SECRET WEAPON REVEALED OVERNIGHT RV SPOTS You WON'T Find on Any RV Camping App! Full-Time RV Life

I can't tell you how many times we've looked for a good overnight spot on an RV or camping app only to find a big empty map. That doesn't mean there's nothing there. It just means you have to know what to look for and how to find it. So today I'm going to show you three overnight spots we found during our recent travels between our boondocking spots when we just needed a safe quick place to stay overnight. Happy Sunday bird watchers. If you've seen some of our recent travel episodes you know that we love to camp in beautiful places like Mammoth Lakes and Bishop California and to go see things like Bernie Falls and the Lava Subway too. This is why we're on the road and this is how we like to camp. But sometimes we just need to find a place to go overnight to get there. And no, we don't need an RV park for this. We just need a place overnight to dry camp with no hookup, no reservations, and no hassle. I'm going to show you three recent spots we stayed in and not one of them could be found on an RV or camping app. In this video I'm not going to show you anything about Harvest House even though I think the $100 a year membership for Harvest House is the most smoking RV deal out there. Still available if you want 15% off of that. The link is below. No, today I'm going to tell you about three other spots, how I found them, and about my secret weapon. Of course if you're traveling through bigger towns and cities you can usually stay at maybe a Cabela's or a Cracker Barrel or a Walmart Supercenter. But what do you do if you're going through a small regional area or a small town? How do you find spots when all you're seeing on those apps is a big donut hole? First up I'm going to tell you about my secret weapon and that's an app called Trucker Path. This is not an RV or camping app. It's an app for truckers that gives them information on places to stay overnight that's updated in real time by other truckers. The app is free and easy to use. You can search by your location or along your route and when you do you'll see a ton of spots come up and not just truck stops, although there's a lot of truck stops on there, there's also scenic overlooks and rest areas and weigh stations and just other great places to park. Now if you click on one of these spots you're going to be able to drill down and see a satellite view of the location so you can see how easy it is to get in. But that's not all. It's also going to tell you if there's a dump station or showers or laundry or wi-fi and really important it tells you how many spots are at that location and then that's updated in real time by the truckers. So for example you might see a truck stop coming up that has 115 spots but it's full and you might see another one 10 miles down the road that has 45 spots and it's empty. And personally I like to leave all the spots I can for the truckers because they don't have as many options as we do and it's important that they stay safe also. So I try and choose spots that aren't going to keep one of the truckers from parking overnight. I love standard truck stops. If you want to do it it's always a good idea to sneak into a corner before it gets busy and stay out of the way while the truckers are coming in and out and don't put out your slides. I've used TruckerPath to find a bunch of great locations. So recently when we were going from Susanville California to Old Station I jumped on the app to see what was available. Now you can see here on freecampsites.net there was nothing along this route or in this area. So I jumped on TruckerPath and found a gem of a spot. This is the Bogard Visitor Center that was right along our route. I looked at it on the satellite view and saw that there were lots of big spaces and recently truckers said that there were a lot of spots available. Now here's the thing about searching for rest areas on Google. They don't always come up. I did this for a long time and discovered that there are rest areas that I wasn't seeing because sometimes they're not called rest areas. Sometimes they're called visitor centers or oasis or scenic overlooks. This is where TruckerPath comes in really handy. This one for example was called a visitor center and it did not come up in a search of rest areas near me. And this is how I found one of my favorite all-time overnight spots which is just a parking area on a trailhead in Frisco Colorado. Now I know some of you are nervous to stay at a rest area because when you pull in there might be signs that say no overnight parking or no camping. All this means is they don't want people to set up camp which means put up their slides, put out their awning, put out a barbecue grill, and their camp chairs. They want people to come in and stay until they're rested so they can safely get back on the road. And if you dig into the actual rules state by state on the Department of Transportation websites you'll find out what those rules are. Pop over to my blog at creativityrv.com because I have a blog post on this that gives you links to every single state. I knew that in California the rule was that you could stay about 10 hours. Here's an actual shot from their website showing that. And if it's a busier site it might be eight hours. That's how Doug and I actually stayed at the Golden Gate Bridge about two years ago. I searched and searched for overnight spots and there was nothing. I found a scenic overlook just off the bridge which is also considered a visitor center or rest area. So we pulled in and sure enough here's the sign from that actual spot that said we could stay there for eight hours. My next favorite go-to overnight spot especially in small regional areas is casinos. Now once upon a time the big casinos would let RVers stay overnight especially like in Vegas because they wanted us to come in and gamble. But that is slowly changing. Now a lot of the big casinos use RV parks as a money maker so you can't stay overnight anymore without signing up to go to the RV park and paying a fee. But that is not necessarily true for smaller regional casinos. Look at this graphic from the American Gaming Association. These are the states that allow gambling and have casinos all across the country. That doesn't sound good. I was amazed when I first hit the road how many areas have little regional casinos especially Indian casinos if you're in the west. So if you're going through a state that has casinos and you need a place to stay overnight just google casinos near me. But then be sure to look on the satellite view of the parking lot and you want to look at your entrance and your exit and if you see any other RVs there because the regional ones can be tight and impossible to get into. But if it looks good for you then call the casino and say something like this. Hey we're traveling through the area and want to come in and visit you and do some gambling but we were wondering if we could stay overnight in your parking lot in our RV. That's I did recently when we were in Bernie, California headed to see Bernie Falls. There was a casino near us in the town that had a pay RV park. So I called and said just that and instead of making us pay for a spot in the RV park they let us park over here in a big lot all by ourselves. We didn't have to pay to stay there but I did lose my bug gambling. Not Doug. He's always the lucky one. And finally I look for Walmart's but not necessarily the Walmart super centers that sometimes allow RVers to stay overnight. If you saw the video I did a couple of years ago called Is Walmart Over? You know that I dug into Walmart's corporate policy. Walmart still likes RVers. They want us to come and stay if the local zoning allows it and then at the discretion of the manager. And here's the thing to know if you want to overnight at Walmart. Do not trust the RV and camping apps because most of the time the information is wrong. They'll say that you can't stay to Walmart where you can stay or that you can't stay in one that you can't. When we need a place to overnight in a smaller regional area I google Walmart near me and that's what I did when we needed a place to stay between Susanville, California and Old Station. You can see here on freecampsites.net there was absolutely nothing in Susanville. First I googled casinos in Susanville and there was one but when we checked it out on satellite view it was way too small for our rig to get into. So then I googled Walmart in Susanville and sure enough there was a tiny non-super center Walmart right there in town. Remember the RV and camping apps are reviewer driven. So if nobody goes in and puts that Walmart or that casino inside the app you're going to see nothing there. And even if you see a Walmart and it's not a super center call like I did for this one in Susanville. I called and asked to talk to a manager and said the same kind of thing I say all the time which is hey we're coming by to do some shopping and we were wondering if we could stay overnight in the backside of your parking lot in our RV. They said yes it was no problem and I think there was one other truck camper in the entire lot. Of course we went into the Walmart and made a small purchase to be good RV citizens and then we packed it up and headed down the road to our next amazing destination. Coming up next we'll see you all next Sunday. Until then everybody have happy travels and be free.