Experience the Freedom: Mastering the Art of Free RV Overnight Stays - California to Oregon

Is there any chance of staying here? Oh, you're a godsend. Thank you. Oh, great. We have a place to stay tonight. This is the Harris Ranch on the I-5, but let's come back to it because I want to do this in order over five nights to show you how you can find safe, comfortable, and free places to stay as you travel, as we did when we were traveling north to Canada. We're going to start our journey at Barstow, California, and span five nights getting to Eugene, Oregon. Come on, let's get going. I really want to show you these places. Starting this five-night challenge off in Barstow, where we had just arrived from Lake Havasu, and actually we did pay for an RV park in Lake Havasu because it was so hot, we needed air conditioning, we needed the 50 amp service, so we bailed on that one and paid. And after a really windy day of driving on the Interstate 40, we arrived in Barstow, shaken and tired, and we found the cheapest of all cheap overnight stays, a Walmart. They're still out there. It's not that easy anymore to find a Walmart that will take an RVer overnight, but in Barstow, they welcome you, and the place is really well set up for overnight RVers and trucks. So this is number one on our five-night challenge, and you gotta love it. It's free, it's open, there are other RVers and truckers nearby so you feel safe. They have security driving throughout the parking lots every 10 minutes, all night long. And of course, you've got shopping on your doorstep. The only frustration, and a mild one, was we found ourselves pinned in in the morning by another RVer who jammed us into the corner of the parking lot. Who does that kind of thing? These damn Canadians. Hey, and I can say that because I'm a Canadian. This was a fellow countryman. So if you've never been to Barstow, California, don't worry, you will. If you RV long enough, you'll go to Barstow. Look at it. It's like the hub of a wheel. See how the highways feed through it? So you may as well become familiar with the Walmart in Barstow, and you're going to be there one day. Once through the Mojave Desert, which is really interesting, especially around Mojave and Hatchipie, with all the wind turbine farms, you then drop down considerably into the Bakersfield area, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I know, I'm supposed to be talking about free overnight stays, so I better get back on track. Oh, but first, have you ever been attacked by a tumbleweed? Well, we were. Getting to the Harris Ranch along the I-5 is really simple. It's right there on the I-5. About an hour and a half north of Bakersfield, and about three hours south of Sacramento. This is one of our favorite free overnight stays anywhere. Really nice surroundings, restaurant, barbecue, gas station. The staff are really welcoming. As you heard from the introduction on this video, the security guard said, sure, stay the night, no problem. And look at all these other campers. It was like having your own private campground in front of a hotel. You gotta put this one on your list. Turn left, then take the first right. Driving time from the Harris Ranch to the Lodi area is only about two and a half hours for most people. But for us, that's about four. Well, on this trip, probably six. When you factor in getting lost in the Sacramento area, try to find cat food for your special needs cats. Oh, right. And then you have to allow for making the wrong turn as you're trying to find your harvest host in a beautiful country area. Where were we? But you know, there's lots of construction going on. It's a good excuse. And you can see, it's beautiful. So we were in no hurry to find our harvest host. So now can you understand when it's a two and a half hour driving day by Google? For us, six hours. Destination is on your right. That was number three on our list of free overnight stays. Well, wait a minute. We had to pay about a $90 membership fee to harvest host. Oh, and we bought about $250 worth of goods inside the store. So I guess this wasn't free at all. How'd this one get in here? Okay, strike this one. No, we got to keep it. Because you didn't have to buy all the things that we bought. You could have just bought one bottle of wine and they'd be happy. Well, after spending all that money at the free harvest host, we were in desperate need of finding a truly free place to stay for the next night. And that leads us to number four on our list. Moochdocking. Just another word for sponging off your friends. Two requirements for moochdocking. First of all, you have to have friends. And secondly, they have to like you well enough to invite you to their property. If you don't have friends, you've got to do something about that. There's probably an app for that. In our case, we're really lucky. Two friends who own a 48-acre nut farm in Northern California welcome us with open arms each year. Let's go see them. So after finding really good friends, the next tip for really happy moochdocking is to literally park on your friend's front door. That way you have access to everything that they enjoy in life. Oh, look at that. Goodness, country living at its best. Oh, my God. Well, I got to say everything else on our free overnight stay list is a real letdown after a moochdocking experience like that. But reality must set in. And the next day we're off. And this time our overnight stay is going to be a very unlikely spot, something that many of you probably have never experienced. So let's head north to Eugene, Oregon, and see what we found. Okay, we've arrived at number five on our list of free places to stay. We're in Coburg, Oregon, which is about five miles north of Eugene. And I'm sorry, I've cheated a bit on this one, because although it's free, it's not something that would be open to everybody. But I'm going to include it because I want to show you it's just really an example of how you can do these kinds of things if the opportunity presents itself. Now, I know it's an odd place to choose as a free overnight stay, but the opportunity was there for us. It's an RV glass repair company. They service big RVs, much bigger than Monty. They're really well known, well respected. Monty as a small fry had its side windows replaced about three months ago, and we called to see if we could just have them look at one window that we were concerned with. They offered us overnight stay with 50 amp service. They are great people. We stayed two nights. It was more than we needed, but they were just very kind to us. Come on, let's take a walk around and I'll show you. Well, here we are back at RV Glass Solutions. Just a minor checkup after the glass replacement in January. Beautiful. They allow us to stay overnight with their 50 amp service and a beautiful 1995 Country Coach ahead of us. Fantastic. Now, Monty is not in the same league as these guys, but you know what? We still love little Monty. Some of these, I would suspect, would be 2, 2.3, 2.4 million dollars new. Okay, let's return to reality. Hi, Monty.