here to find the tanks find those potholes [Applause] here we go first pool bottom most pool is pretty gross I would not want to drink this and there's actually water still flowing into this from those recent rains that little gray streak right in the middle that is a trickle of water going into this pool here this pool that is one of nine or nine of these so there are eight more of these up above here somewhere I'm not gonna go to all nine here right now again I don't have the time I don't have the daylight for that although that would be neat I'll add that to the list of things to do in the future when I come back here but I do want to go to a couple more uh and there is interesting history associated with this place like I said it holds water for longer than uh than other places out here in the desert and so this was a a water source for I'm sure Native Americans and then later on for travelers for minors explorers whoever else came through this area and there's one story that I read where a group of government surveyors came through here in the 1890s and they reported on finding three Prospectors above this pool they died of thirst because they went to this pool and it was empty and they tried to get up to the second but they died before they could get there and there was water in now and there was water in the second one the men's fingers apparently were worn raw they were worn down to the meat from just clawing at the Rocks here trying to get to that second tank but they didn't make it I don't know why I said down to the meat that's a weird it's a weird turn of phrase I meant down to the bone but you know what I mean uh I'm going across the the Rocks here trying to find the second one I'm not sure how far apart they are or what but I'll keep looking well that didn't take long at all I'm at the second pool here I'm above it I assume these two pools together form the second pothole the second tank here the first one was down there and we have great views looking out over the open expanse of the desert out there you can see my car parked right on the edge of the the sunlight and Shadow right in the middle there let's go up a little bit more let's go up to pothole number three shouldn't be too far away maybe over in here or maybe down there let's find out foreign well I don't know what number tank this is I've passed a couple down below that were like this big I don't know if that really counts as one but this is the last one that I'll be visiting here today more nasty nasty water which I'm sure would be amazing if you're dying of thirst but I have the luxury of having several gallons of fresh clean water in my car so I'm good and I need to go find a campsite now except I'm gonna drive an hour and a half I'm guessing out of here out of this this area so this again this whole area you need a permit for this I'm now in the barry M Goldwater range West it's a piece of land that's right up next to the The Wildlife Refuge that again you need a permit for all of these uh I can camp here but I don't want to I want to get out of here I want to get onto just regular BLM land and get closer to where I want to be tomorrow and then I'll set up camp there but again I have about an hour and a half I'm driving to do so let's get one last look of this or at this beautiful desert landscape behind me here if you can I don't know if the lighting is very good I don't know if you can see that or not but it's beautiful trust me and so I'll meet back up with you guys once I get to Camp I'll hike back to my car drive find a place to camp and we'll wrap this up so I'll see you guys somewhere out Yonder [Music] and now just in time for sunset the sun has just barely set behind the mountains over here I found a campsite pretty spot in the sense that there are good mountain views not so pretty in that there are I mean there are fields just right here I'm just over into BLM land right now so I'm on public land and uh really really pretty mountains back behind me and here's the main road it's been a good day I used about half a tank of gas today driving across that and that's great um the Land Cruiser has this weird weird thing where like the first quarter of gas like between the the top of the little gas line and like the next Notch down the top quarter goes by very fast and then the rest of the of the gas goes by it a much slower rate and so I'm still not quite used to it the you know the first quarter tank of gas went by pretty quick this morning I was like oh no I need to be you know really careful with with my driving but uh I think it would have been fine uh like I said I used less than half a tank and I didn't use my spare gas tank at all or my spare gas can up there at all so good information to know for future use that was an amazing place what a fun adventure today driving El Camino Del Diablo 130 some miles of driving on dirt roads the car did great I think you know one of my big questions before this drive today was what kind of vehicle do you need to do that like could I have done that drive in my RAV4 the answer is probably if I needed to but knowing what I know now I don't think I would take my RAV4 there I think uh you know having that extra clearance definitely helped and I don't think I need four-wheel drive but again you know it's never a bad thing to have but you definitely want some clearance for that road like I think I mean you don't need a ton like I think any truck basically would be fine uh any kind of larger SUV should be fine as long as you have good tires you want to be sure you've got good tires on there to you know drive on Jagged rocks for a good good part of the day and uh you know my my head is just kind of spinning with all sorts of ideas for future Adventures to do once I go back there you know the main goal today was to drive the road and then see a few things along the way of course but mostly to drive the road and um it was great fun I had a great time and uh again lots of lots of ideas for future Adventures came from today and I had a great time hope you guys did too thanks for watching let me know what you think let me know if you have any questions let me know what your favorite part was I'll see you in the next one be sure to check out Adventure know-how my new site where you can gain access to a map of all of my free campsites plus monthly bonus videos that you won't find anywhere else learn more at adventurenewhow.com and for links to everything else SUV rving related visit suvrving.com links to these sites and more will be in the video description

Channel: SUV RVing

Views: 87,039

Keywords: suv camping, suv rving, travel, road trip, camping, camper, vanlife, vandwelling, truck camping, adventure, hiking, arizona

Id: PZUli2pOnGw

Length: 38min 48sec (2328 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023