We get asked this more than almost anything else: how do you actually find places to camp out here? Not the destinations everyone already knows about — the pull-outs, the dispersed sites tucked off a spur road, the loop that connects three ghost towns nobody’s written up yet. The honest answer is we don’t have one magic app. We run a small stack of tools, cross-check them against each other, and trust one visual clue over all of them combined: a fire ring.
Start With a Region — That’s How We Find Places to Camp
Before we open any app looking for a specific campsite, we pick an area we want to explore — a mountain range, a mining district, a stretch of BLM land between two highways. Then we work three tools against each other: OnX Offroad for trails and crowd-sourced waypoints, Google Maps for the bigger picture and road context, and Google Earth for terrain in 3D. We’re looking for the ingredients that make a trip come together — a track that passes an interesting point of interest, connects to other trails instead of dead-ending, and has a realistic access point for a start/finish, loop, or in-and-out run.
Pro Tip
The Core Stack
OnX Offroad does most of the heavy lifting. We run the Android app in the vehicle and the Desktop Dashboard in a browser for planning at home — same account, same saved tracks and pins, synced between both. OnX carries thousands of miles of crowd-sourced trails and camp pins, which makes it easy to find spots other overlanders have already vetted. Google Maps and Google Earth get pulled in for satellite context and 3D terrain OnX doesn’t always show well, and a plain Google search rounds it out — trail reports, forum threads, recent trip write-ups. AI tools are useful here too, mostly for chewing through search results fast or summarizing a trail report instead of reading five tabs.
In practice it’s OnX and Google doing about 90% of the work, with a quick research pass afterward to get the historical overview and flag any known issues before we go — closures, access disputes, wash-outs, anything a five-year-old trail report wouldn’t catch.
What We Actually Run
Reading the Ground — The Fire Ring Never Lies
Apps get you close. The actual campsite decision happens on the ground, and there are tells you learn to spot: a pull-out wide enough for a rig, a cleared area free of brush, and the biggest giveaway of all — a fire ring. If a spot has one, someone’s already decided it works. Use the 3D and 2D map views before you commit to a site, too. A spot that looks flat on a 2D satellite image can turn out to be tilted enough to need blocks under your tires once you’re standing on it.
Don’t lock in on a single site. These are dispersed camping areas — first come, first served — and the whole area usually has two or three other decent spots nearby. Always have a backup, or better, two or three. Once the sun drops, finding a new campsite from scratch gets close to impossible. That’s a lesson we learned the hard way, and it’s the kind of mistake you only make once. For the broader ground rules on picking a site that’s already been impacted rather than creating a new one, our Leave No Trace guide covers what actually matters out there.
Heads Up
Building the Track — and Downloading It Before You Leave Service
Once a route looks solid, we build the track in OnX Offroad and drop pins with set icons and short descriptions — campsite, water, POI, hazard. The one step people skip and regret: download the maps for offline use before you lose signal. Your GPS position and any track you’ve already built will still show without a connection, but the map imagery itself won’t load if you didn’t grab it ahead of time. Do this at home on real WiFi, not standing at the trailhead on one bar.
Updating Pins as You Go
As we follow a track, we update pins with real-time notes — which campsites we actually visited, which ones aren’t worth a return trip, and which ones earn a description and a photo. Keep the notes short and useful: level or not, fire ring, cell data or none, fits 4–6 rigs, shade, any relevant trail notes. That format makes it fast to decide on a return visit or hand the info off to someone else running the same area. Fitting more rigs into a group camp is exactly the kind of planning that connects to trail etiquette — first-come-first-served works a lot better when everyone’s leaving good notes and not squatting on marginal ground.
A pinned campsite with real notes attached is worth more than any five-star review. You built it from being there.
Beyond the Apps — Sites Worth Checking
A handful of websites, free and paid, cover trails and camps with more depth than a quick app search — recent trail reports, condition updates, and local knowledge that fills gaps between app updates.
Sites We Check
One worth flagging: FreeRoam, a free-camping app a lot of overlanders used to recommend, is gone — it disappeared from app stores in 2022 and the site went fully dark by 2024. iOverlander has become the go-to replacement: free, crowd-sourced, and strong specifically on BLM dispersed sites and other boondocking spots, with real-time notes from other travelers on road conditions and site quality. It’s a good reminder that any tool in this list can disappear, which is exactly why we don’t lean on just one. If an app or site you’ve bookmarked stops updating, that’s your cue to cross-check with a second source before you drive out on old information.
The Short Version
OnX and Google handle about 90% of how we find places to camp and trails to run, with a quick research pass on top to catch anything historical or currently closed. Everything after that — the fire ring, the pull-out, the two backup sites — comes from being there and paying attention. The tools get you to the neighborhood. Reading the ground gets you the campsite. If you’re just starting to explore new territory, our Hidden Gems in the Mojave piece is a good next stop for places this exact process has already turned up.
