“And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul”  – John Muir***

This is an educational website dedicated to helping individuals find their path to nature through excursion camping on public lands (car camping in National Forest and BLM land (Bureau of Land Management)).

The Off-Grid Guide (OGG) wants to help you find a path to nature by showing you simple ways to get there. Oriented to those who are new to camping, OGG focuses on ‘car camping with a view,’ or more specifically, dispersed camping in National Forest and  BLM land. If you want to know how to find free camping far from people in the middle of amazingly beautiful Nature, read on. Often there are campgrounds along the way, too. OGG will cover some campground camping, but will focus on dispersed camping.

If you’re looking for an excellent guide to campgrounds and more, this book (get the e-version) is one of my favorites for the Eastern Sierra (it has grades for campsite privacy!) : Eastern Sierra And Death Valley Camping With Privacy. Great website, too!

The OGG favorite places span from California to the Four Corners area. The high desert mountains and canyons during summer and fall offer vast landscapes in the Eastern Sierra, Nevada, southern Utah, and northern Arizona for dispersed camping.

So, instead of waiting in long lines to pay to get into the crowded, shuttle bused, South Rim of the Grand Canyon, you may want to camp on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, in the Kaibab Nat. Forest, where you can see the canyon from your campsite, usually you are the only one camping there, and it’s much cooler than the South Rim!

An excursion from the SF Bay Area to the Grand Canyon is easy, 800 miles with places to camp every couple hours (don’t drive the 14 hours at once, you will miss too much)! Once you are in the Eastern Sierra (about 4 hours), you can camp in remote Nature. After that you can take a few days camping along the way. Perhaps the goal is to be at the Grand Canyon, but the path there passes through diverse and magical landscapes THE WHOLE WAY to the Grand Canyon AND BEYOND!

*** By the way, John Muir was a good writer, but not accepting of Native American rights. The quote is included here as a reminder to respect all who have come before us, all who are here now, and all who will follow.