Cedar Breaks Dispersed Camping

We had what would have been a great experience camping in this area somewhat dampened by an over abundance of bees or yellow jackets. We camped here over Labor Day weekend and the area wasn’t overly crowded. We followed the road to the right and crossed over the creek and went back in about a half mile or so. We ended up turning in to a rather large campsite with what looks like 3 separate areas so we took the only one left and set up camp. There were two trailers already in the other spots but no signs of being used. It’s common for people to stage their rigs up on the mountain and head back to work for the week. Over the weekend both occupants showed up for 1 or 2 nights, they just waved and continued on. The yellow jackets got progressively worse and worse as the weekend went on, forcing us to just finally call it quits a half a day early and headed home. They were very annoying whenever food was around and actually but a couple of people in our group. Weather couldn’t have been more perfect, 70’s in the day and 40’s in the night.

I recommend reading the review by the first person who reviewed this camping area.

There are areas to camp right off (the not very busy) Highway 143 near the FS signage.

We took the left fork off FS240 to FS1685 past the pin marked and found a great open area surrounded by trees in which to park. A bit of a rough road for 50 yards (?) or so though. Our spot was at 37º 39' 20" N 112º 44' 12" W.

If you stay on FR 240 there are numerous other spots, depending on how far you want to go. At the time we were there, a logging operation was using this road so it was in very good shape. It was hunting season, so we saw quite a few rigs parked, but did not really see anyone.

This is an OHV area, one reason we wanted to check it out. We did not see any other OHVs while we were there mid week. If you want to explore this area, we highly recommend using AvenziaMaps and downloading the free Dixie National Forest Cedar City Ranger District Motor Vehicle Use Map. The map works with your phone's GPS whether you have cell service or not. You must download the map when you have service. We did get cell service randomly while exploring with the Razor, but we got no service where we camped.

We saw some fall colors, but were a bit too late for the full experience, darn.

We loved camping in this area. There were a lot of dry camping / boon docking spots for all sizes of rigs.

Things to check out in the area:
- Cedar Breaks National Monument
- Brian Head
- Navajo Lake
- Panguitch Lake
- Mammoth Caves
- Crystal Falls
- Duck Creek Village
- The Lava Flows!

Hardly anyone was up there when we went over a weekend in June. Makes a great stopover spot if you're touring Bryce or Zion.

One of our favorite ways to camp is out away from other people with a true feeling of aloneness and this spot did the trick! It was incredibly peaceful here even though there were OHV trails in the area. A few times each day a few OHV riders would go by, but it was never excessive and never disturbing. At night the skies were incredible - you could see the Milky Way from one end of the sky to the other.

The only negative was the number of flies, which is why I'm giving it a 4 instead of a 5. We learned to deal with them but each day during the middle of the day they were quite annoying. Thankfully by evening they dispersed.

The elevation here is 9500 ft so the temps were cool even in July, especially at night. We averaged 70s in the day and 40s at night.

When you enter the camping area you come to a fork in the road. The road on the right has a better surface and is more well-maintained and there are plenty of camping options on it. We chose the road on the left (#1685) which had some bumps and rocks but was still quite passable at slow speeds. We traveled through a narrow section of trees which I've taken a few photos of that was fairly tight but do-able with a spotter. The benefit of passing through that spot is that we came to a very secluded area on the other side facing a huge meadow. (Our GPS coordinates: 37.655355, -112.736787)

Cell service here is fairly non-existent. We ended up putting our phones on airplane mode to save battery because they were constantly searching for a signal and only rarely finding it. We fluctuated between Verizon 1x and 1 bar of 3G and No Service. With a booster we could get 2-3 bars of 3G which was enough to make a phone call when we had an incident with a porcupine and our pup. ;-)

I'm giving 3 stars of access because it was a little challenging to get to our spot, however there are many spots that could easily rank a 5. You're about 10 minutes from the North Point overlook of Cedar Breaks National Monument which is gorgeous, and about 20 minutes from the Brian Head ski area. (We found the arrival via I-15 then Hwy 143 to be a little easier than the route on Hwy 14 out of Cedar City.)

We'll definitely be back here when we're ready for our next escape from the summer heat in our Vegas home!