Whose site is it anyway?!

Gooooooood evening everybody and welcome to Whose Site is it Anyway?! On tonight's blog, we've got Buggy, operated by Anthony and Nicole:

Mike's Motorhome, operated by Mike:

And Really Cool Van, operated by some dude from Texas who wishes to remain unnamed. (Not really. We just didn't get his name):

Whose Site is it Anyway: The post where everything is a free-for-all and the campsite boundaries don't matter!

Tonight we're coming to you from Bridger-Teton National Forest, our first official dispersed camping site. You might recall that we tried our hand at dispersed camping in Utah, and that went pretty bad. Actually, it started a domino effect that led to our rig getting damaged during a flood evacuation, so I suppose it went really bad. We hadn't tried dispersed camping since then, despite veering further away from RV parks and more towards nature-centric parks. We just needed an opportunity to give it another go. We're not huge planners when it comes to our travels, but we don't always keep nights open either. Dispersed camping basically means we need to press our luck and find an open spot on the very night we need a place to stay. If we're lucky, we can end up in a beautiful site surrounded by nature - and pay $0 for it!

When we wrote about being unable to find an open site in Utah, we asked our fellow RVers for advice on what, if anything, we could have done differently. We got some compliments on our creative thinking to scout sites with our ebikes. We also got some good advice, like the sites without cell service are usually less coveted, and it's easier to grab a spot if you're already camping close to the public land. We took notes of everything and patiently awaited our next opportunity to try out this form of camping.

Just outside Grand Teton National Park is Bridger-Teton National Forest, and we have heard some amazing reviews of the dispersed camping in the area. The place everyone talks about is Upper Teton View, and you can see why by this photo:

But, even beyond this coveted spot, there are many dispersed camping areas in the National Forest, and we really wanted to get our RV in one of them. We didn't care if we had the amazing views. We just wanted some space to be immersed in the wilderness. It wouldn't be easy; we'd be searching for an open spot on a weekend in July. Not to mention, the weather had been unbelievably gorgeous every single day we had been in the area. We had our work cut out for us.

We may have overshot, but we did a lot of preparation. First, we camped inside Grand Teton National Park, less than an hour from some of the best dispersed sites around. This was a good distance away for our "staging area," because we could leave there early and quickly arrive to the National Forest, or we could even go and scout sites beforehand without needing to drive too far.

I looked at dozens of pages on Campendium for pictures and reviews. Then I chose the areas I felt would fit us best - both literal size fitting, and lifestyle/vibe fitting - and I created a Google Map where I pinned all of them and wrote basic information on them.

The day before we were supposed to check out of Gros Ventre, our national park campground, was a Friday. We feared that dispersed sites would start filling up fast, and so we made a plan to take the truck early Friday morning and go scouting. If we found a spot we really liked, we could drop some of our belongings there and then head back with our trailer. We had recently accumulated more camping equipment, including a tent, which would be a perfect choice for something to leave behind because to others, it would look like a tent camper had left to go explore for the day but would be coming back to sleep.

Scouting yielded us a few sites that were contenders for our rig - plus we discovered a few amazing sites that were either already filled or too small for us. We ended up dropping our stuff at a site in Toppings Lake Dispersed Camping area, which is in the same area as the Upper Teton holy grail. We left our tent cot and a camping chair in site 21A. Site 21 is subdivided into three sections, 21, 21A, and 21B. None of the sites were occupied when we got there. 21B was up a hill and had a lot of sketchy ruts, so that was out. 21 and 21A were situated across from one another, and while 21 had potentially better views of the tops of the Tetons, 21A was larger and would fit our trailer best. We looked forward to having a little Teton view across the way, as long as the dweller in 21 didn't block it, and we also had a field of colorful wildflowers on our other side.

Because of its continually growing popularity, most of the dispersed camping around the Tetons is not as "dispersed" as it used to be. You can't just drive onto a forest road and set yourself up wherever you choose. Instead, sites have been designated using posts and firepits. This is supposed to keep the areas from getting overcrowded. "Supposed" being the operative word. Personally, we like this setup because we're dispersed camping newbies, and this way we know exactly where to go.

We were excited about our chosen site, but I'm a major optimizer, so I wanted to keep looking to see if any of the other areas had anything better. Like I said, we had a few options here and there, but 21A made the most sense. We spent about 3 hours scouting in total, within about a 20-mile radius, but scouting really just turned into a fun way to explore off-the-beaten-path parts of the Tetons. Expectedly, some of the forest roads were extremely bumpy. It hadn't rained in weeks so thankfully we didn't need to deal with washout, but we still had some moments where we felt like we were more on an off-road adventure. But, looking past the bumps, we saw some incredible views of the Tetons. Then, on one last stop on a side road in Kelly, WY, we found whole new terrain, with more ironized mountains showing off their red layers, and Slide Lake, a paradise for floating, my new favorite passion! There is a campground over there that's first-come, first-served, and we went down there to check things out. There were some empty spots that we could have squeezed into, but we needed to stick with our mission, and our mission was to dispersed camp for free. We weren't about to abandon that experience just for a chance for me to float, as tempting as it was.

We went back to Gros Ventre and packed up to leave. There were lots of advantages to heading out a day early. The campground had limited dump station hours and it wouldn't open until 8am the next morning. If we hadn't scouted sites ahead of time, leaving that late would have likely shot us in the foot because those sites would undoubtedly fill up. Now that we had our site held, we could dump before the station closed, and when a lot less people would be there. It worked perfectly. We dumped, filled, and headed up to our new site.

It was a little nerve-wracking to leave some of our stuff at a dispersed site. We weren't sure if we'd come back to it stolen, or to someone throwing it off to the side and parking there themselves. But, we got back and found our cot and chair exactly where we had left them. A van lifer had parked himself in site 21 across from us, and everything seemed normal.

We had hoped to turn ourselves around so that the big window on our pleasure side could face the Tetons, but now that the van was there, the turn would have been a little tight. We were discussing if it was worth it, when the van dude came out and told us he'd be leaving at 5:30AM, so if we want to wait we'll have a wider turning radius in the morning. He either overheard us talking, or he has the keenest intuition of anyone we've met who isn't towing a large rig themselves. We thanked him for letting us know and pulled ourselves in.

Two hours later, I looked out the window and noticed that a motorhome had pulled in next to the van. I immediately knew that something sinister must be going on because the van dude would have told us if he was expecting someone else to come in. I thought, oh man, are we actually witnessing a belligerent ignoring of the rules? At our very first dispersed campsite?! As the night wore on, another car came in with a group of people and a dog. We assumed they were with the motorhome. We weren't sure what this would mean for our morning turnaround plan, but we went to sleep and figured we'd see who was still there when we woke up.

True to his word, van dude left early. The motorhome and car were still there, but since they were on the far end of the site, we still had room to turn around, though it would definitely take some maneuvering. We just worried that if we didn't do it that morning, the motorhome might move, or someone else might come in. We had stayed hitched the night before, so we just needed to un-chock and unlevel ourselves. We needed to use the part of Site 21 behind the motorhome, close to where the van was, to have enough room and to avoid any nearby ruts, but as far as we knew, the dude had stolen the site anyway, so we used as much of it as we needed. As we were turning around, the people in the car came out and started packing up. They left shortly after we finished turning around. Side note, because I'm proud of this: I somehow got Anthony into a spot that left us perfectly level left to right and front to back. In a dispersed camping area, in the dirt, in the mountains. If I had known I was able to do that, I wouldn't have even bothered with levelers the night before!

We tried to be productive the rest of the day. We had work to do and also wanted to check on a few things outside. Only, we didn't stay out long because the bugs got really bad. Giant flies kept divebombing us and we also had a fair amount of mosquitoes. Not anywhere near this much, but enough that we were swarmed pretty quickly whenever we went outside. Fortunately, they seemed to be deterred by our bug spray...DEETerred? Tehe. But that didn't help us at night. The mosquitoes kept finding their way into our trailer and for some reason really liked the bedroom. We were woken up several times from buzzing in our ears, and we can't even count how many we must have killed. What's worse is, many of the ones we killed were already filled with tons of blood, meaning they had bitten something before. If they then bit us, that's how diseases are spread. Not a very comforting thought.

And so, we battled the bugs and the heat as we tried to enjoy the flowers and the distant Teton peaks, but this dispersed camping situation wasn't really working for us. I kept one eye out the window, wondering if anyone else would come into Site 21, or worse, try to mooch off our site. We didn't have much room to spare, but a small van could have fit. Every time I heard a car, I'd take a look to see where they were going. If it's not yet apparent, this hypervigilance is a fast-track to fatigue.

No one else did show up that day, except for a car that quickly stopped by, greeted the motorhome owner with a bro-hug, and then left. The motorhome guy also left briefly but came back, and later he looked like he was going to turn his rig around, but eventually he went back to his original spot. We soon found out why. He came over to our trailer, asking if we could check a cell tower map for him. He noticed we had Starlink and was initially getting OK cell service with his booster, but then he lost it. His booster was unidirectional, so he thought if he could position his motorhome, he could get a better signal. Anthony checked the Open Signal app for him, secretly wondering about this booster. Why turn the whole motorhome around, unless the booster is superglued to the windshield or something?

During the conversation, which I was eavesdropping through the open window, the motorhome dude, whose name was Mike, mentioned something about "people being allowed to camp at the occupied sites." When Anthony came back in, I asked specifically what he said. I thought maybe he was trying to justify mooching off our van life pal the night before. But no. Mike specifically said that he left to go check out Upper Teton because he wants to move there, and so he wanted to see if anyone left for the day so he could take their spot. Now, we're not just talking about someone packing up and leaving. We're talking about people who already have that site, leave to explore, holding their place with their belongings, and Mike taking their site anyway. Yikes. He also claimed that all the campsite posts state that campers are allowed to do that. Zoom in on this and let me know what it says. Is there invisible ink we don't see?

Clearly, Mike was trying to justify his antics, but we saw them for what they really were. Mooching and stealing. He mooched off Van Life Dude's site, and now he was on a quest to steal some poor campers' site down the street. We thanked our lucky stars that we got back to our site before he came in because we know he would have seen our cot and chair and not given two ounces of thought before parking in 21A. We would have arrived back there and not been able to fit. Now that would have been a terrible first dispersed camping experience! But lucky for us, our experience was just plain bad, not terrible.

We didn't see much of Mike after that. He didn't like the bugs either. By that evening, we were already debating whether or not to leave the next day. It was a Sunday, so we didn't need to worry about work or anything. As we killed more mosquitoes that we feared were disease-ridden, we noticed a surprising development out our window. Van life Dude was back! We had so many questions.

1. When he said he was leaving at 5:30AM, did he know he was going to be back? Why not leave a placeholder? Did he not have any chairs or anything to leave behind? Maybe he didn't care? Maybe he didn't know if he was coming back?
2. If he knew he was coming back, was he frustrated that Moocher Mike took his spot and was still there when he returned?
3. Does he think what Moocher Mike did was copesetic? We assume not, considering our conversation when we arrived. It's not like he said "Hey, I'm leaving at 5:30AM tomorrow, so as long as no one else comes in, you'll have a wider turning radius."
4. Maybe this guy is just used to moochers and stealers and is way more chill than we are?

But most importantly, if rules existed here at Toppings Lake, which they clearly don't, whose site now was it?!

The first person to arrive was Vanlife Dude. Then Moralless Mike came in without a care in the world. But then Vanlife Dude left and didn't place an indicator that he was coming back. Then he came back, but technically he had given up his site when he left. So then did it become Mike's spot? Our heads were spinning about as much as the needles in our moral compasses. We wondered if this was more common in dispersed camping than we thought. We have so many friends who love camping this way, and we thought we would too, but we were stressing out. We don't like wondering if someone is going to come and take our or our neighbor's spots. We don't like the stress of needing to scope out spots and then hope the rig can handle iffy roads. We do like the concept of free, but we realized that when camping is free, people take advantage. We already knew this with all the horror stories of people dumping trash and literally defecating in their spots and not cleaning up, but it's like, when you put in all that effort to find a site you love, you always need to worry that someone will come in? We love living in nature, but the whole point is so we can decompress and relax. We didn't feel like we could do that here.

We planned to stick it out for a few days, but after another night of constantly waking up to mosquitoes, our morale was super low. We had a busy work week coming up with lots of projects and meetings. We couldn't be stressed out and sleep-deprived. We needed to move on out of there. With options in the immediate area being slim, we chose to head further away, towards the town of Cody, WY. The drive took us back through Grand Teton and Yellowstone, and then through Shoshone National Forest. It was a spectacular travel day, followed by a stay at the beautiful Buffalo Bill State Park in Cody. It felt so relieving to be in a site that we knew was ours.

Does that mean we're done with dispersed camping after being 0 for 2 on our experiences? No. We know there will be times where dispersed camping will make sense for us, but we probably won't seek it out too often.

To keep this blog post from getting too long, we ended up going live on Instagram after we arrived in Cody. We shared our story, but what we're not writing about is the crazy drama that ensued on the forest road, right after we left Site 21A. You'll definitely want to watch our livestream playback to hear that one. It was a perfectly stressful end to our stressful dispersed camping experience.

Campground:

• Toppings Lake Dispersed Camping, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Elk, WY
• Site 21A, no hookups
• Firepit
• Campground recommended? Jury's still out on this one
• Site recommended? Yes if the neighbors aren't moochers or mosquitoes