10 FREE Places to RV Park Overnight

campfire question Fred hawser asks where have you camped overnight in emergency situations when you couldn't make your planned destination an excellent question Fred in this video we're going to give you ten places where you can camp or really park your RV overnight for free number one and number one for a reason Walmart you do need to call first before you go and park there just to make sure that it's okay it's pretty much widespread nationwide especially if you're kind of in the middle of the country or in the Northeast you'll have more problems if you're in California or Oregon you'll have even more problems but if you're anywhere in the middle you'll probably be okay yeah we have two really lengthy videos about parking overnight at Walmart so if you haven't seen those videos go watch those and you will get your PhD in Walmart overnight parking we've done it from the deep south all the way up to Alaska and many points in between the more urban the area the harder it's going to be to stop at Walmart number two Cracker Barrel Cracker Barrel that's right in recent years Cracker Barrel has really been embracing RV campers in fact when you see billboards for Cracker Barrel you may notice a little RV symbol tucked away in the corner of the billboard that indicates it's an RV friendly Cracker Barrel we have stopped at Cracker Barrel before it's probably a good practice to ask the management if it's okay to park overnight there and if you're stopping there go inside and get grandpa's old-timey sausage biscuit breakfast or whatever it is or buy something in the store thank them for the service of allowing you to park there overnight by spending some money and most of them advertise that they have RV parking so they'll be like designated RV parking spaces for you so you're not gonna be taking up spaces for other people or that sort of thing yeah Cracker Barrel parking lots can get a little crowded so it's not nearly like stopping at a Walmart where you have just acres and acres of asphalt however they do have bus parking in RV parking and a lot of cracker barrels and I think it's one of those places where you know you roll in kind of later in the evening and you try to leave as early in the morning as you can right after the biscuits come out of the oven that's right number three Cabela's yeah shout out to Cabela's if you're in the West you know Cabela's has these huge sporting goods stores two really nice stores with large asphalt parking lots and most of them are very RV friendly in fact some of them even have dump stations and fresh water that you can use for free so you can't get much more RV friendly than that you need to probably call in advance and make sure that it's okay but I know for example we've stopped with Billings Montana Cabela's and the Idaho Falls Idaho Cabela's and stayed overnight go inside buy some socks or something would you number four and this is an often-overlooked RV opportunity casinos yeah so long as you don't have a gambling addiction casinos can make a great place to stop overnight with your RV they're not always free but some of them do offer complimentary RV parking on the assumption that you're going to come inside and spend a little money yeah you don't necessarily even have to gamble most of these casinos have some pretty decent restaurants inside go inside and treat yourself to a steak and lobster dinner or not now you know yeah I think quite often in the food is very reasonably priced because they want to lure you into that casino yeah we've done it several times out in like California Nevada area and then most recently we did it in southern Alabama and in Louisiana Louisiana and parts of Mississippi so they're actually more casinos than you think of because of Indian reservations and that sort of thing in a lot of places and sometimes casinos will have dedicated little RV camping areas and they will say okay you could pay your fee to stay in the camping area or you could actually overnight park for free just out in the parking lot so if you prefer to do that many casinos will offer you that option yeah we've done it several times number five Oh rest areas I use the term rest very loosely it is a safe place to stop for the night so if you're kind of in an emergency situation that's the most important thing but you don't really get a lot of rest and rest areas because a lot of times you've got the 18-wheelers coming in they stop for like two hours and then they leave again so they're coming in hitting the breaks so that makes a lot of noise and then they're cranking their trucks back up two hours later and sometimes the trucks just idle overnight if they're the big refrigerated trucks you will hear those things Rumble all night long any time you're parked right next to a large 18-wheeler that's running you're going to be awakened you're not gonna have a very peaceful night of sleep yeah unless you have some earplugs so pack my earplugs and it'll help so it probably depends on the location of the rest area the closer you are to an interstate then the busier that rest area is gonna be and the more big 18-wheeler trucks are going to be in there but when you get into more rural areas if you can find those rest areas on the smaller highways those can be more peaceful number six something we're calling pull outs or pullovers and these are basically places on the highway that you will find in rural areas especially north of the border like if you're in Yukon Territory or British Columbia or on your way up to Alaska anywhere in Alaska you'll find these huge patches of asphalt and there's no problem with parking there overnight now when you're in the lower 48 it's much more difficult to do that yeah there have been times when we have just parked on a city street which is a similar type thing and just overnight but it's absolutely as long as it's free parking and you're not violating any codes we have parked overnight in a lot of cities actually yeah again it's one of those situations where you usually arrive after dark light at night and you pull out earlier in the morning right so that you're the lowest impact this is a side street it's preferable just because you know there's less traffic and you know fewer people and that sort of thing and it's free parking area or even paid parking we've paid meter parking before number seven shopping malls which sounds odd but there are actually a lot of shopping malls that welcome our viewers because I want you to come in and spend money and if you talk to management it sort of explained hey we're having a issue is it okay if we park here overnight a lot of times we're gonna say yes that's right in Eugene Oregon big mall there has overflow parking kind of across the street from the mall that they dedicate to our viewers who are coming through the area and it's really a great place to stop in and I think they have a cap on the amount of time you can stay there you could probably stay there for two nights yeah I'm around a register your name and take your tag number and they have security that patrols the parking lot and you're welcome number eight BLM land so this is Bureau of Land Management land this requires a little more homework you're not just gonna pull off on any old exit and find BLM land but if you happen to be out West where BLM land seems to be more plentiful your odds are probably much higher in finding a safe spot to park overnight and this for example is what people do at Quartzsite Arizona they're huge swaths of BLM land there where you can park for up to two weeks pretty much for free every night number nine gas stations now gas stations are sort of an almost last resort for us but we have found ourselves a couple of times in situations where we had no other choice except stop at a gas station and I'm thinking of one time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan every campground was booked we probably stopped at a dozen campgrounds and they were all booked none of them had any overflow camping spots and at this point it was like 11 o'clock at night and it was giving them what was dangerous to still be driving because we were just so tired and we talked to the lady in the gas station and we said hey can we park out back behind your gas station until like 8 o'clock in the morning and she was like sure no problem and so occasionally you can stop at a gas station and that that really leads us to the number 10 place on our list where you can park your RV overnight for free and that would be truck stops yes and before all you try kurz get mad we're giving this as a last resort option for people and honestly if you are in an RV look at the truck stop and gauge the situation because a lot of times truck stops will have the truck stop portion of the truck stop and then they'll have like cars and RVs on the other side so if they have that situation be sure you go to the car and RV side and park on that side where the trucker's can't go so that you're not taking a space away from a trucker right it's very rare that we would stop at a truck stop and for one thing they're really lousy you're not gonna get a whole lot of rest really and most truck stops secondly they're often very crowded and the truckers do need those spaces because they're working and they need a place to stop and rest so we don't really encourage people to stop at truck stops but if you are in an emergency situation and you're tired you know somebody's sick or you've got a flat tire or whatever your trucks running hot you know things happen and a lot of truck stops do have that designated RV section and so you can just park in the RV parking and have no worries yeah and if you happen to be somewhere where the truck stop is not really very busy then I wouldn't feel bad about parking there it's those truck stops that are obviously just packed to the brim where every space matters that I would be more concerned about stopping so that's it guys ten places where you can park your RV overnight for free if you find that you need to or in some sort of emergency situation we have done this in pretty much every state we've taken our RV even the Northeast where it's harder to do it and then it's harder to do it but we've done it and I have the video to prove it so it can be done you just need to have all these places on your radar screen if you find yourself in a bind usually you can find the place where you'll have a safe place to park overnight and worst case scenario if you can't get to any of these places and you need a place to stop a lot of times you can find an RV park that is close to where you are that will let you come in after hours and just pay in the morning as always thank you for tuning in we are Sean and Kristi this is long long honeymoon which we'd like to call lolo ho if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up share it with your friends and family and if you haven't yet please subscribe to our channel it means the world to us to have you join us as part of lolo ho nation and also click that little bell icon next to the subscribe button and you will never miss a long-long honeymoon video because you'll get a notification we love and appreciate you know we sure do so until next time what do we say here we say [Music]

Channel: Long Long Honeymoon

Views: 274,013

Rating: 4.9526191 out of 5

Keywords: airstream, rv, camping, travel, loloho, walmart boondocking, full time rv living, walmart rv, walmart rv camping, walmart camping, camping at walmart, walmart overnight parking, stealth camping, dispersed camping, rv living, free overnight parking, rv boondocking, walmart overnight rv parking, urban camping, how to rv full time, walmart rv parking, walmart overnight

Id: aT_zF0OMWfA

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2019