How to camp for free

We have been on the road for five weeks now and have spent the majority of that time on bureau of land management/public lands, to avoid an overnight cost all together. We do book campgrounds to do our laundry, shower, or if there aren’t nearby free options for the activities we want to do. It took a little bit of time to get into a routine and be able to find our next stop easily and efficiently. Now, it’s just a quick search and we are pulling in to have a fire, cook dinner, enjoy the views and for the most part: have the land to ourselves.

The coolest places we have stayed have been at no cost to us. Being away from the RV parks, or crowded (and often overpriced) camping, has allowed us to connect to nature and have some really amazing experiences.

Here are our most helpful tools for finding free camping:

The iOverlander app

This is our go to app for finding dispersed campsites for three reasons.

1. When camping in dispersed areas, cell service can be difficult to come by. Trying to load an app during that time can be frustrating. iOverlander has all of the sites downloaded into their app, which allows you to view the site locations and information while offline! It uses vector based GPS to show your location in relation to the sites which is very useful when boondocking.

2. This app shows not only free and paid campsites but also shows other useful places like free water sources, laundry and restroom locations.

3. People will put their best “secret” locations in this app, you’ll find sites that will blow your mind! The comments and reviews for each of the sites are very useful too. You’ll know ahead of time if people have been there recently, if it is a noisy location, how difficult the road is etc.

The Campendium app

This app is a close second for us, it has many of the features that iOverlander does, however it requires cell signal to use it. The one benefit this app does offer is it shows pictures of the campsites, which can be very useful!

Between these two resources, (and by always talking to the locals or fellow travelers), we have been able to find locations that we never even anticipated we would be able to stay at. This has been the best road trip we’ve ever been on, since utilizing the public land, that is ours to share and take care of.

Let us know if this is helpful to you, and happy travels!