How I CAMPED 4 NIGHTS NO RV Parks, NO Walmart, NO Campgrounds While visiting Crater Lake and more!

Sometimes when you travel, you just want to get where you're going, right? You don't always want to have to stay at a truck stop or a rest area or a Walmart, and you don't want to spend 50 bucks a night to make a reservation at an RV park that may be way out of the way just to drive there and go through the hassle of hooking up, resting for a few hours, and then getting back on your trip. Today I'm going to show you a trip that we took in September where we stopped at some amazing places along the way, and to make it even better, they were fun, quick, and cheap. Good morning, bird watchers. It's Robin with Creativity RV, and I've been wanting to bring you this video for a long time. Last September, when Doug and I were still in the fifth wheel, we drove up to Sisters, Oregon from California, and every year I've done this trip, I want to see a couple of things along the way, but there's never a good place to stop and rest. I don't know about you, but I like to drive about three, four hours at a time. I don't like to drive 12 hours to get where I'm going. Forget about staying in a crowded campground. They're all full, and even if we could, we wouldn't fit in one, and all the boondocking spots were too far away, so we used Harvest Host. If you don't already have a Harvest Host membership, let me tell you, I let my Passport America go. I let Sam's Club go, but I will never while I'm full-time on the road especially, let my Harvest Host membership go. It's $99 a year, and for that, you get a list of thousands of places to stop and see and stay overnight and support the local businesses. When I've stayed with Harvest Host, I see things I never would have seen otherwise, and there's more of them than there are KOAs, so here's the deal. It's $99 a year, but I've put a link below that gives you 15% off, and that gives you access to over 2,000 farms and museums and attractions and wineries and breweries and all kinds of places that you can stay and dry camp overnight. Now, the rule of thumb is that you should spend about 20 bucks while you're there. I would spend 20 bucks at a Walmart if I were there. I don't want to spend it at Walmart. I'd rather support a local business. You guys know I'm a fan of Harvest Host. I think it's the most smoking deal in the RV world, but in this particular trip, Harvest Host was more than half the fun that we had. When Doug and I left Bernie Falls, amazing, in California, we stayed overnight at my first golf course ever. This is us. We pulled up right next to the green. It was gorgeous. It was private. I wasn't cramped next to somebody else. We took walks around the golf course. We had a lovely breakfast, and then in the morning, we just hooked up and went on our way to our first stop, which was Lava Bed National Monument. There are over 800 caves in Lava Bed National Monument, and we're not spelunkers, so we stuck to exploring some of the easier caves. Wow, that's crazy. Well, now we have to turn around, and it's dark. Wait for me. Literally, Doug is in front of the camera. Say something. Hi. Oh god, it's dark. Dark. We didn't bring our lights. It's just a dark cave. I don't know why we need a light. What could happen? Oh, wow. Steep. That's steep. What do you think, Doug? Are you gonna try and get down in there? I'm gonna try and slip down and get down that cave. We can do it. I'm just gonna walk a little There's a great trail system that takes you to all of these caves, but we have gotten to the difficult ones. I think these you have to crawl on your belly part of the way. We are not prepared for that. You can go left, or you can go right, or we can go out. We can go out. After exploring all of those caves, we were kind of wiped out, but luckily our next harvest house was just half an hour away, so we headed over there. It is a sustainable, eco-friendly potato chip farm. You might not know this about Harvest House, but some of their attractions are not for profit. You're not going in buying wine or something like that, and that was the case with this Harvest House. This is a working farm owned by a family that sells their potatoes to potato chip companies like Kettle Chips. In fact, they came and brought us some free chips when we first got there, which was just lovely of them. Instead of selling us stuff, what they did is they supported their local community using Harvest House with their non-profit. In this case, they support local kids in all of the rural communities so they can get together and get to know each other, which I thought was great. So we donated our 20 bucks to that and then headed on our way to Chilikin, Oregon. What's your name? Russ. Why do you volunteer here, Russ? Because I've got nothing else better to do. Because I love it. Our next stop was the longest miniature hobby railroad in the world, which we rode on. And this place is also a non-profit. People that run this place are in love with trains, and you can tell by all of the wonderful trains that they have on display here. After we found our camping spot, which was nestled in a little wooded area right by the trains, we paid our $20 donation and checked out everything else before we went back home and got a good night's sleep so we could hit the next place on my bucket list. Now, Crater Lake has been on my travel bucket list for a long time, and I've passed it like every year, but it's a little bit out of the way and I could never find a place to camp. But thanks to Harvest House, we got to explore for two days because we stayed nearby at that train museum and then drove less than half an hour into the park. And yes, it was still cold there, but we took some good hikes and finally got to see the lake. That trip was really amazing, and I didn't have to try and squeeze my big fifth wheel into a little tiny camp spot in the park if I could even get a reservation. If you watch my channel, you know that recently I went off on my own in a truck camper and saw seven states in four months. And I went to the South, which I've never done before. And Harvest House was absolutely indispensable. If you don't already have your Harvest House membership, again, of course, the link is below for 15% off. I'll see you guys next week. Until then, I hope you're all doing well out there. Have happy travels, and be free.