What this is
Overlanding Life is a guide to vehicle-based travel in the United States: where the public land is, who manages it, where you can camp on it, how to prepare a vehicle and yourself, and who can help when the work is beyond your driveway.
It is built for the person planning a first weekend on forest roads as much as for the one who has lived out of a truck for years. Overlanding is defined by the wish to go and see, not by what the vehicle cost.
What you will find
- 01The public land map: federal, state and local land, the roads and trails open to vehicles, and federal campgrounds, from the agencies’ own services
- 02The campground guide: 4,929 federal campgrounds, cabins and camping areas by state, county, town and agency, with the boat-in, hike-in and day-use records left out
- 03State guides with measured facts and numbered sources
- 04Destinations, routes, vehicle guides, gear and know-how: 57 researched guides so far
- 05The Overland Directory, and a free way to ask builders for quotes
How we research
One rule governs everything published here: we do not make facts up. Every figure in a guide has a source that a person opened and read, numbered at the foot of the page with the date it was read. Data pages, such as the campground guide, name the public database they are built from.
A source means the body that manages or makes the thing. For land, roads, camping rules and permits, that is the managing agency. For a vehicle’s figures, the manufacturer. For safety, the agency or standards body that owns the subject. We do not cite encyclopedias, forums, trail apps or other publications’ summaries.
Where official sources disagree, we choose one, say which, and keep the other on file. Where no official source states a figure, neither do we. You will find pages here that say "the agency does not publish one". That is deliberate.
What we will not tell you
Whether a road is open today. Whether a fire ban is in force. Whether a permit is available for your dates. These change by the day and belong to the office that manages the ground, so every destination and route ends with a link to that office’s own page rather than with our guess.
The maps are planning aids. Boundaries are approximate, land status changes, and an acre of public land on a map is not always an acre you can legally reach. Confirm with the managing office before you go.
How the data is made
Land status, roads and trails on the map come straight from public services run by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service and the US Geological Survey. We do not keep copies of them.
The campground guide is our own build of the Recreation.gov database. We use a campground’s own coordinates or none, merge the records the database holds twice, leave out places no vehicle can reach, and separate campgrounds you can book ahead from first come, first served ones that Recreation.gov lists only so you can pay on arrival. Elevations are from the US Geological Survey at the campground’s own coordinates.
Federal land figures are from the Congressional Research Service. Route mileage in the state guides is measured from the agencies’ own road layers and printed as a floor, because segments that cross a state line are left out.
The directory
A listing is a real business with details taken from the business itself. Nothing is published automatically: every submission is read by a person first. We do not publish ratings, reviews or rankings, and we do not invent them.
A directory page with no listings says so plainly and offers the free quote form instead, which passes your project to builders who do that kind of work.
Independence
As of September 2026 nothing on this site is paid for. There are no sponsored articles, no affiliate links and no paid placements, and the gear guides name no brands. If that ever changes, the page concerned will say so at the top.
Who is behind it
Overlanding Life is one of five brands built by the same team for people who travel, camp and live on the road. The others cover buying an RV, finding an RV park, living on the road full time and running a campground.
Report a correction
If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us where and what the source says. We check it against the source and fix the page.
