so can you camp with no reservations it might surprise you to know that there are tons of
campgrounds across the USA that you can still camp at without having reservations and in this video
we're going to show you how to find them we are Charity Ben Dakota and trinity we decided we
didn't want to wait for a life of adventure so in 2017 we bought our first RV and set off to live a
life of travel in the USA we've visited over 38 states in three years and have many more to go
follow along to learn all the best places to see RV and travel tips and much more
so before we dive into today's video we really want to say a huge thank you to all of you that
have been jumping in and supporting us on patreon we really appreciate your support
it helps us to keep bringing videos like this to you and we're going to be starting some fun
monthly giveaways for those of you that are supporting us on patreon
so if you'd like to check it out you can do that at gratefulglamper.com forward slash patreon
and we'll put a link below as well now with more RVs on the road than there ever have been before
you might start wondering if it's even going to be possible to get out there and camp this summer if
you haven't already made your reservations and we've actually noticed for ourselves
all of our reservations for the rest of our summer are already booked and a lot of those reservations
we had to book about six months in advance to be able to get into some of those oh so coveted
campgrounds so that being said can you still camp on the fly and the answer is absolutely yes you
can still find those last minute campgrounds those open spaces totally on the fly no reservations
needed so you might be kind of wondering well where are these campgrounds then and
what are you talking about that we can find these types of camp spots now the good news is a lot of
these campgrounds are super cheap and some of them are even free and what they are is a lot of them
are city run campgrounds or county run campgrounds we were just recently in
the tiny tiny town of weeping water Nebraska such a cool little spot very historic they have a
city run campground where it has electric hookup in all the sites all the sites are paved there's
not water or sewer in the sights themselves but there's water in a dump station right there at
the entrance and exit to the campground and the best part is no reservations needed and you can't
even make reservations it's all on a first come first serve basis we pulled in there on a weekend
and there were five sites that were available at this particular campground the best part is 15
a night to be able to stay there and it was a beautiful campground right on the lake so these
gems are out there you just have to do a little bit of digging and we're going to talk about
how to find them just a little bit later in the video so another place to check and to look for
campgrounds where you don't necessarily need the reservations huge in advance are the army
corps of engineer or COE campgrounds these are another great option they're kind of more of a no
frills campground a lot of them do have at least electric and then most of them have things like
water and a dump station on site and they're also very very inexpensive and they're not as
popular or well known so it's usually a little bit easier to be able to get a site in these
core of engineer campgrounds so another option are fairgrounds now a lot of fair grounds have camping
and some fairgrounds even have full hookups so a lot of people have livestock trailers and horse
trailers that have the living quarters and they need camping for when they're at various shows and
events so a lot of fairgrounds will at least offer boondocking if nothing else but many fairgrounds
do have some sort of hookups so looking at local fairgrounds is always a great place to check
if you're in need of a spot to stay and you don't have any reservations so another great
place to check is with harvest hosts now harvest hosts aren't going to really have any hookups
at most of their locations but it's a great spot where you can boondock for a day or two
and be able to kind of set up camp no reservations required just pull into that location and you can
find all sorts of harvest host locations on their website and we'll put a link below for
those as well so this is probably a good reason to talk about trip planning just for a minute
and so if you need some help in the trip planning department you can check out the video at the link
above and you can also download the free trip planning template now this is a trip planning
template that I've developed over the last four years of camping I use the same template every
single year that we're planning trips out and you can find that at the link below or just
go to grateful gratefulglamper.com forward slash planner okay so let's talk about how do you find
some of these places to camp without reservations one of the first places that I always start is
actually on google but it's important that you know what to search for when you're using google
one thing you can search for is camping near and then put in the city name so for example
right now we happen to be in the northern Colorado area so I might search google for
camping near fort collins Colorado and see what comes up in the search results that
way another great resource is to check that local area's parks and recreation website
this is where you can find a lot of the city run campgrounds or the county run
campgrounds so if you just search for the parks and recreation website let's say in Omaha Nebraska
then you can find what is in that area that's actually run by the city or the county when it
comes to camping usually if you even search for something like parks and recreation put
in the city name and then add the word camping to the search it usually brings you right to
that page that talks about the camping that's available at the various parks that are in the
area another great place to find these campgrounds are apps like compendium allstays or RV parky
a lot of them will show what is available for camping in a specific area including
things like city run parks or county run parks one other place to always check
is recreation.gov or corpse lakes dot U.S and we'll put links below for both of those as well
this is a great place to look for those core of engineer parks to be able to find where
those are at and if there are any in the area that you're considering camping in or
that you find yourself traveling through so you'll have to let us know in the comments below what has
your experience been like so far this year with booking campsites or finding campsites on the fly
have you been successful in snagging cancellations at campsites last minute let us know down below
we would love to hear kind of what some of you out there in the RV community are
experiencing right now when it comes to finding a spot to set up a lot of them sorry I'm getting bit
sorry you have a mosquito on you is that a mosquito yes
you're good
choking on my hair this is worse than Florida you're gonna stuff another big aunt pile right
there thanks so much for watching this video if you'd like to see more videos
with RV tips and tricks you can check those out right over here and if you would like to
see more videos with places to travel and fun things that you know you're going to
want to see you can check those out right over here until next time we'll see you on the road