We prefer to camp in the middle of nowhere, so we try to avoid official campgrounds. Almost all our camping has been in places we don’t know and haven’t previously visited. It can be surprisingly tricky to find the middle of nowhere in a place you’ve never been! Here’s how we go about it: we find an area of publicly-owned land near where we want to be on google maps and zoom in.
Most of the time, National Forest and BLM lands are easy to spot on Google Maps, just on our phone. We try to verify that camping there is legal, either by driving there and reading signs or googling “XXX national forest dispersed camping” which almost always points you to the forest service website specific to the area you’re looking at. The land around Flaming Gorge (camp numero tres) looked to be ‘National Recreation Area’ which sounds public enough for us. Zoomed into a particular, kinda randomly chosen, peninsula:
Then we turn on the satellite view and start following dirt roads until we see an area that looks like a camp. Sometimes it’s a wide spot in the vegetation, sometimes you see other campers there, sometimes you just see a little fire ring.
I zoomed into that cool looking peninsula and saw some roads, and, with a little hunting, a fire ring. So we went there!!
Who’s got two thumbs and is permanently wearing a white tee? This guy:
It was a little too windy up there so we camped around the corner in the beach. A seriously awesome campsite easily found at your fingertips? Yes please!
"Purposefully Unrushed" 