Maps. Without them----no roadtrips to our public lands

One of many projects Vicky has been working on in the month since we have been home is maps. 

It's not as straightforward as it may seem.

If one is camping in state parks or National Parks maps are not really essential.  But we camp and hike in areas administered by a variety of agencies:  The Bureau of Land Management, the Agriculture Department, the National Forests, etc.  And in those areas are a maze of publicly-owned places and privately owned places.  And the rules governing where we can camp and hike are complex and different, depending on who administers the areas.

Complex, but worth it.  The reason for taking all of this effort is that we can camp by ourselves, in places where there are few, if any, other people. 

This year Vicky has ordered 25-30 more maps, adding to a collection that now numbers in the hundreds.  These maps are useless unless we have a system for retrieving the ones we need when we are in a certain part of the country.  So, this means she needs a system for them, which she has worked out.

 
 She orders the maps online.

And then organizes them by area, so she can locate them easily when we are traveling:

 

 The puts them into files which we carry in the camper:
 

Knowing how to camp and stay in our public areas, especially when one travels all over the country as we do, isn't straightforward.  It takes some time to learn about how to do this.

But is it ever worth it!