On a top-level basis the first thing I want to know is whether there is any public land in the area I”m planning to visit. Search For Public Land Our Benchmark maps show public land in easy-to-see color-coded areas The US Public Lands App shows boundaries and roads. It’s a multi-step process that starts with figuring out if there is any public land in the area I want to visit, then works down into the details of which office manages the land and then (finally) exactly where to go. There are easier/short-cut methods too (which I’ll list at the bottom), but knowing how to do this from scratch is something every newbie boondocker should learn. My #1 method of finding boondocking spots is what I call a “tops down” method. There are a few other agencies that allow select boondocking, but these two are the biggest and easiest to start with as a newbie. The vast majority of these lands are out west which is why most of the hard-core boondockers are out here. The two biggest tracts of public land that allow boondocking are the lands owned by BLM (Bureau Of Land Management) and National Forest. BLM administers around 248 million acres of land, with National Forest around 193 million acres of land. There are no hookups and no developed campgrounds, but there ARE rules and stay limits, plus not all public land allows you to do this.

Also known as “dispersed camping” there are many, many tracts of public land allow this in the USA. It’s mostly out west!įor those not in the know, boondocking is the art of driving your rig into the wilds and camping for free on public land. Here we go with Part I -> Finding Where To Go Public Land ownership across the US. Initially I though this would be one long post, but it’s actually turned into a 3-4 part, ~8000-word epic so I’ll be releasing it in several blog posts over the next few weeks. How will we know where to go? What if we get stuck? How do we know if it’s legal? So, in my attempt to take a different twist on this whole subject I thought I would approach it from the point of view of the total beginner -> the RVer who’s never boondocked and is doing their very first attempt. Once, a long, long time ago (or maybe not that long ago?) we were total green-horn newbies and the very thought of bringing our 33,000 lb rig out into the desert was terrifying. So, you can see why us bloggers write about it.Īt this point in our RV lives I would call ourselves well-seasoned boondockers, but we haven’t always been this way. That’s because winter is the perfect time to be in the southwest desert and given how how much public land there is out here, it’s just such an easy, gorgeous (and inexpensive) way to spend the season. I’ve written alot of boondocking (aka free camping in the wilds) posts over the years, and during winter pretty much all the big bloggers out there do the same thing. Januby libertatemamo 126 Comments The joy of boondocking Boondocking For Newbies Part I -> Finding Where To Go

Rv boondocking locations