When people learn that I live a good part of the year in a van, I can see in their eyes that they are getting ready to ask me the four most asked questions of a van dweller.
- Where do you park at night?
- Where do you shower?
- Where do you go to the bathroom?
- How do you keep warm in cold weather?
Let me answer these questions from my perspective. I will answer them as one blog entry for each question.
Where do I park at night?
It would be difficult for me to tell you how long it’s been since I last paid for parking my van in an RV park/resort or other similar paid to park area. If driving on the freeway, I might spend the night at a rest stop. Aside from that, I might stay in a Walmart parking lot, Cracker Barrel parking lot, 24-hour fitness centers or one of several other RV or van friendly lots. In addition to that, I have several apps that can direct me to free parking places while traveling. If I intend on spending more than one night in an area, I look for BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Land, National Forest Land, etc.
These areas are usually open to free camping and many of them will let us (the public) camp there for up to 14 days at a time. When that 14 days are up, I can move to another BLM area for another 14 days as long as it’s (I believe) 25 miles distant.
I might mention that when I stay at a Walmart or Cracker Barrel or similar business, I will always make a purchase from those establishments.
This paragraph is not about parking at night, but I feel is relevant to this post. As this lifestyle gains in popularity, there comes with it, abuse; abuse of the land so graciously opened to us for our use at no charge. It seems that every time I’m out, I see more and more trash left by non-caring campers and dumping of grey tanks and other waste. As a result I also see more and more areas of once free land being closed to the public thereby making it more difficult to find good, free camping.
Please respect the land and other campers by picking up your trash and carrying it back out with you.
Source: Most of the photos in this blog are provided courtesy of pixabay.com.
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Until next time…