DuPuis Management Area: Free Florida Camping, and Our First Ever Stop

Quick facts

• Where: DuPuis Management Area, run by the South Florida Water Management District.
• Cost: free. You need a permit, which you get online.
• Stay limit: the permit was good for up to eight days when we went, with a maximum of 30 days a year.
• Type: primitive camping. No hookups.
• Water: a drinkable water spigot. We reached it with a long hose.
• Dump station: yes, on the way out of the park.
• Getting in: a locked gate with a code.
• Solar and Starlink: great where we parked, in the open. The area for campers without horses is mostly wooded (more below).
• When we stayed: eight nights in 2025. It was our very first campsite as full-time RVers.

DuPuis is where we learned to live in the RV. We came for a week of boondocking as complete beginners, and it went better than we had any right to expect.

Where to park for solar and Starlink

Campers without horses are supposed to stay in the non-equestrian section, which is mostly wooded. There are a couple of spots at the edge of the campground that still get some sun, but Starlink would be tricky under the trees.

We got lucky. The camp hosts checked with the people staying in the equestrian area, and they were fine with us parking out in the field. From there, Starlink and solar both worked fine, which mattered because we had no generator. In the wooded section we'd probably have had a lot of trouble with both. If you rely on solar or Starlink, ask the hosts what's available, and grab one of the edge spots if you can.

Water

There's a spigot you can fill from. We were new and didn't know to fill our tank before going to the site, so we ran a really long hose to it and topped up that way. It was drinkable water. If you don't have a long hose, fill up before you park. We wrote up how we refill fresh water when boondocking.

Dump station

There's a dump station on the exit road, so you can empty your tanks on the way out.

Solar

In the field, our panels were full basically the whole time. We ran our Instant Pot on solar and tested the electric fireplace, which used about 40 percent of the battery in four hours, so we went back to propane heat at night. More in our first week running on solar.

Things to know

The ground was soft enough that our leveling blocks dug in. We shared the field with a few horses. Mornings were good for bike rides and short hikes, although we were nervous about alligators the whole first hike.

Would we go back?

Yes. It's free, it has water and a dump station, and it's a forgiving place to try boondocking for the first time. Our eight days here were the first half of a 15-day boondocking challenge. We spent the other seven at Hampton Tract in the Green Swamp. How the water held up is in our boondocking water video.