Tell me everything I need to know about campsites in Alaska
Hi HUBB,
Not a very frequent poster, but frequent reader.
My lovely lady and I are heading to Deadhorse this summer -- her in our Jeep, me on my Tiger. We're taking the month of July, leaving from Edmonton.
We've done a fair bit of overland travel within the Canadian context, and are adept at finding "Crown Land" (publicly owned land, free to camp, hunt, fish, etc. on by anyone) in various counties in several provinces.
We'd like to do the same for Alaska, but I'm not sure what the deal is in the USA.
We prefer to avoid serviced camp sites for several reasons -- we don't care for crowds; we find the ancillary costs of serviced lots to be quite high (like $15 for 10 sticks of Firewood...I'm looking at you, Gregg Lake, AB!), and in general we only ever have a rough idea of where we will end up in a day in terms of mileage and such.
So my questions:
1) What land can we camp on in Alaska? Logging Leases? Parkland? Random clearings down a dirt road?
2) Where is a good place to go for land ownership maps so we know we are on 'public' land?
3) As I described "Crown Land" above, what's the US equivalent, specifically for AK?
4) What general tips/ideas for camping in Alaska do you have?
We are proponents of leave-no-trace camping; we don't even collect firewood as usually we use our Propane fire pit or we go with a lantern for the light, share some stories, and go to bed early for an early start the next day.
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Safe travels, all.
Craig
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