In the summer of 2018, on our long fifteen day road trip, we found ourselves planted in Mt Carmel Utah at a quaint motel and RV park. Mt. Carmel is located north of Fredonia Arizona and north of Kanab Utah on highway 89. Mt Carmel is seventeen miles from the east entrance to Zion National Park. Mt Carmel is also south of Glendale and south of Alton Utah. It is a sixty-nine minute drive from Bryce Canyon National Park.
Mt Carmel offers RV camping, cabins, and motel rooms. The RV sites offer full hook-ups and a picnic table. The park is small, so everything is close. So, that community shower/bathroom (by the way that is the cleanest and most spacious public wash house I have ever seen) is only steps away from every camper. That also means that your RV neighbor is pretty close as well.
Mt Carmel RV park is engulfed with beautiful white poplar trees that grow tall over the RV sites. These trees have leaves that are two tones (green on top and silver on the bottom). The leaves blew during our entire visit. As they blow all you can see is waving silver above your head. The leaves sung us to sleep each night and woke us in the morning. If a person can fall in love with a tree, I was pretty infatuated. Then the owners of the park told us the branches are very weak and fall frequently. Oh well, some love affairs are only meant to be brief.
Google describes Mt. Carmel Motel and RV park as “low-key”. I want to tell you that is a harsh description but it is honestly spot on. But we did not pick Mt Carmel for park amenities. We were among the amenities we wanted: we wanted Zion National Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Brice Canyon National Park. And this RV park put us close to all of that without having to pull our camper through the Carmel Tunnel in Zion National Park.
The neighboring communities provided what amenities we needed. Kanab (20 minutes away) had grocery stores, restaurants, and shopping. We even found a place to swap out tires for Roxie.
Mt Carmel Junction (two minutes away) offered a restaurant for meals we did not want to make ourselves. Orderville (four minutes away) had access to stores that met our quick/emergency needs. And…Mt Carmel Motel and RV park had an onsite post office so mailing those post cards to our loved ones home was so easy!
So, maybe “low-key” is an accurate description. But ‘”low-key” is just what we needed/wanted from our resting place in the south west corner of Utah. And after climbing Angel’s Landing, I needed a safe, comfortable place to land. Mt. Carmel Motel and RV Park provided that to us.
Roam With Friends 