Anyone who is familiar with camping knows that it is a vacation that you can take on the cheap. Now it is even cheaper when you access free RV and tent campgrounds.
Though our aim is not to take away from campgrounds that charge visitors for a night or two of camping, it can come in handy to know some free campgrounds where you can spend the night at little or no cost.
Boondocking Sites
These types of camping sites are often managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. These are just two organizations that offer a free night of camping in their administrative region.
Instead of staying the night in a parking lot which can be dangerous as well as fine inducing, look online for some of the free campgrounds available along your travel route.
Every State of the Union
Campers can find a number of free camping spots or those that charge users less than $10 per night. In California alone there are more than 120 places where you can park your RV or tent overnight.
From city parks to state parks such as Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, you can stay for the night for less than $10 in one of the 12 campsites. The park also offers primitive camping throughout their 60,000 acres.
Wyoming offers over 30 sites that cost $10 or less such as Ayres Natural Bridge State Park. Located near the city of Casper and the town of Glenrock, it is a small campground that closes their gates at 8PM so you need to register. The scenery is said to be spectacular and the Oregon Trail is close by.
The Doyle Bighorn National Forest has between 11-29 campsites and you can stay for up to two weeks. The nearest city is Buffalo and Ten Sleep is the nearest town. Scenery is magnificent here too.
North Carolina boasts a beautiful campground that maintains 18 sites in the Nantahala National Forest. You can be lulled to sleep by the water rushing down the mountains along the Santeetlah River.
There are no hook-ups here, but it is an excellent base for visiting Joyce Kilmer National Forest, home to the Eastern Seaboard’s largest trees and for casting your reel for river fishing.
If you take the time to browse the internet, there are many more places where an RVer or tenters can camp for practically nothing.
It may be well worth your while to map out your trip and avail yourself of some of the campgrounds that charge no or small fees to save yourself the trouble of sleeping in a rest area or store parking lot.
