Grand Canyon / North Rim | Wild Camping

I made it in a Prius with no problems. The view is amazing. It was definitely worth the drive here. I agree with the previous review otherwise.

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This spot is quite literally on the very edge of the Grand Canyon’s north rim. There’s a fire ring, and other than that, vast flatness with little bushes and grasses and then a steep drop off into the canyon.

There are two other wild camping stops on iOverlander near here, but I wanted to make sure I added this one for more accurate coordinates of where we stayed, since the other two felt like they were lacking in some helpful descriptiveness.

The road in is just about 25 miles of ROUGH rock. The first 20 miles are washboardy over average sized gravel / rock, so you have to take it slow, and it’s just very loud. At points you go over hills during this. But by about mile 20 ish, you start hitting BIG rock. Big, pointy rocks right in the path that you have to navigate around or over verrrry slowly. They are sharp in shape, but the edges are rounded, so we went over them quite slow.

We have 2WD with high clearance and slightly better than road tires (Ford e250 van). So we did navigate this okay, but it added about 2 hours to our drive time just to get down this road. There were many times where we started doubting the reviews saying it was “20 miles on a dirt road but worth it”.

I would ABSOLUTELY not arrive after dark. Theres only a handful of places you could pull off and they’re all about 20 miles in if you get stuck (otherwise you’re reversing back out). And whatever your GPS tells you your arrival time is, add two hours for the road in.

On this road I had absolutely no ATT service for the first 10 ish miles. From there I had some service every few miles. Once we got to our actual site, I had service again.

So like I said. We weren’t sure if the reviews were true saying it was worth it. But then we got there. And for us, I think it was worth it. If we were in a low clearance vehicle, not at all worth it. If we got a flat from the sharpness and had to walk a few miles to get service, probably not worth it. But if you’re equipped with the right gear and vehicle, and know what to expect, and definitely if you’re staying for a while, this is SO worth it. I never thought I’d be able to stay somewhere looking into the canyon. And there’s absolutely no one near us, so it feels like our private Grand Canyon. (There are two other people camping in both of the other 2 spots listed nearby in iOverlander, but they each have their own chunk of the rim and they look like ants to us from here).

The space is big enough for an RV but I’m not sure how an RV would do on that dirt road. There’s some tight turns and steep hills.

And lastly - we have a puppy. He likes it here. Plenty of soft ground to dig, but make sure your pup is tethered since there are steep drop offs right nearby. We also found one cactus so far that we’re keeping him away from (he’s like a cactus magnet).

Sunrise, sunsets, and stars — all unbelievable. So far away from anything at all means there’s a calm, quiet, stillness that I’ve never experienced elsewhere.

If you can do it, DO IT! It’s amazing.

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