When people
who travel by RV have a lot of distance to cover over a few days, they will
sometimes get creative when finding a spot to stay the night. Most RV travelers
know that there are establishments that will allow you to stay in their parking
lots for the night for free. If the travelers
are polite, they will stay to the peripheral edges of the parking lots, they
will keep their area clean and tidy, they won’t put all their slides out, and
they will purchase something from the establishment.
It used
to be that, wherever they were, RVers could count on staying the night in a
Walmart parking lot. It’s getting harder to do that now. Some say the city ordinances don’t allow for
it anymore; but I’m betting people were starting to take advantage of a good
thing. So, it’s a good idea to call
ahead to make sure the Walmart will still allow an overnight stay.
Other
places one might stay are casinos, rest areas, city parks, and the occasional restaurant. None of these are ideal camping sites. They are just a place to pull off at night to
sleep before hitting the road again the next morning.
We have
never done this. In the past when we
were done for the day, we’d find an RV park in which to spend the night. Because that can get expensive, we decided we’d
try parking lot stays during our long-distance travel days.
As we
hit the road for this trip, our first stop was to have been at the Seven Feathers
Casino which is on I-5 between Roseburg and Grants Pass in Oregon. Seven Feathers has a beautiful RV
resort. But they also have a designated
parking lot where people can spend a night for free. When
we got there, it was still early afternoon and there were four semi-trucks in
the lot. Trucks are very noisy when they
start up and leave, and since it was still early, we decided to push on.
By the
time we got to Ashland, a parking lot stay was looking less and less like a
good idea. So, we chickened out and stayed
at Emigrant Lake instead. We were
rewarded with a really nice view of the lake and almost had the place to
ourselves. But it cost us over $30.
The next
night, we stayed at a park outside of Red Bluff, CA. The park was run by the Corp of Engineers,
and because we had a Federal Pass, it only cost us $10. We think that’s almost free. And the gorgeous
sunrise made it all the better.
Finally,
on the following night, we were determined to stay in the parking lot at the
Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant, which is about 90 miles North of
Bakersfield, CA. We knew that Harris
Ranch welcomes RV travelers to their complex; and there were a couple of other
RVs already there when we arrived. We got
ourselves situated, put our slide out 6 inches so we could move around in the
trailer, and rested; all the while feeling pretty good about getting to stay
there.
Because
we are polite travelers, we went to dinner at their Ranch Kitchen. I had the Ribeye and H had the New York
Strip. We dropped a cool $100 before the
night was over.
But hey,
we stayed overnight for free!
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