$100/yr to join a club of fellow California homeowners / home renters who love to camp and are willing to reciprocally allow stays at their home is not bad. Especially if that $100 is used to pre vet users who will behave in a way that will garner 4-5 star reviews consistently.
Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
161–170 of 236 posts
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#162This could work if it was community run and not for profit. A business running this has the wrong incentives.
https://www.warmshowers.org/ is a non profit though it's geared towards bicycle tourists.
https://freeroam.app/about is also a 501(c)3 though a bit newer
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#163> All you need to provide is a parking spot and restroom access during designated hours Why would restroom access be required for camping? That's not something normally associated with camping, is it? Is my idea of camping that far off?
I can't remember the last time I've camped at a place without AT LEAST a porta potty. Nobody wants people shitting everywhere and possibly spreading diseases in the soil
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> PLEASE: Leave no trace Someone once mentioned "Leave it nicer than you found it" as a life philosophy, maybe in relation to Japan? I'm not sure anymore. I've taken to that, like when going for a forest walk, even if I pick up literally one tiny plastic wrapper, that's still leaving the forest better than I found it. Of course, pristine is pristine, but if there is trash, go for that good feeling and consider an eas…
Thoreau, in Walden, on borrowing an axe: "The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it." A high school English teacher used this passage to impress upon us this same philosophy of "leave it nicer than you found it" (in particular, I remember him telling us that our parents leave us in his care and he saw it as his job to "retu…
Always fill up the tank when you borrow a friend's car.
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#165boondocking, $80/year for stays, $180/year to also stay at wineries, farms, breweries, etc https://www.boondockerswelcome.com/ boondocking, community-submitted tips https://boondocking.org/ camping, parks, hosting, for-profit https://www.campendium.com/ nature-loving free campers, 501c3 https://freeroam.app/ free campsites, community-submitted tips https://freecampsites.net/ rv camping membership https://harvesthosts…
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - 100%. There is zero excuse for not knowing/abiding by local rules/regulations. The USFS, BLM, and others have troves of information posted online. A local area has gone to great lengths to put up signage stating that unlicensed off-highway vehicles are NOT ALLOWED to travel the main stretch of USFS fire road. So what are people doing? Screaming up and down that very road on unlicensed off-highway vehicles at 2/…
To add to all of this great info, to any prospective dispersed campers: please use high-quality, recent, ideally official maps of your choosing to ensure you're on the sort of land you think you are. Boundaries can change and notes on spots aren't always up to date. My area involves a mix of national park, national forest, DNR land, and private land, and I regularly see dispersed campers getting ticketed for unwittin…
The keyword (primarily for federal land) is MVUM. It stands for Motor Vehicle Use Map. It will be an awkward PDF. Green dotted will indicate trails you can drive on. If you can't pull off all trails to camp little dots will indicate where that's allowed.
BLM and USFS websites have horrible navigation. Just Google the name of the forest with "MVUM". You might also need to first Google forest name + district map and then Google MVUMs for the specific district.
Another option is the MVUM layer in CalTopo (the name comes from the fact it started as just CA, but it's national nowadays)
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#167A big part of the fun for me is being completely alone, practicing map reading, and faffing around as I find my own way. So I Google the name of the forest and the phrase "district map" to identify the ranger district(s) I'm interested in, Google the district name with the phrase "dispersed camping" to read the rules, and then stare at a topo map with an MVUM overlay to decide spots to look. I find this process often identifies better sites (by my preferences at least) than I see online and online listings are not infrequently wrong about the rules. The process from turning on to the first dirt road to camping takes maybe 20 minutes if I'm in a hurry or an hour if I'm optimizing for the perfect spot. If I forgot to refill my water container and need to find a stream that's an extra .1-2hours depending on season and region.
If I wanted the actual right answer I'd call a ranger.
(The reason I Google is because the USFS and to a lesser extent BLM have awful intra-site navigation. I don't bother asking Google to restrict to the domain because the right usfs page will be at the top anyway. MVUM stands for Motor Vehicle Use Map and indicates where I can drive and, if applicable, which roads I can pull off to camp. Remember that following the MVUM is necessary but not sufficient, you also need to check the dispersed camping section of the appropriate website. You can get MVUM pdfs by googling place + "MVUM" but I prefer the MVUM layer in the app CalTopo)
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#168So it's kinda like Couchsurfing.com and Warmshowers, but expensive ($100/yr) and only for vanlifers? Interesting. I like the community peer to peer model, but it kinda feels exploitative to put an expensive business layer on top of it. What does the $100/yr provide that Couchsurfing's $30/yr doesn't, aside from a feeling of exclusivity? Or is that the point, to weed out poor vanlifers and allow only rich vacationers…
The $100/yr cost in undoubtedly cheaper than owning a parking spot and a bathroom in California!
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#169boondocking, $80/year for stays, $180/year to also stay at wineries, farms, breweries, etc https://www.boondockerswelcome.com/ boondocking, community-submitted tips https://boondocking.org/ camping, parks, hosting, for-profit https://www.campendium.com/ nature-loving free campers, 501c3 https://freeroam.app/ free campsites, community-submitted tips https://freecampsites.net/ rv camping membership https://harvesthosts…
or https://recreation.gov :)
Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything you wrote is bang on - please, please, PLEASE: Leave no trace. Haul out your garbage. Don't shoot, shit, or camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers. Don't make fire rings where they already exist. Abide by fire restrictions that might vary by county. Stay on existing, marked hiking and motor vehicle trails. As a resident of the West (which has huge swaths of "public" land) I am so tired of folk…
> PLEASE: Leave no trace Someone once mentioned "Leave it nicer than you found it" as a life philosophy, maybe in relation to Japan? I'm not sure anymore. I've taken to that, like when going for a forest walk, even if I pick up literally one tiny plastic wrapper, that's still leaving the forest better than I found it. Of course, pristine is pristine, but if there is trash, go for that good feeling and consider an eas…
Re: Japan - Japan teaches this early, Japanese students clean their own schools.