Well Friday marked the start of week 9 on the road and I started thinking it might be great to share some things I've learned from travelling this way. Basically nothing has gone wrong in my two months out here, its been relatively cheap (as far as living goes), and I've been having an amazing time, so I figure I must be doing something right. If you are interested in travelling this way, maybe you should give this blog a read through. I would recommend almost anyone trying it out.
What I've been doing
For the last two months, I've been travelling the west side of the United States, mostly alone and mostly living out of my car. To give a bit of an idea, in the last 31 days, I've paid for a place to sleep for 7 of those nights. That includes one night at a campground, three nights at hostels, two nights in airBnB bedrooms, and a night in a cheap motel. The rest of the time I've been boondocking, sneakily sleeping in my car at reststops, trailheads, and even residential areas. For my travels, I'm mostly after natural parks, but I've been spending some time in small and large cities as well. How to get away with sleeping for free
There are easier and harder ways to do this. The easiest and least illegal overnight spots that I've spent the night are marked overnight rest stops along the highway and Walmart parking lots. You can rest easy at places like this and be completely overt about what you are doing. This means taking your time to set up for the night, not caring if people see you hanging out in your vehicle with the lights on, not having to perform gymnastics in the morning as you try to slide into the front seat and drive away without people realizing what you're up to. Rest stops generally have 24 hour washrooms and water fountains, which are nice. Walmarts have washrooms when they are open, which is generally most of the time, as well as coffee/breakfast/WiFi when they have McDonalds (also most of the time). Both rest stops and Walmarts tend to not be particularly beautiful.
The second best are trailheads and pullouts in parks that don't openly have signs saying No Overnight Parking. Sometimes these spots have restrooms. Often they are more secluded. I've never had someone come to tell me to leave, but if it did happen I am fairly confident that nothing more than a request would be made, and I could always explain that I didn't see any signs. The fishier places I've slept is in residential areas, sometimes in front of people's homes. I've gotten really quick at setting up the bed, and feel like my vehicle isn't too conspicuous a camper, so I now feel pretty comfortable doing this. When I spend nights like this, I generally pull in, set up the bed, and go to sleep immediately. I don't want people seeing a light from inside the vehicle which might alert them that some riff-raff is camping out in their neighbourhood. I work with the sun and go to bed when its dark and leave at dawn, when the streets are still quiet. To push things, I've even spent some nights at lookouts in national parks, where there is clear signage that there is to be no overnight camping. Generally I do this when I want to see the sunrise. I did this at Dante's View in Death Valley, and Point Imperial at the Grand Canyon. Both nights nothing happened, and I got to enjoy an amazing spot to camp out. I figured if a ranger came by, they would let me off with a warning anyways. I guess I'm getting pretty confident with my overnight parking after so many weeks of not being caught.
I had one night, when I parked in the lodge parking lot at North Rim Grand Canyon, when I thought I was done for. I had gotten a warning earlier that evening by a girl I met to be careful about this spot, that they were really locking down on overnight camping. Well, I had turned off the lights about 20 minutes previous and was just about asleep when I opened my eyes to my vehicle being flooded with light. I could see the sillouhette of a man walking down the side of my car shining a flashlight. I heard some rapping on a window. Was that my window? I couldn't be sure. Then I heard someone get out of the car beside me, to be told by the ranger that they couldn't camp there and had to move. I sat frozen in my car, afraid to move a muscle. The car pulled away, the ranger left, and as I was left alone in darkness I could breath again. I couldn't remember what the vehicle looked like beside me, and I wondered how they were caught. All that mattered is I made it through another night! What to eat I started this trip with the idea of making all my own food. I would load up with groceries and ice, stuff everything in my cooler, and eat the same stuff almost every day. It was near the end of week 2 that I decided to stop keeping things cold. The cost of ice every couple days didn't seem negligible, and even though I tried to keep up with draining my cooler, I still kept finding food ruined. Wet tortillas, soggy cheese, a container of salsa fresca flooded! How devastating. I changed my shopping to less perishable items, which included a lot of fruit and dried things, stopped with the ice, and never looked back. It was also around this time that I started sleeping in my car every night, so I felt able to eat out a little more with the money I was saving. I now probably spend about $20 per day eating out, which seems fine to me because I'm sleeping for free and have no home expenses (rent, utilities, etc), but that would be an easy area to cut back if you were trying to save more money.
How to shower Apart from finding a place to sleep, finding a spot to shower is the next biggest challenge of this travel style. Dry shampoo can only take you so far! It hasn't been too huge an issue for me because, as I mentioned previously, I book myself places to sleep every 4-5 nights. I feel that I need spots like this for many reasons: shower, laundry, WiFi connection, charging my phone/camera/computer. (Unfortunately I broke my cigarette lighter/charger outlet in the car about a month ago, so keeping things charged has become more of an issue than it should be.) Knowing that I have somewhere booked can put me at ease that if I find nothing beforehand, I will always have that spot to reorganize.
That being said, I'm still being quite active and sometimes am in some pretty hot places. It can get grimy by day 3-4 when I'm trying to apply sunscreen and can feel/see myself rubbing dirt across my body. I look for showers everywhere. Most national parks have showers that you can pay for: Yosemite, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, to name a few of the latest. I keep my eyes peeled when I drive past any campgrounds, they often have signs advertising showers. Along the coast, beach showers were a great way to go too. And then there's swimming in lakes and rivers! Usually that's all I really need to rub the dust and grime off myself from a dusty hike. My hair has gotten used to infrequent washings and doesn't get oily all that fast anymore. If I can't find any of these things and I'm covered in muck, I'll just soak a cloth under my water tank and do my best to clean off my skin before bed. It's not so bad!
The cost of a car
There's no doubt about it, the car is a major expense. It looks like I've spent about $500 in the last month on gas alone. Add on top of that an oil change, filter change, front headlight and breaklight change, and its now more like $750. And then there's car insurance, another $150, and we're looking at $900! This is with nothing going wrong. I'm adding some serious mileage to the vehicle, now almost 9000km for this trip, and there's an eventual cost to that. My 2008 Ford Escape has done me well, but there's always the fear of something major happening before I get home.
Is it for you? With everything, this has been a trip of a lifetime, and I would recommend this kind of travel to anyone. It is a kind of freedom like no other, I can do whatever I want to do and go wherever I like to go. Travelling alone, I get to call all the shots. If I want to wake up at dawn or catch up on some Z's, I can do either. Do I want to push myself hiking all day, or just take it easy by the lake? It's up to me. I just need to be home for September, and that's the only restriction. I pay no rent, no utilities, and so those costs above end up not seeming like much when they are my only living expenses. If it's something you're after, it's possible. Plan it with a transition time between jobs, or ask for a leave of absence. End your lease, find a sublet, airBnB your home, and hit the road! Thanks as always! Amanda P.s. If you missed earlier pictures of my setup, here is the gorgeous beast:
