Open lake prairie ringed by ponderosa fills the view at Mormon Lake, and at dusk the elk drift out of the trees into the grass as the meadow goes blue and cool at 7,000 feet. That altitude is the whole idea southeast of Flagstaff: while the desert valleys bake through summer, the windows stay open after dark up here and nobody reaches for the air conditioning. Families who make the climb tend to stay the week, because once the motorhome is level in the pines there's very little reason to move it.
Days go to Upper Lake Mary and Ashurst Lake, where the Forest Service loops follow the shore, and to the forest roads through the ponderosa between them. With a motorhome that means unhooking for the day and coming back to the same site at night, and with a trailer the truck does the running while the rig stays set up. Either way dinner happens at the same table all week, which is the thing a motorhome does better than anything that gets packed up each morning.
Mormon Lake Lodge and the lakeside campgrounds
Mormon Lake Lodge's RV park is home for the week, and the elk show up at dusk here too. The park has full hookups with 30-amp power, sewer and water, along with pull-through spaces for a longer rig, showers, laundry and a dump station. It opens in April and closes at the new year, as of September 2026, which covers the summer heat escape and a long fall after it.
If you'd rather wake up on the water, the Forest Service campgrounds at Ashurst Lake, Lakeview on Upper Lake Mary and Canyon Vista are dry camping with no hookups, and each one sets its own length limit. Lock in the campground before the rig, because that limit decides which motorhome you rent. For a couple who wants Lakeview's shorter sites, a campervan out of Flagstaff is the size that fits.
Route 66 east to Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest
East of Flagstaff the ponderosa gives way to open grassland, and I-40 follows the old Route 66 line toward Winslow and Holbrook. At Meteor Crater you walk out to the rim and the plain simply ends, dropping into a pale bowl so wide and so sudden that the scale takes a minute to register.
The crater runs its own RV park, and it makes a better base for this stretch than moving the rig every night. Meteor Crater RV Park is open all year with pull-through spaces, as of September 2026, so the motorhome stays put while the days run east, to Winslow on Route 66 one day and the Petrified Forest the next. The national park is a day trip either way, since it has no RV or car camping. Because the crater park stays open through the winter, this is also the trip for the months when Mormon Lake Lodge is closed.
Flagstaff's other famous drives point north and south. For the Grand Canyon's South Rim, the Grand Canyon RV page covers Trailer Village and the in-park sites where a motorhome can sleep. Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, downhill to the south, have their own RV week out of Sedona. Closer to town, the San Francisco Peaks, the Sunset Crater and Wupatki loop and Walnut Canyon make up the high-country day trips from Flagstaff.
