Site Review- Cabin Hollow Dispersed Camping. Near Bryce Canyon National Park (Utah)

Site Review- Cabin Hallow Dispersed Camping. Near Bryce Canyon National Park (Utah)

GPS: 37.7343, -112.2683

It's taken me longer to write this post than I expected to.  I was all set to write the site review, and then. I watched a YouTube video.  Fate Unbound is one of my absolute favorite Fulltime RVer YouTube channels.  They guided me from just dreaming about fulltime living, to actually doing it. 

To say they are some of my role models would be absolutely correct. 

So to see their video, THE END of Dispersed Camping & Boondocking - RV Life , where Roe talks about removing all of their site reviews, caught me off guard.

I understand why she did it.  The sites they were recommending were becoming overly saturated with people, to the point that the sites were having to be shut down. 

They did not want to be the ones leading to the destruction of these sites.  I completely agree with them.  If any of the sites I recommend start getting closed due to destruction, I will also remove my site reviews. 

I love this beautiful earth and I want to continue to explore it with my family.  I wish everyone else felt the same and treated our earth with respect. 

For now, I will continue reviewing sites to help my fellow RVers, but I will not hesitate to stop if I feel it is impacting the earth negatively. 

Now that I have gotten that out there, let’s get down to the review ya'll have been waiting for. 

I found this site on the website for Campendium.

It is called Cabin Hallow Dispersed Camping.

It is located 20 minutes from Bryce Canyon National Park, 30 minutes from Escalante National Monument, 1.5 hours from Zion National Park, and 1.5 hours from Capitol Reef National Park.

Directions to the Site:

To get to this site you take U.S. Scenic Hwy 12 from Panguitch into the Dixie National Forest. 

Along this road you will travel under 2 really cool "tunnels" and past the Dixie National Forest visitor center. 

The visitor center has maps of the area and many hiking trails winding around it. 

As you are driving down this road you will come upon a small bridge.  Right before this bridge, there will be a dirt road on your left with a wooden sign saying Cabin Hallow.

We took this dirt road. 

At the fork, we went left, but you could also go right.  The road did get a little rutted, uneven, and bumpy.  We just took it very slow, and carefully navigated our way.

The sites in this area are easily distinguishable and fairly spaced out.  We had a little difficulty finding a site big enough for us, but our TT is 40 ft. Anything 30 ft and under should have no troubles at all.

We did find us a site a couple miles back. 

One day we decided to explore and see where the road went. We have 4-wheel drive so we felt fairly confident that we could explore a good portion of the area, and you will never believe what we found. 

We followed random dirt roads around the area and came out into an amazing boondocking location. 

It has sites and there were RVs out there, but we didn't see this area on any of the reviews we read. 

The sites were fairly level.  The road was wide and gravel, so pulling our 40ft monstrosity down it would have been a cinch. 

To top it all off, the road came out on HWY 12. If we had just continued over the bridge and down the road a few more miles, the turn in to this area would have been obvious to us. 

If you choose to stay in this location, which we highly recommend, do not be afraid to go a couple miles down the road.  You have a good 10 miles before the road starts to get uneven at all.  Right up front RVers tend to bunch up, parking one on top of each other.  There is no need for this! Explore a little farther back and you will find more wide-open spaces and seclusion. 

Beware though, there are herds of cattle that free range in this area.  We saw a few of them as we drove through, but they didn't seem to mind that we were there at all. Just remember they are large animals, and while they are owned by someone, they are not pets. Please keep your distance from the cows.

Some tips for the area:

The main tip I have for you is probably the same reason you are looking at this post. This boondocking location is driving distance from not 1 but 3 of Utah’s 5 national parks. Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, and Capitol Reef National Park. If you plan to stay in this area, purchase a national park pass and go visit each of these national parks.

Unfortunately, we only got to visit Bryce Canyon National Park while we were here, and I am so incredibly disappointed. Within a few days of being in this site, I tripped while walking the dog and sprained my ankle. I can’t visit a national park without getting out and hitting the trails, and I knew that would not be possible for a couple of weeks. I could barely walk much less hike on my bum ankle. So, we decided to wait on Capitol Reef and Zion until I was healed.

If you do choose to hit up Bryce Canyon National Park

However, a good tip I do have for you is that if you are staying in this area head in to  Panguitch, Utah and have lunch at the Cowboy Smokehouse Café. It is a small restaurant that handles an incredible number of take out orders. It can be a little bit of wait, but it is completely worth it. I had the Famous Cowboy Philly, and it was so good! It has thick, tender chunks of smoked beef in it that has changed the way I think about philly cheesesteaks.  

The food here was even Declan approved, and he is a pretty picky eater.

Cost of Stay:

Free!

This area is located in the Dixie National Forest and it is dry camping, so its free to stay and play.

Length of Stay:

We stayed in this area for 9 days, Normally I wouldn't feel confident with giving you a definite stay limit, but there is a sign posted in this area saying the limit is 16 days.  Since it is clearly posted, I feel confident in passing that information along.

Cell Service:

We have Straight Talk that runs off of Verizon towers and we had 1-2 bars of service at our location, depending on where you stood in the RV. The site we chose was surrounded by cliffs, hoodoos, and hills so that limited our cell service range. In the areas that were more open, I had better service of 3-4 bars.

Do I recommend this area?

Absolutely! It was a huge site, surrounded by hillsides so that we were nestled in.  It was beautiful, serene, and made me feel very safe. We had signal on one side of the RV and in random spots, but only 1-2 bars. 

We made the most of it though and truly enjoyed our location. 

We did not have much noise at all from passing cars. It was fairly quiet, which I loved. 

The only questionable moment we had was when someone pulled into our campsite one night. We were a pretty good way back off the road, so they may have just been looking for a place to park for the night. The pulled all the way up to our RV, turned around, and left.  It made me feel a little uncomfortable, but it seemed innocent enough. 

We plan to return to this area in the future.