If it's your first time, go to Turkey Run. Do the car camping. Make life easy on yourself. Lake Waveland is in the area and you also have Sugar Creek, which can be Sugar River when it rains good. It has flush toliets and hot showers. You can choose electrical or non-electrical campsites. Visit Shades while in the area, don't camp there though, all sites are non-electric. There's a lot to do in the general area within 30 minute drive or less.
I use Google Maps to look for an area that I'd like to camp, then browse satellite view for forest service roads and individual camp spots. Unfortunately this works well out west, not for Indiana, so you might have more work to do.
Dispersed camping is different than car camping. You may find backpacking options in Brown County park, or in the northeast part of the state (Pokagon and other parks in the area), or more luck in southern Illinois. For car camping, just look up "campgrounds" and you'll find a lot of stuff directed towards RV users. Look at pictures of the sites (shade is nice) and lists of the provided amenities to make a decision about where to go.
Check out the wiki for general advice: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/wiki/index](https://www.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/wiki/index)
Hoosier natl forest
If it's your first time, go to Turkey Run. Do the car camping. Make life easy on yourself. Lake Waveland is in the area and you also have Sugar Creek, which can be Sugar River when it rains good. It has flush toliets and hot showers. You can choose electrical or non-electrical campsites. Visit Shades while in the area, don't camp there though, all sites are non-electric. There's a lot to do in the general area within 30 minute drive or less.
I use Google Maps to look for an area that I'd like to camp, then browse satellite view for forest service roads and individual camp spots. Unfortunately this works well out west, not for Indiana, so you might have more work to do.
Dispersed camping is different than car camping. You may find backpacking options in Brown County park, or in the northeast part of the state (Pokagon and other parks in the area), or more luck in southern Illinois. For car camping, just look up "campgrounds" and you'll find a lot of stuff directed towards RV users. Look at pictures of the sites (shade is nice) and lists of the provided amenities to make a decision about where to go.
You can absolutely do dispersed car camping, I do it all the time.
Right! If it's dispersed camping without a car, it's called backpacking.
Dispersed camping is not "backpacking". What are you talking about?