One of the questions we are asked most often, both by fellow vanlifers and those who live a more stationary life, is how we find camping and drinking water while on the road.

We have been incredibly fortunate to have never paid for either since departing on this trip and thought we would share our process for finding both.

Hopefully this post will help out fellow vanlifers and alleviate some worries that our friends and family might have (I’m looking at you mom).

Free Camping 

When looking for places to stay for a night or two, we have a few non-negotiables that must be met before we make a place our temporary home.

-We need the place to be easily accessible with the van. By this we mean a location that we can get to without getting our van stuck on a washed-out road.

-We need cell service. We do not need perfect connectivity by any means, but we do need a place with no less than a couple bars of reliable service so that we can stay in touch with friends and family. 

 -We need the campsite to be free. While paying for a campsite is never out of the question, paying upwards of $30/night is not preferable and would result in a huge cut to our budget. 

What We Do

We use an assortment of websites and apps on our phones to find free campsites. Between these apps we have ALWAYS found a place to stay that has suited our needs. The apps we use are as follows:

Campendium

Campendium is by far our favorite app. We find it to be the easiest to use with a very large and active community that regularly reviews campsites. This app allows you to search for campsites at any price range, as well as dump stations, fill stations, and public lands.

Additionally, this app integrates well with the GPS in your phone, so you can quickly search your surrounding area for locations. The app also comes with great features, like the ability to save campsites and to access turn-by-turn directions directly through the app.

Lastly, we find this app to be the most informative, one of the most comprehensive, and the most accurate campsite app on the market. This app also tells you what cell phone service is like at a specific campsite by identifying specific carriers and displaying how many bars of service that people have in the area. 

How to use Campendium

After downloading the app, open it and give it permission to use your GPS location through your phone. Once the app is set up, it is ready to use. 

You can search a location for campsites using a few methods. First, you can click the GPS location button and the app will ping your location and show you points of interest in your area. Second, you can search for a city or town using the search bar. Third, you can manually zoom into an area using the map feature. Focus the map on the area that you would like to search and select the button “Search this Area.”

iOverlander 

iOverlander is very similar to Campendium. The map feature is integrated to Apple Maps on IOS platforms, which is nice for Apple users.

Additionally, the app offers dozens of options for what to search for including free camp sites, paid campsites, locations with bathrooms, locations with showers, dump stations, hotels, and much much more.

This app allows you to save the location and pin places that you have camped. You can also read reviews from people who have stayed in the location. 

This app is incredibly user friendly and current, which makes it an incredible choice for anybody looking for a place to stay. For us though, we prefer the interface of Campendium a little more. 

How to use iOverlander

When you first log into iOverlander, you will be presented with a screen that has three options. You can “Search,” “Check-in,” or go to “Settings”. 

If you click “Map” you will be taken to an interactive map with icons to identify the different points of interest that you are searching for. You can then touch an icon to learn more information about that location. 

If you would like to change your search settings, simply click “Filter” in the top right and corner of the map. From here you can alter your search settings. 

If we come up empty after searching these apps, our final line of defense is to check out freecampsites.net. 

Freecampsites.net is well-known within the travel community and provides users with a list of both paid and free sites within a search area that is specified by the user. This website, while it works well, is not our favorite because the user interface is a little clunky and the website has lost prevalence with the introduction of the previously mentioned apps.

A benefit of this website is that it is the oldest on the list, which means it has a huge collection of reported campsites. Therefore, if you do not find a campsite on any apps, you might find a few on freecampsites.net. 

On the downside, freecampsites.net is community run and since the majority of campers opt to use apps, not as many people are using this website. This means that there are quite a few campsites that have not been reviewed in years and you may pull up to a campsite you selected only to find that it no longer exists. 

How to use Freecampsites.net

In your internet browser, go to freecampsites.net. Once the website loads you will see an interactive map with a search bar over top of it. In the search bar you can enter the city or town near which you would like to camp. The website will generate possible campsites that will appear on the map in the form of tents. Green tents signify free camping and red tents signify paid camping. 

Once the campsites have loaded to the map, simply click on the tent (or campsite) that interests you. If you would like to stay at that campsite, you will need to copy the GPS coordinates and paste them directly into your GPS. 

Other Apps that Vanlifers Swear by

RV Life

The Dyrt

The Vanlife App

Finding Water

The only thing more important than where we are going to sleep is what we are going to drink.

Our setup allows for us to carry about 10 gallons of drinking water, which can last us about 3-4 days before we need to fill up. Twice a week though, we have no choice but to venture out into the world and track down H2O.

There are water fill-up stations at nearly every supermarket or grocery store. While this is convenient, a gallon of water can cost anywhere between 25 and 75 cents. 

Though this might not seem like much, overtime the costs will add up. 

As a result, we prefer to find free water. 

So how do we do it?

It all starts by opening our internet browser and searching https://www.sanidumps.com.

This site, though really clunky, is extremely useful and outlines places in a specific area that have dump stations and water fill-ups. This website also goes the extra mile to inform users if the water is potable (safe to drink) or not. 

Once we have the list in front of us, we will call the phone numbers associated to the water fill-up site and confirm that they actually do provide free water. We have learned that most places do, in fact, provide free water, but charge for dumping waste. 

If we do not have any luck on this website, we will do a simple search on Google “Free potable water near (location).” This will usually lead us to a thread on Reddit that helps us to locate local water sources that are typically only known to locals.