Loy Butte Road Dispersed Camping

Great pace to camp and ride the OHV around. At this time a lot of the small trails are closed for land improvement I think. OHV trails are very well marked around here and are fun to ride. Finding a good camp spot did take a while with a motor home and trailer; even coming on a Thursday evening. Looks like lots of full time van and pod campers like it here.

First time camping in this area. Only reason I didn’t give 5 stars is there is a lot of traffic passing by on the weekends and could possibly be hard to find a spot if you have a large RV. If you have a large trailer or big rig it’s best you go in and scope out a place before you bring in your RV, we have a F150 Raptor that we took in to find our spot before dragging our 5th wheel in.
The road is very passable for any RV (as long as there is no rain) but minimal places to turn around from what I can see.
We have a 40’ 5th wheel and found a pull through spot about 5 miles in.

We have a beautiful view of the red rock mountains.

This is definitely a spot we’ll be back to camp in. It’s only about 10 miles from Sedona and you can off road all the way to town if you like.

Exact GPS: 34°51'41.7"N 111°54'31.4"W

This was our first foray into dispersed boondocks camping. An amazing start. Route 525A leads to Loy Butte Road: at one point, the pavement stops and the dirt road starts. 4WD on our BMW X5D was great to have. We were looking on a Saturday morning and there were tons of spots to choose from. We found this one with no other campers in sight. No one joined at any point. While it’s hot and dry and there’s not really a lick of shade, the sunset views are gorgeous. Temperature barely dropped (still in the 90s) at night, so there was little reprieve from the heat. Absolutely worth it, though.

Recent global events have forced me to work remotely, so I decided to see if I could pull off working really remotely using a T-Mobile hot spot with an added antenna and a beefed up data plan. It worked great here!

Depending on the site, we were able to get up to five bars of full service. Some sites definitely have better connectivity than others but with a little patience and a little driving, it was easy enough to find something decent.

The campsite itself was easy to access from the road in my Subaru Impreza. We even saw an Audi sedan of some sort on the road navigating without trouble before we got in too deep.

We used this as a base camp before backpacking around Sedona for a couple of days and it was perfect. Clean, quiet and peaceful.

We stayed at a spot just past 525c. GPS 34.854088, -111.916303 . There was a bit of a dip at the bottom but we managed it ok. It was pretty busy when we were there on March 24th-28th. It was a little difficult to find a spot for our 33 ft 5th wheel and especially one that was level. It was pretty quite at night. Road was pretty bumpy. It was convenient to areas we wanted to explore even though most were closed due to Covid-19.

The views from our site were a reward for driving down the very bumpy road with our truck and pop-up camper. There were many tent and rv campers but plenty of spots to accommodate all with a reasonable amount of privacy. Near many hiking trails and close enough to Sedona for a quick supply (or pizza) run. Great experience for our first “dry” camping trip!

This is the same as Road 525. We actually wanted to camp on 525C, but they had that road closed. It was March and they had some rain the previous week. It was also during the Covid-19 Virus, so the pink tour jeeps were not running. However there were an occasional ATV during the day. Our site was just past the turnoff for 525C and just past road 9513 on the right. We were actually on a little hill above the turnout next to the road. We were about 400 feet from the road and four miles from 89A. (34°51'41"N 111°54'30"W). Palatki Ruins was closed and we drove five miles up the road to Honanki Ruins. Unfortunately it was also closed. The drive was nice. We were close enough to Sedona and to Cottenwood. Water is available at the fairgrounds in Cottenwood for $10.00. The old copper mining town of Jerome is definitely worth a visit. Many hikes around the area and I would recommend National Geographic trail illustrated topographic map of Sycamore Canyon and Verde Valley. All Trails App is handy as well. One can also go on the National Forest Service and download to your cell phone for free a MVUM map.