Camp for Free Forever –Dispersed Camping Explained
RV living is fantastic, but it hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, State and National Parks cancelled our reservations because they were closing. We found the answer in dispersed camping!
If you try dispersed, you’ll want solar panels. There’s no electricity in the wild.
We don’t have a lot of dispersed camping experience yet. We've done boondocking, which means parking where you're not hooked up to anything.
Dispersed camping means camping outside a designated campground, usually on public lands. You will have no hookups or facilities. The two places that allow dispersed camping are USDA National Forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Most of these areas are in specific parts of the country. A lot of the National Forests are on the West Coast.
Dispersed camping restrictions
There are limitations to how long you can stay at dispersed camping areas. You can stay in BLM lands for up to 14 days. National Forests only allow 16-day stays.
You need to camp at least 100 feet away from a water source, meaning close to rivers and streams.
Some places have signage like this one. You’ll want to make sure that you respect these rules because the lands are protected.
When you’re dispersed camping, you’ll have no restrooms or trash disposal areas. So, you’ll need to ensure that you leave the area tidy.
Dispersed camping is generally allowed within a mile of an existing campground or a population center.
How to find dispersed camping sites
You can find a place using maps and some internet tools and then visit it before you hook up your rig. This is important if you have a large rig because there are places where you could only camp with a tent.
Dispersed camping isn't only for RVs. If you have a tent, you could go into a National Forest and connect with nature. Some Dispersed camping sites are in secluded areas. The roads are so crazy that you can barely drive a big rig.
The Dyrt app is great for planning your trips and finding suitable dispersed camping sites.
The app shows you the number of campgrounds in your area. The pro version, which costs $36 a year, lets you find National Forest land and BLM land for dispersed camping.
The Dyrt App allows you to download offline maps. So, if you have no internet, you can still find your way around.
You can use the Satellite view of the app to check how a dispersed campsite looks before you go. Sometimes you can see little white spots that are RVs.
You want to contact a Forest Ranger station or a BLM office to know for sure if you're allowed to camp at a spot. But if you find the site using an app like The Dyrt, you're probably safe to camp there for free.
As always, we look forward to sharing more of our adventures with you.
Check out our YouTube video below for more dispersed camping tips and tricks:
