In today's video, I'm gonna show you the four ways
that i camp for free!
Oh, hey what's going on youtube
greetings from the nevada side of lake tahoe so i often get asked about
the cost of living doing this full-time van life rv living lifestyle and
my reply is usually it actually is much cheaper than you think one of the
reasons is because i found a bunch of different
ways to camp for free so that's what we're
going to talk about today we're going to talk about the four different ways
that i camp for free and as a matter of fact i'm actually in one of those free
spots right now so let's just jump right into
this and go to the first way i camp for free okay so the first
method of camping for free i'm going to talk about is called
mooch docking so what is mood stocking mooch docking is where you stay on a
friend or family member's property or like i am
here i'm in the driveway of my friend's
airbnb so he rented this airbnb for a couple
months and he said hey come and visit me here i
know you're in the area and you can just park in my driveway
and that's what i do a bunch of my remote your friends are actually staying
in this house so there isn't enough room for me
to actually camp in the house so i'm just staying
in my van out here in the parking lot which is something i rather do anyway
when i visit friends and family in my van they always say oh come inside
and sleep in here and i'm like no no no this is my home
this is where i want to sleep this is where i feel comfortable
it's great to be able to travel with your home so
yeah mooch docking is a great way to camp for free
there is one caveat here you've got to be careful with condo association and
homeowners association rules you got to make sure that they
allow rvs and converted vans to be parked
in the neighborhood sometimes they don't and you don't want to get your
friends or family members fined by the homeowners association
if you have a network of friends and family throughout the country
this is a great way to camp for free i mentioned before i was in the military
for 20 years i did a program called remote year a one
year travel program and i have a bunch of friends from the
military and from that remote year travel program
scattered across the country and they all invite me to stay
in their driveway when i'm driving through so it really
is a cool way to camp for free and reconnect with friends and family
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so another option for free camping is a walmart parking lot
to be honest with you it's not my first choice it's probably usually my last
choice but when you're in a bind you can almost
find a walmart anywhere and most of them
allow rvs to park in their parking lot for the night as you'll see
there's a bonder a bounder over there uh there is a van
and trailer behind me there's another van over there and there is a class c
over there there's usually a section of the walmart parking lot where they let
arby's park we're over in a corner here as you can see i'm
in butte montana by the way so if you're ever in butte montana
and you're in a pinch and you need a spot to park you can park at this
walmart so over there's the walmart the main
parking lot and then we're over here so in a pinch
like i mentioned this is a great option for some free camping all right we're at
our next free place to camp it's a cracker barrel
to me if you're gonna camp in a city or a town
this is probably one of the best options most cracker barrels have an rv section
and they allow people to park in their parking lot overnight
one of the real cool things about it is you can wake up the next morning and get
like their six dollar breakfast yeah so this is another option
when you're in a pitch all right so now my favorite spot on the
list the last thing i'm going to talk about
is bureau of land management or blm
land and national forest land i'm currently
on blm land here in california and look at this place like i have it
all to myself it is forest fire time
so it is a bit smoky in the hills but i mean it's still pretty grand
nonetheless this is called fossil lake or fossil creek something like that
just south of mammoth so pretty pretty cool
so the great thing about national forest and blm land
is it's government owned and it's for the people's use
so if you're in the united states you can camp
on blm land and national forest land for free there are campgrounds
on blm land and national forest land sometimes that you have to pay for
that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the dispersed camping
the free stuff and it's everywhere if you've been watching my channel for a
while you'll remember i camped at a spot in the tetons with
these beautiful pink flowers with view of the
tetons it was amazing i camped at henry's
lake idaho right on the lake that was blm land
the place by the tetons that i just mentioned was national forest land
i stayed in salida on blm land which was amazing and then in leadville
colorado if you remember i stayed at a paid
campground paid like 60 or 70 dollars a night
and it was a dump and just outside of leadville
i found national forest land to camp on that was amazing
and i stayed there for i think like two weeks
so with blm land and national forest land like i mentioned
you can stay up to 14 days some blm land and national forest land
will have tighter restrictions but if they do there'll be notices
posted where it'll say like you can only stay here for five days
like one of the spots we stayed in outside
of the tetons about 10 miles outside of it was five days only but that was still
amazing it was along a river it was great all right so those are the ways
you can camp for free you can mooch dock like staying in
somebody's driveway you can stay in a walmart parking lot
you can stay in a cracker barrel or you can do what i love to do and stay
on blm land like this or in a national forest for free if you
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thanks for watching so in this video damn it
come on kevin oh my god this freaking mic
uh if you're in a town ah hello hello hello and then in leadville
colorado i stayed on you can mooch doc
staying at somebody's the in somebody's driveway for free ah
jack that up and then in leadville colorado
i stayed in national fort that freaking bug
that'll be a good
now you're the one outtake losing sleep for and i hope the wrong ones slip right
through your magic fingers and i hope we find some way to fall in
love like we were yeah you're the only reason i was
california dreaming in the first place