Born To Be Wild

We wanted to get out into the wilderness a bit on this trip and not have to rely on staying at proper campsites every night.  Campsites are OK but they cost money and although there are some really nice ones, at the cheaper ones you occasionally have to mix with trailer trash and rednecks that live there full time, as well as morons from abroad who don't have a clue what they're doing.  Wait, that's us.

Fortunately there are other camping opportunities to be had, which let you be a bit more independent.  So far we've stayed at all of these locations:

Visitor's Centres

Some of the more historic towns that attract tourists have visitor's centres with RV parking that let you stay overnight.  Ultimately I suppose you're sleeping in a car park but trust me, if you manage to haul your 30ft ass through the local streets of a town without crashing into anything around (or above!) you, you don't really feel like leaving any time soon!

This is probably not a good option for anyone who sleepwalks, or anyone who forgets to get dressed before walking around in front of the windows first thing in the morning.  But it's enabled us to check out some cool places without having to try and get public transport in and out of the town.  And of course not having to drive anywhere after exploring has its benefits:

Home Depot / Walmart Car Park

This sounds even more bizarre but basically, a lot of the big stores will let you park overnight as they have huge car parks that never get full, and you're likely to pop in and buy a few things while you're there.

As a frame of reference for UK people, this is essentially like camping in B&Q's car park.  Yes, it feels weird and you're hardly out there with nature, but it can be handy if you're just trying to get from one place to the next and don't want the hassle of finding a campground.

National Parks / National Forest

This is where it gets a bit more interesting.  In a lot of the National Forest areas you can drive out into the middle of nowhere, find a spot and just wild camp for the night.  Here's where we decided to sleep the night after we bought the RV:

Any camping like this in a remote, rural area is known as "boondocking".  I was geeky enough to look this up so let me save any fellow geeks the trouble:  It comes from an old Filipino word, "bundog", meaning "mountain".  US military men serving in the Philippines at the time used it to describe any remote, rural areas.  Now it basically gets used to describe wild-camping.  Don't say I never teach you anything!

This is a pretty fun way to see the country and we plan on doing as much of it as we can.