Hole in the Rock

We stayed here for 2 nights in October, 2019. We had our choice of many nice spots and chose one with a view of the beautiful Kaiparowits Plateau. The road was a bit rough, but we made it fine with 2 wheel drive pulling a 5th wheel. While here we explored Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and hiked to the beautiful waterfall at Lower Calf Creek Recreation Area.

Hole In The Rock Rd is a bit washboard, but you are only on it for like 1/4 mile. The roads inside the camping area have big ruts and dry washouts (could be creeks in heavy rains, but I’m not sure) so I wouldn’t recommend arriving in the dark unless you know where you are going. But they are easy to navigate in daylight & with decent vehicle clearance. That being said there was a newer muscle car in there when we left, they just parked in the first area. This place must be huge because we saw about 10 cars drive in and they were out of sight. A few big busses, so definitely big rig friendly.

To access the camping, don't miss the right-hand turn about 1/4 mile down Hole in the Rock Rd (we missed it!) Once you turn, there are three roads that fork out. We went right to find a spot on the edge of the mesa. If it's raining, these roads can get slicked out, but if not, you can go down a bit - maybe a half mile to a mile. We found one right away. No issues with our 26-foot trailer. Saw Class A and all sorts of vehicles camped everywhere on this open and flat spot.

Great location, 5 miles from town of Escalante! Excellent cell service and internet Verizon Mifi 4 bars and ATT LTE 3 bars. We parked our Class A 36 foot along the cliff side with amazing views! Half Mile Gravel road off main HWY 12, very accessible for all type rigs. We saw camper vans, class C and few Class As. Nice flat level areas- however is dry and slightly sandy!

We had planned on staying here for four nights. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. Yesterday was 99 and today 100!

Lots of spots to pick from. When you enter, there is a triple Y in the road. If you go towards the left, there are some pretty big crevices in the road. We parked and walked for 15 minutes or so to find a site we liked. Only two other truck/van campers that we could see. Guess everyone else knew about the weather.

We’ll be back to explore at a cooler time.

We found Hole in the Rock camp site just off of BLM-200 Road. For us, this was a perfect area since it was wide open land, so we could turn our RV around easily with our car on the tow dolly and it was right near all of the hikes that we wanted to do. The price = free

From this base camp, we went to some amazing hikes; Peekaboo Gulch, Spooky Gulch, Devils Garden, and Zebra Slot Canyon. All of these hikes were down BLM-200 Road. We stayed here for two days. We even went into nearby town to fill up our Camelback’s and a Jerry jug with free water at the Escalante Visitor Center.

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We set up camp in the huge field/parking area right where hole in the rock connects to SR 12. There is a ton of space for a lot of rigs and some bushy tree here and there that can provide some privacy but overall this has more of a campground feel than being in the middle of nowhere- but hey its free and the views are great and we were lucky to have some very friendly neighbors while we were there. We used it as a one night stop off between Bryce and Capitol Reef while hiking some of Escalante-Grand Staircase NM. If our rig could handle the washboard of hole in the rock we would stay longer and do all the amazing hikes down that road as well- but alas bus suspensions were not made for such things.

We had decent AT&T signal (good for browsing, download not bad, upload terrible)

This is a big open field with a few juniper trees here and there. It can get pretty windy and pretty busy (big OHV crowd, lots of generator noise while we were there), but it is a good place to set camp while you go hike some awesome canyons down the very wash boardy Hole-in-the-Rock Road. Make sure to stop at the Escalante Visitor Center to get all the info you need to explore the area.

This area is easy access with huge wide open areas. After spending the first day in the wide open field parking area we found some really nice campsites down the road to the right as you enter camping area with great sunset views.

There are no amenities here, can find what you need in nearby Escalante, but you will pay for the remoteness. Was pretty quiet while we were here, we were by ourselves a few nights. This makes a great spot to camp and check out Spooky and Peek-a-boo gulches. Spooky Gulch was really cool, if you don't mind the squeeze.

Cell service was a bit spotty, but we made it work with the booster, could probably do without. Depends where you camp.