Roger Naylor is a longtime Arizona travel writer and has probably hiked just about every trail in the state.
He spoke with The Show about some of his favorite swimming spots where you can cool off in the great outdoors this summer.
Full conversation
ROGER NAYLOR: Air conditioning keeps us alive during the summer, but water and shade set us free. This is what summer is all about, the idea that you can get out and have a little adventure at one of our swimming holes. And Arizona has legendary swimming holes, you know, which a lot of people may not think about. Again, it’s all desert and stuff, but no, we’ve got swimming holes all over the state that are just amazing.
GILGER: And lakes, all of this. OK, so let’s get into a few of them, and I think the obvious one we have to start with because it’s the first one that comes to almost everyone’s mind is going to be Slide Rock in Sedona.
NAYLOR: Slide Rock is beautiful, it’s gorgeous. Don’t even try to go on a weekend. You know, it’s just it’s just going to be insane. It’s a state park, and they just don’t have the capacity to handle people, so they will just kind of wave you by. It fills up very quickly.
Go during the week, if you can, and it’s certainly worth it if you’ve never been, you absolutely have to go. If you have kids or grandkids, they’ll love it. It’s a natural slide through the rock, so it’s a really a joy.
But again, it is packed on the weekends all summer long. Go during the week, or go in the off-season and just enjoy the beauty of it. Here’s a great one. If you’re if you feel like you still want to be in Oak Creek Canyon, you want to have that experience, you want to be in water, stop at Grasshopper Point.
GILGER: I’ve never heard of this one, so this is also right there?
NAYLOR: Yeah, it’s right there in the canyon. It’s 2 miles north of Sedona. So as you’re coming out of Sedona, you get to it before you get to Slide Rock. Just pull down. It’s a pay site, I think it’s about 12 bucks to get in, but it’s a nice little picnic area.
And what it is, it doesn’t have the slide, but Oak Creek makes a kind of a curve, a sweeping curve there uh against a big rock cliff and forms this huge pool, so it’s just really crystal clear and and gorgeous. You got some nice little shallows, but you’ve also got some little ledges up on the cliffs, so people like to jump into these deeper pools and stuff, which, you know, again, always be very careful.
You’re on your own, these places don’t have lifeguards. But it is a very popular for jumping in. You can jump 5 feet off, 8 feet off, you know, whatever, it’s really nice pools, so it’s just a really terrific spot. And since it is a a pay side, there’s a restroom, there’s some picnic tables, nice little hiking trail, the Allen’s Bend Trail, that goes along the path. Be careful of poison ivy if you’re hiking that trail though along the creek. But very gorgeous.
GILGER: OK, watch out for poison ivy and jumping too far. OK.
Another two I wanted to talk about, I’ve been to one of these, but not both of them. These are a little bit closer to the Valley up in Camp Verde — the Bull Pen and then you’ve got the Crack, right? Tell us about these.
NAYLOR: Well, the Bull Pen is up off of there’s a Bull Pen Ranch, I don’t know how it got that name, but uh so it’s a on West Clear Creek. You drive down at a dirt road, you park, you walk it’s about a mile walk and then you start it’s a really beautiful spot, there’s some nice rocks to jump off of. There’s a nice sandy beach. Gets very crowded.
You can continue up West Clear Creek, you can keep going and get to some different pools above the main one and stuff and find some other spots as well if it is a little too crowded. So, that’s a really good one.
The Crack is another one that’s great. I love this spot. It’s off the Bell Trail, it’s kind of in the Rimrock area between Camp Verde and and Sedona. It’s off the down a dirt road, you hike in on the Bell Trail, not the Bell Rock Trail, don’t get that confused, it’s the Bell Trail, which parallels Wet Beaver Creek, so it’s kind of stays on a sandy little bench above the creek.
So The Crack is 3 miles back, so it’s a 3-mile hike to get there, but it is this gorgeous channel flowing through these sandstone rocks and some good diving, good swimming. Terrific.
If you don’t want to hike that far, or if you’ve got little kids and don’t want to face that, keep an eye out, there are beaches all along the way all along that hike, you’ll see little social trails that lead down to the stream, and that puts you down at some a more personalized little smaller beach.
You know, there’s one spot there, and I’m trying it’s right before you even get on the trail, you see over in the stream. I heard all this splashing and laughing stuff and I wandered over there, and it was just a whole bunch of moms with these little kids, I mean just you know, 1- and 2-year-olds and stuff because it’s a nice this little shallow clear thing, and they’re all just sitting splashing, having a wonderful time. So, you know, swimming holes mean different things to different ages and different sizes, so you can always find something for those.
GILGER: You don’t have to go cliff jumping?
NAYLOR: Yeah, you don’t. Exactly.
GILGER: All right, so those are some sort of north-central spots. Let’s go down south. You also have on your list here Patagonia Lake, which I have never been to and I’ve always wanted to because I love this part of the state. What’s it like?
NAYLOR: It’s absolutely beautiful, and you think somebody’s pulling your leg, because you’re driving south, you’re south of Patagonia, you’re heading to to Nogales, and you see the sign to Patagonia Lake, and you turn and it’s just these dusty hills covered with ocotillo and you’re driving back about 4 miles and you go, "This cannot possibly be."
And sure enough, here in this valley is this beautiful sparkling lake of 2,265 acres, I think. Wow. And it’s a hot birding spot during the winter. In the summer, it’s more for fishing stuff, but they got a campground right there.
They’ve got four or five more air-conditioned cabins, they rent boats and kayaks, and they’ve got this beautiful little beach, Boulder Beach. And it’s great, it’s soft sand, and they’ve got it roped off for the kids, and it’s a nice gentle slope down, so you’ve got this real fun swimming beach, and the picnic tables and picnic areas are right outside that.
So, again, just another really good one for kids, and older folks can swim in the lake as well at different spots, I think you can swim anywhere except around at the docks or things, but this is just a really good friendly beach to meta a lot of people from Tucson like to get out to this one and stuff. This is sort of one of their getaways.
GILGER: It sounds beautiful.
NAYLOR: It is. It’s a really gorgeous little spot. I love Patagonia Lake.
GILGER: All right, let’s head up north then lastly, up to Lake Havasu City, which obviously is a lake, and there’s the real London Bridge there. But I don’t think of this as like a swimming spot, is it?
NAYLOR: Well, exactly, but these are great spots. In fact, even before you get up there, there’s several state parks, Cattail Cove just a little south of Lake Havasu is a white sandy beach, they’ve even got a dog beach as well, which is very fun.
And then you get into the Lake Havasu City and there’s they’ve got a few beaches on their own, the biggest, I think, is the London Bridge Beach right there along the channel. You’ve got beach volleyball, you’ve got a roped-off beach area, you’ve got a dog park, you’ve got picnic tables, you’ve got white sand, you’ve got palm trees swaying in the breeze, the seagulls are circling overhead, the sun’s glinting off their wings, you can lay out on the sand, you got little waves lapping in, you have to remind yourself, I’m still in Arizona, I never left the state! It feels like you’re out on the West Coast, but you only had to drive two or three hours to get there and and enjoying it.
So, yeah, it’s a kind of that’s kind of an old-fashioned "I want to read a book on the beach" kind of day.
GILGER: It sounds great. So, it sounds like not all of these like take a big hike to get to. Some of these are pretty accessible.
NAYLOR: Exactly, yeah, if you if you have mobility issues, then definitely head for the parks, head for Cattail Cove State Park, River Island State Park, Patagonia Lake.
Lyman Lake up in the White Mountains has a beautiful little beach, and it’s a huge lake and stuff, and again, you drive right up to it practically and and so it is, you don’t have to hike to them.
But, yeah, some of the others like the Crack and the Bull Pen and some of those, yeah, that’s going to involve a little hiking. So, what do you what kind of day do you want? Do you want an adventure? Do you want to make it easy on yourself?
GILGER: Yeah, all right. Longtime Arizona travel writer Roger Naylor joining us to talk about swimming holes as we head into the depths of summer. Roger, thank you so much, as always.
NAYLOR: My pleasure.
