Free and Cheap Places to Park Your RV

Published: May 12, 2008

By Nathan Swartz

While in the process of attempting to figure out what our approximate expenses will be, and therefore understand how much RV we can afford, I’ve been researching cheap or free places to camp in an RV.

Boondocking is the term for parking somewhere without hookups. Search the Web and you’ll find out that Wal-Mart seems to be the leader here. A few additional resources that I’ve found:

Casino Camper. Apparently the world of casino gambling and the RV lifestyle get along quite well, and this website lists a plethora of RV-friendly casinos (ie, they don’t mind if you boondock one or more nights) and etiquette to live by.
FreeCampgrounds.com has a handy interactive map for finding places to stay, often for one night only or without hookups mind you, that are either free or extremely cheap ($10/night or less).
Passport America costs $44/year and for that you get 50% off of their network of over 1400 campsites throughout North America.
Wal-Mart is still an option. The benefit of boondocking at a Wal-Mart is, if you hate them and their evil empire, you’re kind of “sticking it to the man.” The downside is they might give you the boot. FreeCampgrounds.com has this page dedicated to listing Wal-Mart’s that don’t allow you to boondock.
Flying J is a fairly common gas station in the MidWest and formally states their amicable nature toward overnight RV parking in their lots near the bottom of this page from their website.

March 6, 2018
I have a 30′ 5th wheel that I need moved (my late husband used to drive it and I cannot do it) to a “permanent” spot to live in with full hookups before June 1st, 2018. Please send me your recommendations, experiences, blogs, comments etc. ASAP so I can find somewhere (hopefully in So. Calif) SOON.
Thank you,
Sherry
Sherry
Reply
1. March 8, 2018
  You can search our site for everything California by visiting this search page. I am partial to the Eastern Sierras / US 395 but that may be a bit remote for some people’s tastes. Otherwise, near Joshua Tree would win out for me over any of the coastal, crowded, more expensive places in Southern California.
  Except maybe for Santa Cruz, though I don’t think California’s define that as “Southern California” as they tend to be directionally uninclined. :)
  Or you can look at campendium.com, they’ve got tons of campgrounds down there, though not always the full-time trailer park type ones.
  Nathan Swartz
  Reply

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