Forest Road 225

My husband and I spent two nights here on our journey between the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and Zion. We pulled into the first campsite off 225 as we arrived late and didn't want to spend too much time looking for a campsite. Although we could still see and hear the road from our spot, it was surprisingly peaceful and shady. Jacob Lake Inn is 6 minutes drive away if you need to refill water, get a hot meal, pick up some souvenirs or get a gas refill. You must get some of their famous cookies if you stop in!

Poster at the Jacob's Lake visitor center claims 876 dispersed camping sites on the Kaibab! Well take your pick! All have beautiful 100' Ponderosa Pine trees, amazing privacy, nice fire pits, and wait for it....are level and many have pull thru loops! Mostly used during hunting season. Great proximity to North Rim. Stayed on Road 257 across from 225. Entrance to 257 sign says it is also the AZ Great Western Hiking Trail. Spent 3 nights, saw 3 people! This is a highly managed forest for timber production. Use of controlled fire to eliminate competition and spur pine growth common. Check out the Kaibab squirrel with the trademark white tail as it acclimated to winters here and is an isolated species. Smell the Ponderosa bark, smells like vanilla! Great boondock!

We stayed here one night in late April and saw one or two passing trucks on the Forest road but that was it.

We drove in further in on FR225 than the coordinates listed on this page and found a great spot. There were a couple of rutted out sections of the road but overall was pretty easy to navigate.

We camped in a spot directly across from Buffalo Hill Tank and had a great night of exploring the area.

225 has only 3 established sites within the first couple of miles. There are a few other places you can pull off the road, but it’s mostly hilly. 225 is a mix of good, rough and rutted road surface. It is 2WD, and OK for low clearance vehicles if you can get through the long rut at the entrance. Road 257, directly across the highway from 225, is a better bet for campsites near the highway.

There is a maze of roads back behind 225, and Google maps shows them all, but you need the Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) to know which ones you can camp on. Go to the “official website” link above and click the link under “Kaibab NF Links” on the right. Get the Avenza Maps app to run the map. There is a large parking area on the highway right opposite 225, where you can unhitch to go scouting.

I camped at the third site in on 225, at 1.4 miles, coords in the site # above. GPS elevation 7,960 ft. The site has a gravel entrance, and it’s pull-through. It was a perfect location beside a wooded canyon, and very quiet. I only saw a few vehicles go by each day. I had 2 bars of Verizon, signal strength -115 dB, but 4G was only 3 Mbps down and 2 up.

There is free water and a dumpster at Jacob Lake (Forest Service) Campground and at the Jacob Lake gas station, which also has very expensive propane. There are no dump stations in the area. I dumped at the Chevron in Kanab, and got propane at Amerigas. Honey’s Marketplace in Kanab is a well-stocked, but expensive grocery store.

Sunday night stay, 5/13/18

This is a beautiful spot to camp, although due to the elevation, it's still a bit chilly mid-May (at least when we were there). We had no problem driving FR225 in our little van, but noticed the road did a slow climb. Passing the first and second spots closer to the main road (both empty), we drove back to explore other sites, and there was only one other RV camper back farther. Stopping at another site past them, it was just too windy, so decided to go back down to the first sites. Took the the nice big spot, close to main road (Hwy 89A).

This spot, as shown in the pictures, is nice, large and fairly level, with a fire ring of rocks. Access easy for this one; maybe not as easy for the sites farther back. There was some grass area around the large dirt area. It was quiet at night, but in the day, there was a fair amount of traffic on Hwy 89A. We had no cell service (AT&T).

We just went up the hill and found an open flat space that was perfect for 2 nights. Close to Jacobs's Lake fuel and convenience stop. Dirt road and some deep ruts, so go slow. Pretty sure you can camp at any site on the forest roads. It says no fires, but that appears to be ignored frequently. We could still hear the hwy a little. We didn't see anyone the first night, but 3 cars went by the next night. This was in early June 2018.

(36.7440558,-112.1764837)
We read the reviews and went north on FS257
Maybe a mile. The road was dry and pretty good. (Beware if it is wet though. I can imagine it would be sloppy in spots). I crawl anyway, but it maybe took 10 minutes to find a good spot. There were a few along the way, but we wanted farther from the highway. Nice and level an so quiet! We heard a few coyote howls way off in the distance at night. Nothing to explore here but desert though. We rode the dirt bike 60 miles and found a lot of nothing. We tried to get to White Pocket, but the sand was so deep we had to turn around. It would take a serious 4wd to get up that road! It is very dry here. No streams anywhere.
The N Rim of the canyon is way less crowded than the S Rim and this is a good place to stay for that. It is a long road in though. Jacob Lake Inn is a must visit. Great food, really great bakery goods, and a staff of friendly, energetic young people that will impress.

Coming from the Netherland, with a smal Rental RV!
We missed the official Forest Road 225 and would not drive back. So we thake the next road on the left. It was a nice place to stay!! It is free to park in National Forest, so we stayed here this night.
The GPS is: 36.735962, -112.189515

No toilet / no water / no bathroom sink / no shower / no table / rocks fire pit / easy access / middle shade.

We stayed there mid-June, on the road to Zion National Park. It was a very convenient place, we were alone, it's really flat, and there is a fire pit made with rocks. We can hear the road, but there was not so much traffic. Dark was really good and stars incredible. Good spot!

If you live off Solar like we do you’ll need to do a lot of scouting to find adequate sites in this North Rim area. Many of the NF sites are in the trees and would get less than an hour of power. We found NF-225 Extremely rutted from summer rains and found more suitable sites especially for solar across the hwy. on NF-257. Upon exiting the hwy to the north for 257, take the right fork and go about 300 yards to the cattle guard and take a right along the fence to find 3-4 adequate solar sites. Our site: 36.7353520 -112.1696722 was the last of the sites before the cattle fence. Not a great road but doable.
Upon further ‘scouting’ we found NF- 247 just a bit West was good road and had multiple sites in an open meadow that would be great for solar. A bit ‘undeveloped’ there were stone fire rings and good access from road just needed more ‘use’ by campers like us.

The forest service is doing a Lot of thinning and clearing, especially on NF-257 past the cattle guard, making for some Excellent opportunities for us boondockers to ‘develop’ some very good camping sites for the future. I would predict that NF-247 & 257 may become the best camping in this area in the future. I would add them as separate areas on Campendium but don’t know how in the app.