Hancock Road Dispersed Camping

Pulled into this area with a 36 foot fifth toy hauler. Almost got stuck and I have a 4wd dually diesel. Dirt/sand is very loose and deep in some spots. If you have big high floatation mud tires with 4wd you will no problem. I did find a very nice site. Fourth or fifth road on right ( scout your site first) . Hard packed sand/ dirt. I dropped my trailer after almost getting stuck and went and searched. Item on note my TMobile coverage was 2 to3 bar but I'm using some special equipment. Insty connect for the win!

We camped in the upper part of the 2nd road on right for 3 nights.
I don’t recommend you stay here for more than a night. A lot of road noise. We arrived after dark and it was an area I knew I could pull my pop up into and out of if need be.
It’s probably much better down the road a ways if you are there more than the night. Campsite was nice except for the glass It was really close to the road right across from best friends and the stars were amazing.

Just needed an overnight spot between Capital Reef and Horseshoe Bend and this did the trick. Was a little worried about the deep sand reports but the spot we found on Road 563 was not too deep.
Did some trash cleanup since whoever was there before forgot their trash bags.
The spots along Hancock Road that seemed to match the coordinates were all taken or folks were close together so we kept rolling SW to about 2.9 miles and found this marked road 563 to the SE of Hancock Road that had a couple of spots near the road and a third about a quarter of a mile further in.

We went to the marked coordinates but it was not as spacious as some other locations along Hancock road. We found a spot that worked fine for our 43 foot fifth wheel east of that location. The sand was not a problem because I have a 4wd F350 and it handled it just fine pulling our rig but I can see how it could be a problem for 2wd vehicles especially if you are off the well used paths. The sand gets everywhere and can be annoying when it is windy. I heard that the sand is worse when dry than when it rains but I didn't notice any difference. The sand is the only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5.

It is only a few miles from Zion National Park. FYI, the road through Zion has a tunnel and you have to pay $15 for any trailer or large vehicle and there is a height limit of 11' 4". What I didn't know is that when I drove my dually I still had to pay the fee. They charge you for dually trucks or anything more than 7' 10" wide as well but the pass is good for 7 days.

The Thunderbird Inn at Mount Carmel Junction is just up the road (FYI, the pies are overrated). There is a dump station with potable water and garbage at the junction and it is free if you fill up for gas at the Shell station, otherwise $10. It's also not too far from Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. Down the road toward Kanab is the Moqui Cave and Kanab is a nice town with grocery stores and some good restaurants. Elevation is 5600' so it can get cold at night. We actually had light snow one night at the end of May even though the weather was in the 70's most of the daytime.

We had good cell service. AT&T was 50Mbps download and T-Mobile was 8Mbps. However, I did have a couple disconnects from the local cell tower a few times. Not sure if they were working on it but I was able to manually switch to another and continue on.

After reading the reviews I thought we’d be fine in our 30’ fifth wheel and f350 4 wheel drive. Especially since we boondock full time. I was wrong! The sand isn’t too deep but it’s very soft and there isn’t many spots you can turn around at. We got stuck in the worst kind of way for an hour and I still don’t know how we made it out. Unless you’re in a van or short class c with 4 wheel drive I wouldn’t try it. Just go up the road 7 miles to “old hwy 89 dispersed camping” and save yourself the hassle. No red dirt there and nice Mountain views!