Video: Truck Camper on the Apache Trail

Gieco Insurance has been airing a very popular commercial lately featuring the song Midnight Rider by the Allman Brothers Band. This commercial inspired us to do our own video featuring this music. This is a short video compilation of a 2013 Ram 3500 and a 2016 Northstar Laredo truck camper climbing Fish Creek Hill on Arizona’s Apache Trail. The Apache Trail is a great road to explore in a truck camper. Nestled in between the Four Peaks and Superstition Wilderness Areas in the Tonto National Forest, the Apache Trail serves as a gateway to breathtaking, virgin scenery. Varying in elevations between 1,715 feet to 3,050 feet, the trail will take you through bronze-colored canyons, past pristine mountain lakes, and around rocky, jagged peaks. Wildlife is plentiful on the Apache Trail, too, including herds of big horn sheep, elk, and wild horses.

Driving the Apache Trail can have its challenges. The 22-mile-long stretch between Tortilla Flat and the Roosevelt Dam in unpaved, so you’ll be driving on rough, washboard surfaces in places. This portion of the route also includes a spectacular and dizzying 1,000 foot drop down Fish Creek Hill (mile post 225.5) at a 15 to 17 percent grade. You’ll need to be on your toes as you drive down this hill as the road twists and turns and narrows in places where only one vehicle at a time can pass (the road is so narrow here that we had to pull in our driving mirrors to provide sufficient clearance for vehicles driving in the opposite direction to pass). The trail also features numerous switchbacks and blind, hair-pin turns that will also require your undivided attention.