NEWS

The latest news from the Help Desk team

The State of Tennessee will soon make it illegal to camp on public property. A new law goes into effect on July 1, 2022. House Bill 0978, and Senate Bill 1610 was originally written in 2021 in response to riots that took place throughout the country in 2020. Those riots hit the Volunteer State hard, […]

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Beginning Thursday, June 24, 2021, the entire Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest is closing due to extreme fire danger under historically dry conditions. The Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest lies in the eastern portion of Arizona, bordering with New Mexico. More than two dozen fires have started on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in the last few days. Two of […]

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The very-popular Alabama Hills, a dispersed camping area in the Eastern Sierra Mountains of California, is now closed for all camping due to a CodeRED Alert as a result of the nearby Alabama Fire. The Inyo County Sheriff is now ordering all existing campers and recreationists to evacuate the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area near […]

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Nevada BLM announced yesterday it is asking to public to submit their photos of Nevada BLM lands for to be included in an upcoming Travel Planner. The promotion is co-operative between Nevada Bureau of Land Management and Travel Nevada, a publication of the Nevada Commission on Tourism. Winning photos will be printed in Travel Nevada’s […]

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On Thursday, May 13, 2021, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it shut down dispersed camping in five (5) areas of Colorado, covering Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, claiming recent visitors had destroyed and contaminated much of these areas. “…National Forest visitors created thousands of new campsites as they pulled off roads and damaged resources, […]

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You should make reservations for camping as far in advance as possible. If 2020 was any indication of how the COVID-19 pandemic created a surge in camping, it’s going to continue for 2021. USA Today reports that both state and national parks across the country are urging people to make their reservations as far in […]

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Instead, keep at least one site in each state your “secret boondocking site”. Don’t share this site on FreeRoam, or Campendium, et al. The reason why is because boondocking is getting tougher to find. COVID-19 changed the United States in many ways. It pushed more Americans into camping and RVing. Instead of going to Disney […]

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Aside from how gorgeous Flaming Gorge is, the beauty of camping there is that much of it is free. The problem is finding a campsite that isn’t already taken, or already congested with RVs, or somewhat close to town, or finding a place that has usable cellular data. That’s when it gets tough. Flaming Gorge […]

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While campgrounds fill up fast at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, it’s not really that hard to find available free camping. You just have to know where to look. Sash and I pulled into Portneuf Lower, a free campground run by Idaho Department of Fish & Game, located only two miles away from downtown Lava Hot […]

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(Cover photo by Dave Hensley) My plan to camp at (or by) Grand Teton National Park was something I thought I’d realize this Spring. The photo from Campendium (see example) looked all so inspiring and idyllic. I was sold on the romanticism of the American West and the idea of free camping. Could I actually […]

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