Who’s ready for some out-of-this-world scenery? This next batch of photos from the Havasu Falls area will blow your mind… or at the very least inspire you to book a trip here.

We’re hiking the final mile to the campground and right around this corner we get our first view of waterfalls.

When I glimpse this next view, it occurs to me that I didn’t know such a place existed on Earth, much less in my home country. It looks like it was CGI’ed in a movie.

A closer look at Navajo Falls:

We press onward, towards Havasu Falls and our campground.

There she is, the mighty Havasu Falls. It’s breathtaking to behold.

The force of the falls is intimidating — as we will learn tomorrow, the velocity is so strong that you can’t swim closer than 15 feet from its base before the water pushes you back.

The trail dips down past Havasu Falls and five minutes later we’re at the campground. It’s nothing like I anticipated — there are no specific campsites, we just walk along the river until we find a clearing that suits us and then set up our tents. There are bathrooms (compost toilets only) located along the river as well as a fresh water source where visitors can refill water bottles.

Irving and I find a nice spot — we have a picnic table all to ourselves, and we set up our tents on either side of it. We’re about 10 feet from the river. Here’s our view:

Best campsite ever, or best campsite ever?

Here’s my tent:

That’s Irving’s tent in the foreground, then our picnic table, and then my tent.

Bathrooms are nearby, scattered along the river. They are (seemingly brand-new) long drop compost toilets, which are well-maintained and way nicer than I expected. There is a bin of wood chips in each stall along with a scoop so that users can add chips after use. Toilet paper is supplied. There’s no running water for sinks but hand sanitizer dispensers are posted just outside the stalls.

Dinner is simple — since our loaf of bread disintegrated into crumbs on the hike down, I buy plain Indian fry bread and slather on some peanut butter and jam. Shortly thereafter the sun goes down and we retreat to our tents. We’re fairly exhausted from the 10 mile hike to get here and quickly fall asleep to the sound of babbling brook.

… 9 hours later, I wake up to this view from my tent:

How insanely lucky are we to be here? I’ve been to a lot of stunning places on this planet, and Havasu Falls ranks up there among my favorite spots.

Irving has brought his camping stove and fuel, and before long we have boiling water to make instant coffee and oatmeal. (This is my first time trying the Starbucks Via Vanilla Latte and it’s terrible! Perhaps the regular Via coffee packets are more palatable.)

Then we load our day packs and head off on a 6-mile day hike to explore other waterfalls in the area. More on that next week!

In the meantime, who wants to plan a trip to Havasu Falls after reading this post? It was on my bucket list for YEARS and it lives up to the hype.