FREE Camping in Southern California

July 4, 2018March 5, 2020

FREE Camping in Southern California

We were pleasantly surprised to find more than enough FREE camping SoCal and we didn’t have to camp in a Wal-Mart parking lot! Below are some of our favorite sites from our time in Southern California.

Laguna Mountain

Julian, CA

GPS: 32.977978, -116.524818

We end up in trailhead parking lots a lot of the time because they are well-traveled, have access to trails, and normally have toilets. This spot was simple, had a great view of Anza Borrego in the distance, and was right on the Pacific Crest Trail.

There are quite a few level spots here and a vault toilet is available. Take a walk on the nearby Sunset Trail for beautiful views at the foot of the Sierras.

San Diego River Preserve

San Diego, CA

GPS: 32.76000856, -117.2250726

This site is a pull-out along the San Diego River in the heart of SD. There is bound to be a fair bit of traffic noise and potential conversations with homeless people living nearby, but you can’t beat the location for a quick night’s sleep and 5-minute drives to Sea World, Ocean Beach, and much more.

This can be an intimidating place to park, but we left our rig here for 4-5 hours at night and rode our bikes to Ocean Beach to have dinner and drinks and enjoy the ocean. There are plenty of runners and cyclists that use this abandoned road day and night, so we never felt unsafe here.

Law Street Beach

San Diego, CA

GPS: 32.8025916, -117.2595628

This section of curbside next to Pacific Beach is one of the best FREE camping spots we have ever had. The view of the Ocean is magnificent and the amount of active people around was very refreshing. There is not a lot of solitude here, but there is plenty of ocean to share.

This site had bathrooms and showers nearby and one only had to make sure not to park here during street sweeping, one day per week.

Thomas Mountain

Anza, CA

GPS: 33.5792566, -116.6241575

There are loads of pull outs and campsites along this OHV trail/road near Anza, CA. The road can be a bit rough and steep, so we stopped short of the top and had a great view of the valley below.

Vehicle with low-clearance should really try somewhere else, this road is rutted and rocky in places and could be hard to navigate in a rig larger than 24 feet.

North Joshua Tree BLM

Joshua Tree, CA

GPS: 34.172932, -116.224663

If you are looking for a peaceful escape from the modern world, this is not it. This is a dry creek bed that is used heavily for off-roading, dirt biking, and any other loud vehicle driving that you can think of. The lake bed is beautiful and very flat, but don’t plan on going to sleep until dark.

This is a perfect overnight spot before entering Joshua Tree National Park. The West Entrance is just minutes away and has a bathroom and brochure station for the park.

Sawtooth Canyon (New Jack City)

Barstow, CA

GPS: 34.670395, -116.98423

We recently (March 2020) added this campsite as we traveled to LA for work and this made a perfect stopover from Northern Arizona.

This campground is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is very busy in the climbing season (October-March). There is a ton of climbing available in this area and something can be found for climbers of all skill levels. This site has toilets but they were full when we visited, there was also zero occupancy when we arrived on a Wednesday night in March-arrive early. All in all, it wasn’t a bad place to stopover on the way to LA. Be sure and hike to the top of the ridge and check out the views looking toward Big Bear.

We had some of our most unique campsites of our whole summer in So Cal and we think you will enjoy them too! Did we miss any spots along our route? E-mail us and let us know!

February 1, 2018February 6, 2018

FREE Camping: Wapta Falls Recreation Site-Field, British Columbia

If you haven’t noticed yet, we don’t like paying for camping. We especially don’t like paying for camping when we are traveling through beautiful Western Canada and every dollar means we can stay on the road a little longer and see more of this beautiful country. Many thanks to the British Columbia Recreation Department for having so many awesome, free campsites and trails for public use. This one was located just down the road from Wapta Falls and offered amazing views of the falls and the mountains beyond.

How to Get There- (GPS: 51.109397, -116.500873)

Once you visit Jasper National Park, travel back down the Icefields Parkway and turn West on HWY 1 toward Field turn onto Beaverfoot Rd. Stay on Beaverfoot Rd for nearly 8 miles of rough logging road and turn left at the sign for Wapta Falls Recreation Site. The dirt road to the campsites is rutted and could be difficult to navigate in wet weather. We managed fine through a few puddles in a 19 ft. Class C RV. Getting out was a little tricky, but with some careful driving we made it out with no problem.

We pulled in at night and didn’t really understand how good of a FREE camping spot we had stumbled upon. Rachael started working on a delicious meal of red beans and rice and I took a walk outside to see what I could see, and hear. The sound of Wapta Falls 2000 feet below was LOUD! And if the stars could make noise they would have drown out the falls. This was by far the best night for night photography on our trip, but it didn’t last long. By the time Rachael got done with dinner, most of the stars had hidden themselves behind cloud cover.

We rested easy knowing that the parking brake was on and that we would awake to the sound of a mountain waterfall and what was sure to be a beautiful view. We slept in the next morning and awoke to great conditions and undoubtedly one of the best views of the trip. Chancellor Peak and Mt. Vaux dominate the horizon and Wapta Falls, massive in its own right, is dwarfed by the peaks above. It is crazy to think that only a day before we were hiking to the abandoned campground and the hoodoos at the base of Chancellor Peak and now we were viewing the same peak from a great distance.

You could say that there were facilities here. There were a couple of fire pit areas and a couple of picnic tables that seemed to be pretty well maintained. There was also a pit toilet between the campsites that seemed to be in okay shape. We would definitely poop here again.

Activities in the Area–

Wapta Falls Hike-The most obvious activity in the immediate area is to hike to Wapta Falls. The falls are beautiful and huge. There are two options to hike to the falls from this campsite. One is to drive Beaverfoot Rd back to HWY 1 and turn West until you see the sign for Wapta Falls on your right. The second option (we suggest this one) is to hike down and bushwhack your way from the campsite to the falls. It is a lot of elevation to climb back up, but we think the views will more than make up for it.
Golden, BC- This quiet little town was one of our favorites from the trip mostly because of the quaint size and the amenities that abounded for such a small town. Our favorite stop in Golden was Bacchus Books. This bookstore doubles as a cafe and coffee shop. The selection of books was impressive considering the whole place couldn’t have been 2000 square feet on both floors. We enjoyed the baked goods and reading in a coffee shop that wasn’t packed full of people.

It really was a shame that we had to leave this campsite so soon, but we had more to see in Yoho and time was starting to run out on our Canadian adventure. We hope that you enjoyed our review of this campsite and hope that you continue to follow our adventures on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook as @okienomads.

December 30, 2017December 30, 2017

A Hike Through an Abandoned Campground: Hoodoo Creek Trail, Yoho National Park

Abandoned campsites. Dilapidated bathroom facilities. Wood stoves and propane tanks. 75 tent campsites left to ruin. What causes a large campground in a Canadian National Park close abruptly and leave large amounts of infrastructure to be taken back by the forest?

In 2013, Parks Canada elected to close Chancellor Peak Campground, which provided 59 campsites on the Western side of Yoho National Park. The decision was made after extreme flooding of the Kicking Horse River ripped through the Chancellor Peak Campground in Summer 2012. Parks officials stated that money was set aside to remove infrastructure such as fire rings, picnic tables, and buildings before more damage could occur.

Then why was Hoodoo Creek Campground abandoned in 2001 and left to rot? Seventy-five campsites lay empty near the town of Field, BC with remains of numbered signs still showing the rings of tent-sites barely visible through the grass and trees that have overgrown around them. Large bathroom facilities sit unlocked and still fully furnished with large amounts of plumbing supplies laying in their stalls. Huge, covered outdoor gathering areas with wood stoves and picnic tables lay un-touched if you disregard the numerous graffiti tags scattered through-out. Large dumpsters and outbuildings remain unused and still in relatively good shape considering the time that they have sat in the bitter Alberta winters.

Online research into the Hoodoo Creek Campground and it’s closure returned very little information. While digging through a Land Management Plan for Yoho NP from 2000, I found a section that mentions efforts to “Examine ways to improve wildlife movement at constricted areas, called pinch points… the Hoodoo Campground”. The Canadian Government has shown time and again that it is serious about protecting wildlife, but would it close a profitable campground in a unique location simply to allow animals to pass through the area easier? If so, wouldn’t Parks Canada Marketing take a story like that and run with it?

The location is still used heavily by visitors that seek to use the 30 campsites at the entrance to the campground, far from the A-F loops of the old campground. Thousands of visitors have probably stayed in the new sites without even knowing that the old sites were still there, that is how heavy the underbrush and trees have become. The other major draw to this area is a 3.3 KM hike to a rock formation called a Hoodoo, the namesake of the abandoned campground.

Mt. Chancellor towering over the abandoned Hoodoo Creek Campground

Once parked at the road block that keeps visitors from visiting the old campsites you must travel down a flat gravel road to reach the campground and Hoodoo Creek. You will begin to see campground signs for Camp A, B, C… Within each ring of sites, you will see short 4×4 posts with numbers on them marking where a tent pad used to be. Travel past the campsites to the creek and cross over to get to the trailhead. It appears that a few iterations of a bridge have been built over time and all have been wiped away by the spring snow melt.

Keep in mind that this is a very, very, steep trail. It gains over 300 m of elevation over less than a couple of kilometers. You begin hiking a set of gradual switchbacks through Douglas fir and the remnants of a prescribed burn in 2005. When we visited in October of 2017, the trail was clear and in good shape.

The switchbacks continue until you round the corner with a clear view of Mt. Chancellor and Wapta Falls in the distance. More on that in a later post. Continue around the bend and you will begin to see views of several Hoodoos jutting out of the side of the hill and Hoodoo Creek directly below. You will reach a sign for a couple of different view points. I advise taking the upper view point as the lower simply wasn’t very impressive.

Hoodoos are formed when softer rock is eroded away, yet the sedimentary rock that is covered by the harder stone above is protected from erosion and remains, forming a tower-like formation. The Lenchcoil Hoodoos are rare in that this type of rock formation is normally found in drier climates than Yoho NP.

The view from the edge of the Hoodoos is fantastic and it gives a very real sense of the size and scale of the formations. Continue up the trail for an interesting perspective of interesting objects, or spend some time soaking up the views of the crazy rocks from below.

This hike is an out and back and as you descend back to the creek you will be rewarded with excellent views of the surrounding valley. Wapta Falls is visible in a Tolkien-esque landscape over the horizon and should definitely be on your list of sites to see if you are fortunate enough to visit Yoho National Park. The hike down is much more enjoyable that the rather tough hike up to the Hoodoos.

A final note on the Hoodoos Campground: Although we thoroughly enjoyed our time exploring the Hoodoo Creek area, we couldn’t seem to get past the idea that something tragic happened here. When we crossed back across the creek, we found a water pump house next to a large water storage tank, a couple of thousand gallons of capacity if I had to guess. Inside this ridiculously well-maintained pump house was a brand new generator that had enough juice to power a small village. All of the water fittings on the storage tank were in excellent shape and had been used recently. We also found a large mass of water pipe that appeared to be used to pump water out of the creek at some point.

Is this a secret water heist?

Was there a mass-murder in the Hoodoo Creek Campground in 2001?

Or was this simply a move by Parks Canada to protect the travel of wildlife from one area of the park to another?

My research was inconclusive and hopefully someone who reads this can fill us in on what exactly happened at Hoodoo Creek. If you have information about this mysterious campground, we would love to hear from you. As always, follow us on Instagram to get the most up to date images and video from our trips and build progress on our bus. We would love it if you would check out the rest of the blog and the YouTube page as well. All social media is @okienomads. Thanks for reading and have a blessed day!

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November 5, 2017

Gluten Free: 5 Tips for Eating GF on a Road Trip

One of our biggest challenges on road trips is eating healthy and gluten free. Rachael has a gluten intolerance that makes digesting wheat a truly miserable experience for both of us, but mostly her. I can eat Gluten, but my digestion is greatly improved when I kick wheat out of my diet. So how do we do it? We travel all over the country staying in campgrounds, Air BnB’s and backcountry campgrounds in the middle of nowhere and we always have to eat.

Below are some tips that will help you eat Gluten Free on the road or in the woods:

Use Gluten Free Apps- There are countless apps that are available for free or cheap on Android and iOS that will point you in the direction of GF restaurants in your area. The app we use most is Find Me Gluten Free. It has over 100,000 downloads from the Google Play Store and it has been very accurate for us. Simply type in the location that you are searching and navigate the list or map for results. Be advised that in very large cities like, the results can be overwhelming; try zooming in to your neighborhood or street for accurate results.
Embrace the Art of Cooking- If you are new to a Gluten Free lifestyle, you will need to embrace the fact that you will need to learn how to cook. Eating out is not only less healthy, but it is extremely expensive. It is especially expensive when you are on a road trip budget. Before we get setup at any campsite or take off on any trip into the backcountry, we create a menu and meal prep. Keep an eye out as we will be posting Gluten Free recipes very soon on the blog.
Shop Before You Leave- If you know that your regular grocery store stocks GF bread and all of the ingredients that you will need to make your favorite camp dish, don’t wait until you get to Pond Creek, OK to see if the 7-Eleven attendant has any idea what Gluten is. Plan your meals ahead of your departure and buy your potentially hard to find items before you embark.
Pack Snacks- Not only is eating small meals throughout the day a healthy choice, but it gives you some flexibility when it comes to eating Gluten Free in unfamiliar places. By packing a snack such as fruits, vegetables, or trail mix, you give yourself a back-up plan in case you can’t find a meal on the road. On our most recent trip to Canada, we flew with a 5LB bag of Kar’s Trail Mix and ate it over the course of two weeks in the Great White North; we didn’t have to worry about getting glutened by a mystery trail mix in Yoho National Park. To see more from that trip, check out our post about the start of that trip here.
Take Your Time & Stay Longer- In my limited time traveling and living with a person that has a gluten intolerance, I have found that the less rushed we are and the longer we stay in a particular area, the more likely we are to find quality Gluten Free offerings and the more accommodating grocery stores in an area. Conversely, the more that we rush while traveling or in our day-to-day, the more we slip up on eating well.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to visit our site and to read our content. We greatly appreciate it and we want to hear from you. Please leave us a comment on the blog, send us an email at okienomads@gmail.com, or find us on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube @okienomads.

November 1, 2017November 22, 2017

Canadian Road Trip: Getting to Canada

The easiest and least complicated aspect of our recent trip planning was arranging to get into Canada from the US.

Did you know: American Citizens can visit Canada for up to 180 days before other arrangements such as Visas have to be arranged? Crazy! All of this natural beauty and all of these super friendly people and the government doesn’t care if you spend 6 months across the border. AWESOME!

The backbone of our whole trip was finding an affordable international flight that left near our wedding and arrived when we needed to be back. We used Expedia.com for our flights and found a cheap flight out of XNA in Northwest Arkansas and a return flight to Tulsa International.

Okienomads Travel Tip #1: Always check-in to your flight before you get to the airport. If the plane is empty, you will probably get to sit by your travel companion. If it is full (like our return flight from Calgary) you will get stuck between two strangers.

Once we arrived in Calgary, we made our way to our first Air BnB for our layover for Canadian Thanksgiving. MJ was a fantastic host and we could not have asked for a better place to relax and recharge before hitting the road. The apartment is furnished well and the hot-tub was a great addition. The location was great for walking all over Downtown Calgary. I would highly recommend this for anyone looking for an alternative to a hotel room.

On our return trip through Calgary, we stayed here. Justin was also a great host and was even there to let us in when there was a malfunction with the buzzer at the front door. The building is a historic brick building in the heart of Downtown Calgary. The layout was a little unique, but it worked great for two road-weary travelers.

Calgary has plenty to offer in the way of food and shopping, there was however, limited nightlife. We are not big into nightlife or bars, but we did notice that it was a little dead after about 10PM. We found no shortage of food options and even found some that accommodated with gluten free options. Below are a few of our favorites:

Yellow Door Bistro/119 12 Avenue SW- This cafe was a bit overpriced, but the Sunday brunch was very good. The service was excellent and the waiter even helped us plan out our day of walking around the city. I probably wouldn’t eat hear again, simply due to the price tag, but if someone else is paying, its great!
Pho Hoai Vietnamese Noodle House/132 3 Ave SE- Want to eat at the best Thai food that is open on Thanksgiving? This is it. The food was excellent, cheap, and authentic. The owner explained that her special sauce is hand made from scratch daily. The location is a little tricky as it is in a strip mall in Chinatown, but it was tasty.
Sweet Tooth Rolled Ice Cream/206 Center St SE- Talk about a hidden gem! This ice cream parlor rolls their ice cream right in front of you and delivers a delicious final product. The ice cream artisans were extremely friendly and super nice. I would highly recommend this place during your stop in Calgary.
Michael’s Pizza/139 10 Ave SW- The google reviews speak for themselves, Michaels was excellent pizza! They make their pizza with farm-fresh ingredients and deliver anywhere downtown. They also have a gluten free crust that was pretty good.

Calgary has a lot to do, especially if you are short on time in the city. We really enjoyed spending quality time walking the trails around the Bow River and exploring the different neighborhoods in and around Calgary. If we had a little more time, we would have taken a trip out to the Calgary Olympic Park. Our schedule did not support this however, so it will have to wait until next time. We got a hold of our RV and our next stop was Banff National Park. To learn more about our experience with Cruise Canada and a rental RV in general, click here!

Next Article: BANFF, AB: OKIENOMAD’S TRIP THROUGH CANADA’S OLDEST NATIONAL PARK

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October 27, 2017November 22, 2017

Travel on the Cheap: FAQ and Review of Renting an RV to tour the Canadian Rockies

When we started brainstorming options for our Honeymoon, Rachael and I were both unaware of how much adventure we could cram into two weeks by renting an RV and road-tripping through the Canadian Rockies.

Why Cruise America (Canada)?

We researched a few other RV rental companies (Canada Dream mostly) and they were more expensive and not nearly as flexible with dates and costs. We got a seasonal deal with Cruise Canada (same company as Cruise America) and it cost us almost half as much with CC as it would have with Canada Dream.

Why an RV?

Cost. One alternative is to camp, but campsites are around $12-20/night not to mention the cost of renting camping equipment that could withstand the cold of October in Alberta which ranged anywhere from $20-100/night which isn’t any cheaper than the RV. The RV cost us just under $1000 CAD after renting pots and pans for the 8 nights. Hotels in Banff and Jasper averaged around $150/night not to mention the cost of a rental car or shuttle to drive us to cool places. In the RV it was one cost for the whole trip and we only had to worry about one reservation.

Convenience. Everything was in the RV! Just like when we travel in the bus, all of the things that we needed were tucked away in the RV, ready for any hike or adventure that arose. We could go from sleeping to hiking in a couple of minutes and the RV was secure and safe anywhere that we visited in Alberta and British Columbia. All we had to pack was a sleeping bag and we were set!

How terrible was living in an RV for over a week?

You are asking a couple who want to live full-time in a school bus, but past that, the RV was great! Everything worked and was clean when we picked up the unit. We used the propane stove and heater throughout the whole time we were in the rig and it worked flawlessly. The refrigerator ran off of electric and propane and we only refilled the propane tank once to the effect of about $25CAD.

The RV only had 100k miles on it and appeared to be basically new. It drove fine for as large of a vehicle as it was and we only had to put air in 1 tire on one occasion. We literally just drove it, slept in it, and took it back.

How brutal was dealing with Cruise Canada (America)?

I too have read some of the reviews online about Cruise Canada and I was initially very skeptic. I had planned to walk around the whole rig with a GoPro filming all of the little problems and blemishes, similar to the experience of renting a cheap apartment in a college town. However, our experience with CC was very good. Customer service was right on and we spent a total of about 20 minutes at their location, total. The check-in was fast and painless. Below are a couple of tips to help your process go smoothly:

Don’t plan on starting your rental on a weekend. We started and ended our rental on a weekday and we hardly saw anyone else at the location.
Have all of your paperwork in order. Make sure that you watch the safety video that they send to you ahead of time. And provide all of the needed licenses and agreements when you get to the counter.
Be familiar with the general operation of a Recreation Vehicle before you rent someone else’s $60,000+ rig. Understand how propane, electric, and water systems work. It’s simple.

Do you have to stay in Campgrounds?

Yes and no. To use the 110V appliances like the AC unit and the microwave, you must be connected to shore power in a campground or driveway. The rest of the appliances/lights/etc are 2-way, meaning they can run on the “house” battery for a short period of time. We only paid for camping 2 nights out of the 9 that we stayed in the RV.

Look for highway turnoffs, abandoned parking lots, and free RV parking signs and eat your heart out. One of our favorite nights of the trip was in a “Free RV Parking” area at the Crossing Gas Station/Motel/Pub.

Where did you poop?

This is a super common question that we often get with the bus life and the answer is the same, public restrooms and the woods are everywhere, especially in Canada. We did not use the RV washroom for #2 once. We utilized the always present forest or public restrooms when were near a city or town. Just think of how many trailhead, coffee shop, visitor center bathrooms that you see every day of a trip. Now just plan your day a little bit ahead of time and you too will not let the poo control your adventures.

Bonus tip: Always bring TP. An extra roll of toilet paper can save the day. We bought a small 4 pack when we landed and donated what was left to our AirBnB host in Calgary before we flew out…A small price to pay for comfortable BM’s.

If you have ever rented an RV and had a hack or suggestion that could help us the next time we rent, please drop a comment or e-mail us at okienomads@gmail.com. As always, keep up to date with our adventures on Instagram and YouTube @okienomads.