FreeRoam - Boondocking & More

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.

I really love what the developer has been doing with this app. I’m more of a 4X4 Overland Tourer type, but I’m sympathetic to the Van Life and I find I need a lot of the same overlays to work and explore—like the mobile service maps and the BLM overlays. The ethos is not terribly different. Anyway, I’ve recently noticed wildfire alerts coming up in the app for the areas I’ve been looking at. Super cool. The UX is very clean and easy to use. Frankly, It just blows iOverlander out of the water and I’d use it exclusively if some of that data and organization targeting 4WD users could port-over.

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!

I noticed a couple interface issues: 1. When you click on a campground, etc, the info pop up stays up with no way to remove it until you leave the map tab and then return or choose another campsite. Clutters up the map when you are searching. 2. Wondering about your weather source and accuracy as well as how the actual forecast is pulled down: looking at one campsite, I saw what was clearly a regional or nearby region vs the actual pinpoint location. The several thousand foot altitude difference from the campground to where forecast seemed to be from makes for a very inaccurate forecast. All that being said, I like the interface and look forward to seeing how this evolves.

I camp BLM all the time, and I needed an app that actually lets me easily locate and use coordinates to get to BLM land. I love this app! It’s so useful at helping me plan for my trips. However, it would be nice to have a feature that lets you filter only BLM, campground with restrictions, or paid campgrounds (besides just the pricing filter). Please make a feature description that says whether or not it’s completely free, requires backcountry permit, with restrictions, or restrictions apply etc. That would be very helpful.