A big part of the fun for me is being completely alone, practicing map reading, and faffing around as I find my own way. So I Google the name of the forest and

A big part of the fun for me is being completely alone, practicing map reading, and faffing around as I find my own way. So I Google the name of the forest and the phrase "district map" to identify the ranger district(s) I'm interested in, Google the district name with the phrase "dispersed camping" to read the rules, and then stare at a topo map with an MVUM overlay to decide spots to look. I find this process often identifies better sites (by my preferences at least) than I see online and online listings are not infrequently wrong about the rules. The process from turning on to the first dirt road to camping takes maybe 20 minutes if I'm in a hurry or an hour if I'm optimizing for the perfect spot. If I forgot to refill my water container and need to find a stream that's an extra .1-2hours depending on season and region. If I wanted the actual right answer I'd call a ranger. (The reason I Google is because the USFS and to a lesser extent BLM have awful intra-site navigation. I don't bother asking Google to restrict to the domain because the right usfs page will be at the top anyway. MVUM stands for Motor Vehicle Use Map and indicates where I can drive and, if applicable, which roads I can pull off to camp. Remember that following the MVUM is necessary but not sufficient, you also need to check the dispersed camping section of the appropriate website. You can get MVUM pdfs by googling place + "MVUM" but I prefer the MVUM layer in the app CalTopo)