FreeRoam - Boondocking & Mor‪e‬ 12+

Nice tool

I mainly wanted this so that I could look up BLM land, so it gets 3 stars just for that.

It is lacking in a few areas.

1. It is annoying when apps don’t include an easy feedback feature. With something like camping, it can be dangerous or inconvenient if bad info can’t be changed.

Specifically- Mission Bay is not a free camping area. It should not even show up as such.

Now, there is a camp ground at Mission Bay, it is not listed and it cost over $100 a night.

2. The app is a good starting place, but then I have to go through another step to learn more about an area. Reviews are one thing. This needs to be improved because I still don’t feel right about camping somewhere that no one has left a comment about. This is especially true in S California. There seems to always be some restriction somewhere that isn’t widely known. I wouldn’t feel comfortable going to some random BLM land and setting up a shooting target, nor would I want to inadvertently set up camp on a shooting range.

Get it? I need a BLM map, this app does that, extra info is inconsistent.

Also, forests are shown but the names don’t display, adding another step to have to go to another map or forest site. Speaking of which, I hate maps that don’t have legends or names. With all filters off, I still see green areas in different shades. This is meaningless if a. I don’t see a name and b. If I don’t know what the green denotes.

Developer Response ,

Hi there, thanks for the constructive feedback!

For #1, we typically hope that people reach out in chat (via the "Social" page) or email from the contact page ([email protected]). Longer-term though, the goal is to give the community more power to edit these sort of things, similar to Wikipedia. I went ahead and deleted Misison Bayhttps://youtu.be/GvRNzOFAbpg?t=488

For #2, we started out only showing campgrounds that people have reviewed, but our top request was to add more campgrounds, so we added in more. Typically they'll have a link to the USFS/rec.gov website for more info, but it's definitely much more of a shot in the dark vs ones with reviews.

When you have the USFS (or BLM) overlay on, if you tap on whatever area you're curious about, there will be an info card that pops up on the bottom and if you click on the "Info" button on that it'll give you information about the national forest, ranger district, and even MVUMs if there are any. (Here's a video showing how to do it: https://youtu.be/GvRNzOFAbpg?t=488)

The green shades you see with the overlays off are just standard forests that are included in the base map which we don't have much control over (much like Google maps green forest areas that don't necessarily 100% match the USFS). The USFS overlay from the overlays menu is accurate though :)

Great idea

The areas we have been using it in, don’t seem to have many reviews or updates. We love the idea of this and try to leave reviews everywhere we go to help build up the app and make it more useful. I gave it 4 stars because it is a little buggy and the keyboard gets stuck in the way almost every time I use it. It’s also difficult to search with the search bar, the best way to find your location is to just pinch through on the map by yourself. Searching for a city by name in the search bar is useless. So I love the idea of this app and I love all the stuff it includes, especially pricing per campsite, cell signal, and road difficulty. But it’s buggy and annoying to use. Still one of the best campsite apps out there. Love the way it looks and the potential. Will still use it and update reviews as we go and hope for some app updates!

Great app!

This app is user driven, plus information from cell phone carriers, public sites, etc.

If the cell phone service doesn’t work, in an area where it is “supposed to,” then it is your carrier’s fault, not the app (the app does not give live updates on how well the cell phone service is functioning currently, since that has to do with a plethora of contributing factors).

Read all of the signage in your destination area. Since this is a user driven app, people can often times get it wrong and not notice that an area is not free or is restricted to “no overnight parking.”

Please don’t post private property areas even if it looks vacant, you’re sending someone to tresspass - In this day and age that could be deadly.

When using the free sites, please remember that other people use these as well and that if they arrived first, please give them their space. They did not choose that spot because you were there, please don’t add yourself to their well thought out and researched area, thus rendering it useless to them for all intents and purposes (which is so that we can get the heck away from each other : )

Thanks for reading this, campers! Stay safe when you go “Into the Wild!”