VAN LIFE TIPS // Best Places to Sleep For Free

Hi I'm Leah and Ben. You're Leah and Ben. Sometimes she's Ben, sometimes she's Leah. Hi we're Leah and Ben and we are the crew from Combi Life. We have been traveling and living this VW bus full-time and we are doing little videos just to share what we have learned on the road. Yes in this video we're going to be talking about where you can sleep for free. I've paid for places to sleep over the past five years about this many times so we've become something of an expert on this subject. Here in this video we're going to talk about five places that you can sleep for free. Option number one is BLM land or crown land. So if you're in North America there are lots of spots where you can camp for free. In the US you can camp in BLM land, grasslands and national forests. How do you find them? You can find them through a lot of apps and google freecampsites.net. You've got to check that out. Now these are really good options because you can camp for a long period of time. It's not just like a one or two night thing. You can actually go there. We have friends that live out of their vehicles full-time that actually base their year around the use of these facilities. So if you want to live off-grid and be independent these are really good options for staying somewhere for a long period of time. And if you're in Canada and you're a Canadian resident or you're working in Canada you can stay on crown land for up to 21 days which is really really cool. If you are a visitor you need to get a permit but that varies with different provinces so make sure you research beforehand. Research where to go to but yeah there's lots of spaces. Option number two is your friend's driveways. One of the things about living a nomadic lifestyle is it kind of sucks staying in touch with your friends and your family so combining that with a little bit of visit and having a support network of people that are vanlifer friendly and that will happily host you for a few days can help you also plan your itinerary where you're going to go and give you access to things like showers and smiley faces that you recognise which is always nice. If you don't have any friends in the area that you're going to there is sites like couchsurfing.com and meetup.com which is just a community site where you can go and meet up with people and locals around the area. If you're lucky they might invite you to sleep on their couch or be in their driveway. Yeah good option. Option number three everybody's favourite free camping spot. Large convenience stores. We don't want to be brand specific. Walmart. Everybody knows. Walmart. What's the other one? The hunting store. Cabela's. Cabela's is a really they allow you to stay there I think only up to 24 hours. They might be different depending on the store but they are a really good option if you're in a busy town, busy city and you need a free place to camp. Yeah it's not a good place to be staying like day after day but if you're just passing through it's not a bad option. It's a place that you know you're not going to be hassled. Not all big convenience stores allow you to stay there. We have been asked to move on from Walmart. Yeah that was kind of embarrassing. Yeah because we had no idea but there is a site where you can check which Walmart's allow you or don't allow you more specifically to park there so maybe find out before you go into town. We leave the comment like we were silly. We didn't realise that there was no other RVs there. If you don't see an RV at Walmart then you know that you can't stay there because there's guaranteed to be at least one RV in a Walmart car park. How are they going to be trendsetters? Be the first in the crowd. Start something new guys. Get down to your local Walmart. It's amazing. You're going to love life there. And other car parks apart from Walmart big casinos as well. They don't really mind that you stay there. You know what? Asking the police like if you see a policeman and say I would like to find somewhere to park tonight because I'm passing through. I'd like somewhere free. Where can I park? They'll tell you. You think they're the people you need to avoid but you know if they're a decent person and most of the time they are they'll tell you where you will be causing less trouble and won't be disturbed for the night. Number four. Quiet neighbourhoods. It's not always legal depending on where you are to park in residential areas and sleep in your vehicle. So do check the local laws because we really wouldn't want to encourage anybody to do anything illegal. No we wouldn't. So if you do think it's possible for you to stay in a quiet neighbourhood or if you're just passing through this can be an option. Try not to park in front of anybody's house. Try not to pee on anybody's tree. Try not to park in front of a house that's got a dog. They're going to know that you're irrespectful. Yeah leave no traces and you know get up and go before they get up in the morning so they don't wake up to somebody in a hammock outside their house. Number five. If you are motoring through a town look for free rest stops. You are legally allowed to sleep in your vehicle for seven or eight hours or something like that so you won't be disturbed and that is enough time for you to get your head down for the night. Number six. There's more than five. Is there? No we only did five. To sum up guys if you don't take the piss and you're respectful to the neighbourhoods that you visit you probably aren't going to run into too much of a problem. In more residential and built up areas and suburbs you are more likely to see a problem because there's more people living the van life but just be respectful and don't stay in one place for too long. I've been fined I think two or three times in in the entire time I've been living in this vehicle and I've been asked to be to move on maybe like less than five times so it really doesn't happen very often but we do move around and mix it up a lot so that even if we are in one space that we're not hassling anybody and not being a burden to society because we wouldn't want to be a burden to society. Hopefully that helps you guys. If you liked it give it a thumbs up. If you have some top tips for the community of where you might be able to stay for free please do leave it below we'd love to learn we'd love to be able to share this information with other people. If you're just getting into van life you may want to check out our book we've written loads of tips about getting started actually how you can live on the road and how most importantly you can last on the road that's a really key thing because this lifestyle can be quite challenging and we kind of come up against all those hurdles so if you're interested in the van life do check out our book. Otherwise subscribe and come back next time for more van life and travel adventures. Until then happy travel