Forest Road 552 Dispersed Camping

This particular spot is close enough to the road to have some slight road noise. There are other spots further along the road that eliminate that issue. It is easy access from the freeway, and nicely positioned to split the drive between Phoenix and Moab. I didn't have any worthwhile Verizon connectivity, but I've heard there is some connectivity if you continue far enough up the road to have a view down the north side of the slopes.

We drove in directly across from the turnout to Sunset Crater National Monument. At the "T", we turned right and there were a number of camping sites along the road but there were campers in most of them so we kept driving. At the intersection where the sign points to Lockett Meadow we found an unoccupied site and settled in. There was A LOT of traffic heading toward the meadow and those roads are dusty. Luckily, it was blowing away from us. We did hear someone shooting for quite awhile but after dark, it was perfectly quiet.
If you go straight at that intersection, there is a locked gate. If you turn right, you head up a very narrow road (my partner describes it as terrifying) that is barely passable for two vehicles. You do not want to take a camper on it. The next morning we had our GPS programmed for our next stop and to exit the forest service roads, it tried to take us on a road that looked like it would head straight out to 89. We scoped it out with our Jeep first - don't do it - just backtrack the way you came in.
No Verizon service to speak of although I occasionally got a weak signal but it didn't last long enough to be of any use.

I planned on only staying one night but took a drive in the early afternoon and found even better campsites than I stayed in!
Road 552, 553 and 418 have beautiful views an large open campsites.
Then I took a drive across hwy 89 and found sunset crater. It was getting dark soon so I decided to stay another night and go back early and hike the trails!
I had t mobile coverage in my campsite of 2 bars without booster and 4 bars with it. There was even signal on my trail hike!

We spent one night here. The area is beautiful and clean, with many pine trees. Close to Hwy 89, but not much road noise. Great choice to boondock close to Flagstaff! There was Verizon 3G coverage in the evening, but the data signal was lost the next morning.

Pulled in for the night and easily found a spot for a big rig. Seems to be a busy area due to forest access (= dusty). AT&T shows full bars LTE service but data seemed slow.

Stayed December 10, 2018. Verizon cellphone coverage is not the greatest, have to find a pull off with service. We stayed on 420 and only drove down a little ways. Drove around the area and road was fine with the small suv.

March 29, 2019 after a day at the Grand Canyon taking the train up to view the beautiful sites by the time that we got back it was around 5:30 and decided to push forward up to Utah going thru Flagstaff. Realizing we were more tired than we thought we stopped off at Forest Road 552 and by the time we found it it was dark didn’t have to travel far into it before we found a site between trees and not a lot of people around. It was very quiet and perfect.

Plenty of room for large class C motorhomes. Quiet at night, mostly level though make sure you have plenty of leveling blocks.

Just to elaborate a bit on the choices, there are small accessible areas to the right and left of 552 about 150 yards after leaving Hwy 89, best for campers or tents. Road noise would be noticeable. About half way down 552 before the intersection there is a larger area to the left where we saw two Class A’s parked and they seemed to fit comfortably. Just at the intersection of 552 and Schultz Pass Rd, there is a site for campers, B’s and smaller C’s on the left, perhaps best accessed from SP Rd. And then there’s the larger open space across from the 552/SP Rd that’s most noticeable from the sat view. That site isn’t especially level, as noted, but some jockeying of position makes it quite workable. We had our 25’ and also a 30’ trailer in there with their TVs and there was room for one more RV of most any type. We didn’t explore further down SP Rd.

SP Rd and 552 are quite busy in the daytime and there is some amount of road dust generated...but you can see by our rating we thought it was quite acceptable. We noticed no highway noise at that spot and the night sky was beautiful. Our 3G Verizon rating was with a booster but it was steady. Keep in mind you are above 7,000’ MSL and most nights are going to be chilly and perhaps below freezing.

Popular spot nestled right under the San Francisco Peaks. Great for those looking to escape the desert heat. Beautiful trees all around. Check fire restrictions as it is very dry around here.

Cell signal was sparse close to the road, but once we popped out and found a clearing further up, Tmobile was incredibly fast. Verizon and AT&T were weak or non existent. From the spot we chose or some trails higher on the mountain, the Painted Desert can be seen off in the distance.