For anyone looking for actually free, no strings attached (and no subscription) camping, check https://freecampsites.net/ instead. It's a community wiki of free camp sites, usually on federal lands of various sorts (National Forests and BLM lands often have primitive campsites with fire rings and not much else). It's great for travel around national parks, especially. But please do leave no trace, pack out what you b…
Wow this resource is amazing. Looks like it works well for Canadian sites too. Thanks for sharing.
To add to all of this great info, to any prospective dispersed campers: please use high-quality, recent, ideally official maps of your choosing to ensure you're on the sort of land you think you are. Boundaries can change and notes on spots aren't always up to date. My area involves a mix of national park, national forest, DNR land, and private land, and I regularly see dispersed campers getting ticketed for unwittin…
That's a really good point. Although not every agency produces good dispersed campsite maps, they typically do have at least boundary maps on their website.
Avenza (iOS/Android app) has done all the heavy lifting - you can download area maps and your position will be shown correctly on the map if you allow location services. Most of the BLM/USFS land I've been to recently produce compatible maps.
I think that's a pretty privileged viewpoint. That's $100/year of disposable income for maybe a parking spot where you want to go, maybe available when you want to go. That's definitely not a trivial dollar amount for something like that, especially when there are free alternatives (strip mall parking lots, rest stops, federal lands, moving between neighborhoods, etc.). Then there's the question of being able to offe…
Yeah, if I'm going to be honest, if you can't afford $100/yr you can't afford to host, so you're not going to be a contributor to their community. Looks like the filter is working.
Not only that but for many, paying $100 a year would bring a sense of security of choosing a legit service, service which could be very unsafe without a proper identification and that’s where the registrant’s payment could establish some traceability in case something goes bad. Paying $100 also puts a price on account abuse for registrants too. I don’t think paying for a service is a bad thing and don’t think it is expensive at all. Someone has to maintain the service, even if that’s a one dev shop. I don’t consider myself priviledged at all as I’m not in a very rosy financial situation and think twice or more before spending any dollar. Ok, I have food and shelter, I’m not dirt poor but do live paycheck to paycheck as modestly as I can. There’s an utopic idea of free community service but that requires someone to put work in, either volunteer or pay some.
Everything you wrote is bang on - please, please, PLEASE: Leave no trace. Haul out your garbage. Don't shoot, shit, or camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers. Don't make fire rings where they already exist. Abide by fire restrictions that might vary by county. Stay on existing, marked hiking and motor vehicle trails. As a resident of the West (which has huge swaths of "public" land) I am so tired of folk…
> PLEASE: Leave no trace Someone once mentioned "Leave it nicer than you found it" as a life philosophy, maybe in relation to Japan? I'm not sure anymore. I've taken to that, like when going for a forest walk, even if I pick up literally one tiny plastic wrapper, that's still leaving the forest better than I found it. Of course, pristine is pristine, but if there is trash, go for that good feeling and consider an eas…
Thoreau, in Walden, on borrowing an axe: "The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it."
A high school English teacher used this passage to impress upon us this same philosophy of "leave it nicer than you found it" (in particular, I remember him telling us that our parents leave us in his care and he saw it as his job to "return us sharper than we were received") and it's one of those rare moments that made such a deep impression on me I remember it often even decades later.
Everything you wrote is bang on - please, please, PLEASE: Leave no trace. Haul out your garbage. Don't shoot, shit, or camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers. Don't make fire rings where they already exist. Abide by fire restrictions that might vary by county. Stay on existing, marked hiking and motor vehicle trails. As a resident of the West (which has huge swaths of "public" land) I am so tired of folk…
> PLEASE: Leave no trace Someone once mentioned "Leave it nicer than you found it" as a life philosophy, maybe in relation to Japan? I'm not sure anymore. I've taken to that, like when going for a forest walk, even if I pick up literally one tiny plastic wrapper, that's still leaving the forest better than I found it. Of course, pristine is pristine, but if there is trash, go for that good feeling and consider an eas…
Yes, this. I take LNT very seriously, and when I am in an area where someone didn't, it's still on me to clean it up. If I don't, then I'm leaving a trace (not one that I caused, but a trace nonetheless).
Everything you wrote is bang on - please, please, PLEASE: Leave no trace. Haul out your garbage. Don't shoot, shit, or camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers. Don't make fire rings where they already exist. Abide by fire restrictions that might vary by county. Stay on existing, marked hiking and motor vehicle trails. As a resident of the West (which has huge swaths of "public" land) I am so tired of folk…
> Don't make fire rings where they already exist. I think you mean that we should only use extant fire rings and not make new ones?
No, in a lot of areas when you are dispersed camping you are allowed to make fire rings. You could be camping 20 miles deep into the woods. There will not magically be a fire ring there for you. However, if there does happen to be a fire ring close by, use that one and not create a new one.
1 host = 1 credit looks like a problem, similar to how it can be hard to build up ratio on well established private torrent trackers. The distribution of credits will not be even with many hosts building up credits for some nebulous future trip. How do those actually travelling around earn credits past the first 3 complimentary? Bonus point systems or just ignoring ratio solved this from my pov for trackers, the 1 to…
The idea is hosts sell off their excess credits if they don’t want them.