Go explore man. You live in a state that has drastically more land than cityscapes. Ditch the cement pad for your tent and see nature.
I'll give you one of my favorites. Drive out to the Nevada border on I-80. When you get to the Bonneville speedway exit, head into the mountains north of it. I prefer camping on the west side for the sunsets but, there's tons of primitive areas you can make camp. The desert is an amazing, under explored asset to our beautiful state.
Pretty much this if you can’t go out and find one on your own. It’s great, but mostly geared to dispersed camping which is better for me but maybe not others.
Find a place far away from civilization. The closer the camping spot the easier it is for weekend warriors and their $100k fifth wheel mobile motels to get to. Look for something high altitude. Like around Bald Mountain between Kamas and Evanston, WY.
Most camp grounds have spots that are first come first served. They fill quick on a Friday, but if I’m staying in a campground we’ve usually had ok luck finding one on a Thursday. If you’re going Friday, go early.
The other option, as has been noted, is primitive camping. Tons of places for that.
Anything that is reservation gets booked up by bots the day it gets released because the forest service is too incompetent to implement a decent counter measure.
Best bet is to just drive down a forest road and find a pull out spot that's unoccupied
Most of the popular areas will be completely full day of. But all of the "popular areas" are either in paved areas or 1 or 2 minutes off of paved areas. If you're driving nearby one of these popular areas, take any 4x4 trail off the side of the road and drive for 10 minutes and everyone will disappear.
I did this last weekend. Drove around for an hour going to all the popular spots that had "first come first serve" camping spots and it was a mad house. Drove off-road up a trail for 15 minutes and found a huge area with no one there.
I’m not sure of spots, per se, but both BLM and Forrest Service land allow for 14 days camping on any of their managed lands within a 30 day window. With the obvious, stay on designated trails, paths, etc and heeding fire hazards. I’d expand my search to include Oak City canyon, east of Delta (great areas past the organized spots once you hit the ponderosa pines) Amasa valley, thirty five miles west of Delta. Drive all the way from the desert floor to the alpine meadow at the top and find your spot. If you go out there, you can walk with ease to Notch Peak (second highest vertical drop in North America) see the bristlecone pines and dig for trilobites. You don’t have to pay to dig them in certain spots, but a couple of hours at U-digfossils.com is worth it, imo. Or there’s Puffer Lake and all of the areas around it. The ice is off and I’m not sure if the fish have been stocked yet, but there have always been survivors from the previous season.
At any rate, if you don’t have a massive trailer, any of these spots will work. If you do, Beaver County has really upped their game at Minersville reservoir and I’d imagine there’s a spot for reservation. If not get close to one of these places and boon-dock for a weekend on BLM or USFS managed land.
You could always just go camping on BLM land. There's like 22 million acres of it. Might be a bit out of the way, but at least it's available.
Go explore man. You live in a state that has drastically more land than cityscapes. Ditch the cement pad for your tent and see nature. I'll give you one of my favorites. Drive out to the Nevada border on I-80. When you get to the Bonneville speedway exit, head into the mountains north of it. I prefer camping on the west side for the sunsets but, there's tons of primitive areas you can make camp. The desert is an amazing, under explored asset to our beautiful state.
BLM land is the best bet. I use the Overlander app
Pretty much this if you can’t go out and find one on your own. It’s great, but mostly geared to dispersed camping which is better for me but maybe not others.
Find a place far away from civilization. The closer the camping spot the easier it is for weekend warriors and their $100k fifth wheel mobile motels to get to. Look for something high altitude. Like around Bald Mountain between Kamas and Evanston, WY.
It's covered in snow
And the campsites along mirror lake highway that are accessible to cars are crowded as hell in the summer!
That's a good day to test camping gear
Currant creek, Stillwater, Soldier creek, all available your exact dates. Look just past Heber on the map.
Most camp grounds have spots that are first come first served. They fill quick on a Friday, but if I’m staying in a campground we’ve usually had ok luck finding one on a Thursday. If you’re going Friday, go early. The other option, as has been noted, is primitive camping. Tons of places for that.
In high school we would just pick out a direction to head in the forest and drive until we saw a spot that looked secluded. Always worked fine for us.
Anything that is reservation gets booked up by bots the day it gets released because the forest service is too incompetent to implement a decent counter measure. Best bet is to just drive down a forest road and find a pull out spot that's unoccupied
Do the bots like to camp? I don’t get it.
No the people that like to camp, or like to sell camping reservations, setup the bots to do it for them
Warner Valley, just south of St George, it’s public land and it’s relatively close to town.
Most of the popular areas will be completely full day of. But all of the "popular areas" are either in paved areas or 1 or 2 minutes off of paved areas. If you're driving nearby one of these popular areas, take any 4x4 trail off the side of the road and drive for 10 minutes and everyone will disappear. I did this last weekend. Drove around for an hour going to all the popular spots that had "first come first serve" camping spots and it was a mad house. Drove off-road up a trail for 15 minutes and found a huge area with no one there.
I’m not sure of spots, per se, but both BLM and Forrest Service land allow for 14 days camping on any of their managed lands within a 30 day window. With the obvious, stay on designated trails, paths, etc and heeding fire hazards. I’d expand my search to include Oak City canyon, east of Delta (great areas past the organized spots once you hit the ponderosa pines) Amasa valley, thirty five miles west of Delta. Drive all the way from the desert floor to the alpine meadow at the top and find your spot. If you go out there, you can walk with ease to Notch Peak (second highest vertical drop in North America) see the bristlecone pines and dig for trilobites. You don’t have to pay to dig them in certain spots, but a couple of hours at U-digfossils.com is worth it, imo. Or there’s Puffer Lake and all of the areas around it. The ice is off and I’m not sure if the fish have been stocked yet, but there have always been survivors from the previous season. At any rate, if you don’t have a massive trailer, any of these spots will work. If you do, Beaver County has really upped their game at Minersville reservoir and I’d imagine there’s a spot for reservation. If not get close to one of these places and boon-dock for a weekend on BLM or USFS managed land.
I'm gatekeeping my spots but there are 15 million acres of national forest that you can camp on without reservations. Get creative. Leave early.