September 2008, I joined my husband at work one day, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler!
His work, let me travel with him for a year and took me to all the Lower 48, Canada twice, and Mexico once. It was a fun time. I saw scenery that I’d never seen before…. roads that went on as far as the eye could see…. and places that I wanted to go back to.
That’s kind of what we’re doing now – all those places we wanted to go back to, but we’re doing it very very slowly – intentionally – to save money! You could spend a fortune out here!!!!!
We can only afford to act like tourist a few days a month in very special places. Paying $40 for two Bar-B-Que sandwiches and two fries can’t happen everyday… (but they were good! :-)) And I made chili-tasting-Shepard-pie dinner out of the leftovers one night. Ok,…. I digress…. back to the story….
From this post on – you’ll hear me talking a lot about FREE parking/camping. Most of the next few places we’re not going to have hook-up’s of any kind. No fresh water (for the sinks), no sewer (for the toilet), and no electric.
But, NO worries – we have tanks that hold our fresh water, grey water waste (shower, sinks), and our black tank for the toilet and solar for all those connectivity devices we all need. We just have to be mindful on status of all the tanks and charges on the solar.
My point is – we are living this not vacationing or taking a trip. This is our home now – all 240 sq ft of it. If our truck is not moving – we are not spending any money. We don’t have anywhere to be at any designated time, so sitting still for a few days to offset costs is optimal for us.
For the new RVer – be it full time, part time, weekend time, or just a weeks vacation – you can find some cool lands that you have the right to camp on for FREE. (no affiliation with any of the below – just resources we use)
- FreeCampsites.net
- Allstays.com
- BLM land (mostly out west)
- And there’s many more – Army Corps of Engineers, National Recreation Area’s, and the list goes on.
And now you find us 3 hours into our trip to Magnolia Beach, TX and we decided to stay at 290 Truck Plaza in Giddings, TX for the night. After 3 hours of pulling our 5th Wheel behind us – we’re normally ready to stop. We’d had a great time in Dallas/Fort Worth and decided to call it a night.
I pulled up on Freecampsites.net and found 290 Truck Plaza just a mile off the road we were on. It looked accommodating, fairly empty, and roomy.
Being my husband is a former OTR (over the road) truck driver and realizing space is normally tight for the drivers who must get off the road – we squeezed ourselves over to the grass as far as possible. You must be respectful – the truck drivers that bring us all those glorious things – by law, must stop driving after a set period of time – please be respectful! Please!
Ultimately we stayed here two nights because the weather where we were headed was cold and rainy with 20 mph winds. We were in no hurry to run into that kind of weather.
The truck stop personnel never came out to ask us what we were doing, there were (at max) two 18-wheelers here each night, so we patronized the store and stayed inside the RV. We also picked up a lot of trash on the backside of the parking lot!
Ok, lets get onto the BEACH!!!!! Overnight stops are good and mostly free if you’re not afraid of noise at a truck stop and noise from the interstate from Rest Area Parking. We’re not afraid of either. Overnighting at these places is a choice you have to make for yourself.