Tom's Best Spring Road - Dispersed Camping

We got to Tom's Best Spring Road on Tuesday morning and found that the site that we had scouted out and determined to be our favorite on Monday afternoon was still available. We drove Gracie with the Jeep hooked up from Camp Lutherwood to Tom's Best Spring Road with the plan to stop at the first pull-off and disconnect the Jeep to go see if the site was available. Unfortunately, another vehicle was coming out the road when we got to that pull-off, and they pulled into the pull-off to allow us to get by (we had *not* noticed on Monday afternoon how narrow the main road was for two vehicles to pass when one of the vehicles is a class A motorhome!). Amazingly enough, that happened at the second pull-off too, and the third pull-off had a trailer parked (camping) in it! We were almost to the side road where we would turn to get to the site when we came to the 4th pull-off, which was thankfully empty! We unhooked the Jeep, drove over and found the site unoccupied, and went back to get Gracie.

We did a bit of maneuvering to get Gracie in the best location to get maximum sun exposure to the solar panels...

...and then, after we were parked, when we put the jacks down, we found out that there was a hole right under where the left front jack should be supported by the ground! We tried different things to shore it up, including (shown here) shoveling some dirt, but... even after all of that, the leveling system said that there was "excess slope". The back tires were up on a little bit of a hill, and the leveling system couldn't compensate enough to get us level -- and it was leaving the steps to the front door way up high too. So... we decided we could move Gracie a little bit to get the back tires down off the little mound, the front jack out of the hole, and everything went more smoothly after that.

Gracie in our site

We are at a Y between two roads, which means we get some traffic going by but it isn't a real busy area -- maybe about 10-12 vehicles during the day on Tuesday.

And there is a view of Bryce Canyon from our site if you look through/above the trees.

Carl went up on the roof to see if the solar panels needed cleaning and decided that they are okay (the rig and Jeep are **filthy** but the roof isn't as bad). So, while he was up there, he decided to take the awning straps off just in case we decide we want to deploy the awning while we're here.

Carl wanted to get some practice flying the drone -- we are allowed to fly it in National Forest land (where we are now) as long as we aren't disturbing others, or wildlife, or being a nuisance. We weren't able to fly it much when we were near Mt Carmel Junction because it was quite windy. It is a bit windy here too, but not all the time.

The shots from the drone are not great -- we think because the lens probably got dust on it when it was taking off -- it is quite dusty here...

...but it is nice to get an overview of the site where we are parked.

At this point I was flying the drone... my first flight!

Let's just say that I had to concentrate! It wasn't exactly intuitive since we had the "front" pointing toward us in order to take pictures -- so the side-to-side and left-turn-right-turn knobs worked opposite from what my brain was thinking they should do... but at least I didn't crash it into a tree, or Gracie, or the ground -- all of which were certainly possible!

Later in the afternoon, we decided to take a walk around the "loop" that one of the roads at our "Y" makes with Tom's Best Spring Road... some of the views we saw -- I think this is towards Bryce.

This is towards Bryce too but it may be further south than Bryce is.

We think this is Bryce -- This was taken after we had walked up a small hill just behind Gracie.

There is a campsite up on top of that small hill -- but we don't think Gracie would make it up the hill!

Coming back "home".

We are enjoying our experiences with dispersed camping in National Forest land. This is in Dixie National Forest (I have not found out why it is named "Dixie").

Link to Google Map here

We are looking forward to visiting Bryce while we are here!