Planning: overnights

Then there’s the question of camping/rent.  Leaving David’s job means living on a lot less.

As such, we’ll be looking for free camping as often as we can.  Our preference is to find lovely forests to camp in, because that’s where we’d like to be anyway.  Sometimes public lands can be found where you can camp for free in the wilderness (sans hookups and amenities) and this is called boondocking.  As in, you’re out in the boondocks.  The government calls it “dispersed camping.”

We’ll do that whenever we can, and it may be a whole lot easier to find such lands when we go west.  I’m not sure how often we’ll score a forest on our trip up the East Coast.

We will also be looking for family farms that will allow us to overnight free and we will happily purchase fresh food from them in the morning. Isn’t this a great idea: Harvest Hosts As much as we will enjoy waking up in forests and going for hikes, we will also enjoy waking up on a family owned working farm!

Sometimes there’s no forest and no farm, and we will be liberally using Walmart, Cracker Barrel, and other such establishments for their free RV parking.  These will not provide a bucolic playland outside our door, but we’ll not spend much time there, perhaps spending dinner at a playground (I can cook while David watches the kids on the swings) and retiring to the giant chain parking lot only when we’re ready to sleep!