Summer Camp Series: Dispersed Camping with Felicia Fullwood

0:02Welcome to our summer mini-series all about camping.

0:12In these bonus episodes, we're going beyond the standard tent and campsite setup, from bikepacking and rafting to camping with kids and dispersed car camping. Over the next four weeks, we're talking to people who are camping their own way, sharing what works, what doesn't, and how you can try it too. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

0:52The first time that we ever went to Spurs camping was just in my SUV actually before we bought our van. And that was probably the most like liberating moment for me. I just remember like vividly laying in there. I remember the blanket I had around me being like, I can't believe that I'm just now finding out about this.

1:12Felicia Fullwood went dispersed camping for the first time when she was 24 years old, and it changed her life. Dispersed camping, also called wild camping, is when you set up camp somewhere that isn't a designated campground. These spots are typically free and tend to be much more private. Plus, you can get even closer to that off-grid wilderness experience. The catch is that you have to be completely self-sufficient for this kind of adventuring. You need to haul in your own water, handle your own waste, and carry out your own trash. While dispersed camping can take a little more preparation and know-how, it's a perfect way to escape the summer crowds and get off the beaten path.

1:54Seven years ago, Felicia and her boyfriend started dispersed camping and living on the road full-time. She had just walked away from a corporate job to pursue adventure photography, a move that launched her career as a content creator, blogger, and general outdoor enthusiast. On her YouTube and Instagram page, Felicia shares van life inspiration and advice for fellow travelers. Her love for dispersed camping started a few years ago on her first wild camping trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The experience opened her eyes to the freedom and flexibility this lifestyle offers.

2:34Felicia Fullwood, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm excited to talk to you about dispersed camping. Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here. Tell me about the first time you ever went dispersed camping. I was 24 at the time, I think. And my friend Roman's like, hey, yeah, you can just disperse camp wherever in Michigan. We have all these national forests and state forest land that you can go on. And I'm like, what? You just pick a spot in the middle of nowhere? He's like, sure, I'll take you. And he took us out there and we camped in our little SUV. It was like a Chevy Equinox back at the time, tiny.

3:06And we slept in the car. And I'll never forget that night sitting there being like, oh, my gosh, because I had lived in Michigan my entire life. And I didn't know that we had this beautiful entire peninsula that I had never explored and that you could just go and camp wherever you wanted. And that was a huge game changer for me. After that first dispersed camping trip, what did you learn? I mean, it was magical, but is there anything you would have done differently? Sure. I think the biggest thing is that I learned that I needed a lot less in life than I thought. Like I, I always thought that by 25, I'd have this, this job, this car, this partner, you know, um, everything figured out by then.

3:44And at 24, I was sitting in my Jeep, like far from that. I did, you know, have a job that I loved. I'm a partner that I loved and I was doing what I loved. However, I didn't have everything else figured out. But for whatever reason, just sitting in there was such a liberating moment, feeling like this is really all that I need. If I'm able to explore the places that I want to go, camp in my vehicle for free with the person that I love, that's really all that I needed in life. How do you prep for a dispersed camping trip? I would identify the area that you want to go, make sure that it's legal to camp there and know the restrictions of how long you can stay, what's around, whether there are, you know, water resources, trash resources.

4:26But other than that, I would say just being prepared, making sure that you bring something to pack in your trash, making sure that you understand there won't be any bathroom facilities and how you're going to handle that. And to know, you know, for safety, I would advise probably trying to plan so that you can arrive before dark so that you know what you're looking for. And then also determine what you want to do. Just having an overall plan of what the goal is, whether that be to get away for solitude or whether that be to go find community. It completely depends on what your goals are. And then I have a giant master checklist of all the bare necessities that we need.

5:04And we pack everything up in one day, make sure we have what we need, and we hit the road. How do you prep your vehicle? Arguably one of the most important things to do before a long road trip is get your car checked and make sure that you're road ready because that's something that we didn't do the first time that we drove across the country and we had quite a few downfalls. We got a flat tire and we went to change our flat tire and we realized that our spare tire did not fit the car. When we went to change it, my boyfriend's like, this doesn't fit on the vehicle. And I'm like, what do you mean?

5:38And he's like, it won't fit. We had to call somebody. Then we were in an area that didn't have any tires. So we were stranded in a Walmart parking lot for two days in South Dakota in 96 degree heat. And then we also didn't have good brakes. We started going down the mountains. We were in the Beartooth Mountains and we started heading back down. And I started to feel a little something going on with the brakes. And we somehow made it down the mountain pass, took it to a mechanic. And he said that we had absolutely no metal left at all and that we were just straight grinding and he didn't know how we even made it.

6:11So needless to say, we spent about a week and a half of our month road trip stranded because we didn't prepare the vehicle and do our due diligence to check everything. So really quickly, what's on this list? Like, how do you get ready? What's this checklist look like? Yeah, yeah. So we try to keep it as minimal as possible. I try to keep like a capsule wardrobe when I'm in the van in terms of clothing where I only have, you know, a week or two worth of outfits that I can kind of mix and match as well as tons of camera gear. That's what we do. Both my boyfriend and I both have a full camera gear full of lenses, audio recording, drones, stuff like that.

6:49We also just bought two brand new mountain bikes and we put a bike rack on the back. So now we have a bunch of mountain bikes. We have a stand up paddle board. We have we have a pizza oven that we have in the We have like an overhead compartment. It's a little uni pizza oven that we can whip out and make fresh wood-fired pizzas while we're camping. I don't even have like a wood-fired pizza here. This is amazing. You should get one. We bought it for at home. And then when we realized it's not that hard to travel with, we could bring this with us. And, you know, it's a whole other business. You could start while you're on the road.

7:22Yeah, there's this event called Camp Shred at the local Cardiff campgrounds where I live. And it's mostly surf brands. But now there's a whole van life overland section. And there was like wood-fired pizza ovens and batteries and fridge. We're inspiring people. Yeah, and like coffee solutions that I'd never seen. It was really cool. I think the biggest part of overlanding and van life and dispersed camping is that you can have all the same comforts from home in a vehicle. Okay, so you bring your pizza oven, you bring like the essentials, the pizza oven, the coffee maker. The toaster oven has been a huge game changer.

7:59Instead of having a big oven, you can make cinnamon rolls, cookies, all those little luxuries that you can't usually make while you're camping. It's incredible. How do you plug it in? We have an entire power system. Actually, my boyfriend built out our van completely from scratch. And we basically have a house battery that's attached to the alternator of our van. So when we drive, it charges. and we also have two solar panels up top that continue to give us 24-7 power so we can be off grid for a couple weeks at a time as long as it's sunny, which has been fantastic. What's your sleep setup while dispersed camping?

8:33Sure. So that was probably the biggest thing when we were thinking about building our van is having a comfortable place to sleep. We have a queen size bed in our van and it's not one that you can break down and turn into a couch. When we're in the van, most of our time is spent outside. And when we're not, we're sleeping. And I want to be able to sleep well when we're in the van. That was my biggest priority. So what do you do for a bathroom? Usually within the leave no trace principles, we just use the bathroom outside and then we have the bucket toilet as an emergency system. What does that mean?

9:06So basically the bucket that you put a trash bag in and we use wood pellets that are for horse bedding. So it basically turns into sawdust with any liquid and you're able to just throw that away immediately. It's the cleanest and in my opinion the easiest way to have a bathroom system in a vehicle. But sometimes you're not near a trash can for weeks, days? So that's what I meant about as an emergency situation. Like one time it happened to us when we were in a severe storm where we literally couldn't get out of our van and I did have to use the emergency bathroom while out in the woods. But other than that, we just use the bathroom outside.

9:44Okay. So when you're in the wild, you just go outside and you dig a hole and you pack out everything? Yes. Your waste, you bury. There's some places where you're going to be hiking or camping, like in a canyon where you have to take a wag bag or take everything out. Absolutely. Yes. It depends on where you're at and what the regulations are. But yes, you pack out all of your trash, including toilet paper. So there's different ways that you can do it. I have like a just I just use plastic bags that I will put my toilet paper in and pack that out with us. And that gets packed out with all of our trash and gets thrown away on our way out when we're able to find a trash can.

10:23But we typically don't go more than three or four days without checking in at a trailhead or something that has somewhere that you're able to dispose of your trash. So that hasn't been an issue for us so far.

10:48Let's talk about safety. What sort of things do you bring with you? Because you are in the middle of nowhere and, you know, a situation where there's an emergency is where you can't extract yourself. So what do you do to really just stay safe so you don't have to involve EMS and you guys can really handle most of things by yourselves? For sure. And I think the biggest thing is to know where you're going and kind of anticipate what could potentially happen. There's a lot of great resources as well, like the Garmin inReach Mini. So if you are going out of service, there's, you know, satellite phones available so that you can have contact with the emergency services if you do need it.

11:28but for most situations like we got stuck in Oregon on the coast I went off of a mountain road and the van was teetering like almost to flip basically and we tried everything in our power to do it ourselves but we did end up needing to call a tow truck to get that but that is when we learned the lesson of if we would have had traction boards if we would have had a shovel or anything that would have been able to help us prevent needing to call somebody ourselves we We didn't have any of those things, unfortunately. So I would say to know where you're going. And if you're going somewhere that has, you know, sand, make sure you have traction boards.

12:05If you're going somewhere that's snowy, make sure you're bringing a shovel. It sounds kind of self-explanatory, but it's not. When you're on the fly and you're just trying to get to a camping spot, you don't always think about those things. What are the best ways to find spots for dispersed camping? I would say knowing the public land in the area is number one. but also having the right tools and resources available. Like there's plenty of apps. I love OnX Off-Road. That's one of my favorite ones. ReGrid is another app. The Public Lands app is only like$4.99 in the app store. And you can look on your phone and it gives you like a green overlay where there's public land.

12:42But they also have like public sourced camping apps that kind of have people leave reviews where they've camped before. There's a lot of apps that kind of let you know where you can park when you're on the road. but there's also apps specifically focused for dispersed camping. Like I said, OnX Off-Road would probably be my best recommendation there. You can do everything from understand the road, the trail navigation, offline maps. You can save and pinpoint things. But I would say that the public land overlays and being able to determine where public land is near you is by far the most important step to start dispersed camping.

13:18How do you know where you're allowed to go and where you can't go? Sure. There's so many different types of public land and it depends on where you're at in the state. Like here in Michigan, we actually don't have BLM, which is the Bureau of Land Management, which is public land out west. It's really popular in like Nevada, all out west. But out here, we really have national forests and state forests. So the three places that you can camp are national forest, state forest land, and then BLM land, as well as state game areas. But there's a ton of public resources for you to be able to find this out.

13:52They all have their set of rules based on how long you can stay. And it's pretty easy to find that kind of information on their website, as well as there's tons of resources out there. I actually have a bunch of resources on my blog, kind of how to figure out where you can camp for free in all of the U.S. and then also specifically in Michigan. Do you have a story about your most dreamy spot you've found? I do and it's in California so two years ago we were chasing the super bloom it was like this time of year and um where were we beforehand um I can't remember exactly where we were but we decided all of a sudden to just send it to California for the super bloom I was doing a photography job that required us to shoot wildflowers and it's like the chorizo plains And it's just these mountains that literally turned purple and orange and yellow with like wildflowers.

14:45Apparently we caught it on like a really crazy year where that typically doesn't happen. But long story short, we went up this crazy gnarly road. We don't have a four-wheel drive van. We have an older van that's been beat up. It's not, you know, made to go down crazy gnarly mountain roads. But we just saw what was up there and we were like, we have to send it up there. And we took our chances. And I have it's documented on YouTube, the trail that we took. And I cannot believe to this day that the van made it. And I just remember shaking, white knuckling it the entire ride up there. And then we got up there and the wildflower bloom was absolutely insane.

15:21And then the next morning we woke up to like a cloud inversion of clouds at the sunrise. And it was honestly one of the most insane things I've ever seen in my life. And to be able to just wake up and have that at my front door was insane. It was like the universe was telling me you're exactly where you need to be. OK, so don't try this at home, but maybe try this at home. I don't know what to tell you. I mean, life's all about getting outside of your comfort zone and doing the things that scare you. And it's like, you know, worst case scenario, you would have had to flag someone down and you would have figured it out.

15:52It's not like you would have been stranded in the wilderness. We were prepared and we knew what we were getting ourselves into. What happens when you go to a site and it's occupied? Like, how do you pivot? Yeah, so that's why I really love to try to educate people to find your own spots and to not necessarily always go to the ones that you find on the camping apps, especially on any anywhere close to a national park, near a holiday, on the weekends. And we're lucky that we're able to kind of pick and choose when we camp so we can go during the week where it's less busy. But that oftentimes happens where you arrive at a camping spot and there will be other people.

16:26And it depends. If it's a really tight spot where you can only fit one car, you have to keep moving and find another spot. If it feels like the person might be friendly and maybe you guys could camp next to each other, you can, you know, talk to them and see how they feel about having a neighbor. But many times people will just wake up and you'll have somebody parked right next to you. You always have to have a backup plan. And that's why I like to tell people to arrive before it's dark. So you're not searching for a camp spot, trying to shine a flashlight to see if somebody's, you know, in the spot already.

16:56How do you manage navigation when, you know, you don't have service? You download offline maps. OnX Offroad is the app that I use the most. And I never go camping without first downloading the area you're in because even if you have service, it might not be enough service to load the full topographical maps and all the things that you need to be able to see your pinpoints. So downloading offline maps, you can use your navigation just like you would if you were to be online.

17:33Why do you love dispersed camping? Yeah, I would say the community found with Dispersed Camping. I met some of my closest friends ever doing this. And most of the people that we've experienced on the road have been incredible people in the community of off-road, overland, fan life, Dispersed Camping, that whole kind of niche. The people are amazing and everybody's after the same goal. Everybody's looking for solitude and wants freedom in life and travel to the most beautiful places while doing it. So it's been amazing. We've met some incredible people.

18:11I love that dispersed camping can take you to spots off the beaten path. And if you're in a van, it can definitely be a bit more like glamping than camping. I mean, come on. Can you imagine eating a fresh pizza from a wood-burning oven in the mountains? If you don't have access to a van, remember that many of the tips and tricks that Felicia talked about can also be applied to tent camping. There was one other thing Felicia and I spoke about that's important when it comes to camping in the wild, making sure you leave no trace. When you're venturing into these natural spaces, it's imperative that you leave them as you found them, which means pack out everything, including your apple cores.

18:54In our conversation, Felicia also mentioned a number of helpful apps and resources. We'll link those up in our show notes. To follow Felicia and find more info about van life and adventuring professionally, you can follow her on Instagram at Felicia underscore Fullwood or go to her website, FeliciaFullwood.com. That's F-E-L-I-C-I-A F-U-L-L-W-O-O-D.

19:25Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger Produced by Annie Fassler Sylvia Thomas and Sam Peers-Nitzburg of Puddle Creative Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd Our executive producers are Paolo Motula and Joe Crosby As always, we love it when you follow the show take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen and remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas

19:58Thank you.