Boondocking Paradise

Being outfitted to camp without hook-ups for long periods of time makes us work hard at finding spots to camp for free. We spent most of the last year in Michigan, Canada, and the northeast and southeast parts of the country. It was really hard finding good places to camp on public lands. We managed to find good spots in some national forests (Hiawatha, Oconee, Ocala) and even on some private property (Rhinebeck Aerodrome, Inn at Little Washington), but for the most part we were stuck at campgrounds. While campgrounds sound like fun to a lot of people, they really aren't that great to us. There's usually too much noise, too many campfires, too many barking dogs, too many people, and too many dollars paid for few to no facilities.

Now that we're finally back in the west, we can't believe how easy it is to find great places to camp. Where we used to search for days to find one decent spot we now routinely find multiple spots within a few hours. It's like life is one big Easter egg hunt now. We haven't hooked up to an electric outlet in six weeks and may not for the rest of the summer. Finding free places to dump our tanks and fill our water tanks is also easy.

Even this roadside picnic area in Texas gave us great views and a quiet evening before moving on the next day. Even if staying over one night isn't really boondocking, you can't even find places like this on the east coast where you can spend a pleasant night.

In Nevada, basically the entire state is a boondocking opportunity. While we were in Great Basin National Park, we found free sites all over the place in BLM, National Forest and even in the National Park property.

This spot next to a stream and a grove of silver aspens worked well for us for two and a half weeks.

There was more hiking for us and the dogs than we could cover in a year. We went hiking on one of the most popular trails in the park on Saturday over Memorial Day Weekend and didn't see another person.

We also had a nice dinner view in the backyard.

One of the many sites we found for boondocking near Great Basin in Nevada had some abandoned pavement in the middle of a BLM sagebrush desert at the foot of the mountains. This spot would handle just about any size rig or a group.

In Oregon we stayed mostly in the southeastern part of the state. There were ample boondocking spots all around Crater Lake and Klamath Falls. We'll definitely be back to finish some hiking we didn't get to at Crater Lake.

One place we lingered for a while was a nice little spot right next to the Williamson River.

Idaho offers so many places to stop for a night or multiple days that I'm not sure why anyone would use a campground here unless they absolutely had to. Here are a few examples.

Although part of the reason to boondock is to find those out of the way places where you're all alone (especially at night), we're finding spots where we could easily camp with other people. We'll eventually be looking for kindred spirits people who like to camp off-grid, do some fishing, go on day hikes, grill local products for dinner and sit around a campfire at night.