Post your Sneakiest Stealth Camp
I learned that it was a $120 dollar fine after I stayed overnight on a college University campus. Cops were looking for all the rvs due to the graduation festivities the next day. I got away with i...
Forum Discussion
We don't stealth camp much. We have fallen in love with state parks for camping, and living in Britain it is a struggle to find anywhere to stealth camp that is legal or not in a noisy service area, or 18 inches from the edge of a fast road.
We did have a great night camped on top of a mountain above a fjord in Norway. I wasn't aware of any signs saying we couldn't camp, but I didn't want to take any risks of upsetting someone. It was on a parking pull-out on a road ploughed through the snow on the top of the mountain. A road only used by tourists, since sensible locals used the modern tunnel that cut straight through the mountain at sea-level.
We parked up and went for a walk in the snow, and waited for the little remaining tourist traffic to die away before actually camping. I levelled the truck on a couple of rocks rather than using my obvious bright yellow levelling ramps, didn't place anything outside, minimised the use of lights inside and even brought the steps in so anyone passing would just see a parked vehicle.
I did recently make a mistake. Near Glacier NP we drove down a dirt road heading for a national forest area when we found a quiet area in a gorge where we could pull off the dirt road into an area just below and out of site of the road. I thought it was public land - there were certainly no signs indicating it was private.
So as you've probably guessed, at about 9 PM there was the sound of a diesel engine drawing up to the camper. I threw on my shoes and stepped out smiling and said "Hi, my name's Steve". His name was Jerry and it was his land and actually the public land started only a mile down the road where there was a proper campground. I apologised and said it was my mistake. He said his main worry was high school kids coming and messing around. He said he wasn't going to run us out providing we didn't start any fires or shoot anything. I assured him that we certainly were not going to be doing either and thanked him for his understanding.
Had I known it was private land I wouldn't have camped there. Even in retrospect, knowing that Jerry let me do it. I'm also aware that the situation could have worked out very different if I had taken a different stance with Jerry, if I had spread stuff around the camper, maybe even if I didn't have an English accent.
Steve.
We did have a great night camped on top of a mountain above a fjord in Norway. I wasn't aware of any signs saying we couldn't camp, but I didn't want to take any risks of upsetting someone. It was on a parking pull-out on a road ploughed through the snow on the top of the mountain. A road only used by tourists, since sensible locals used the modern tunnel that cut straight through the mountain at sea-level.
We parked up and went for a walk in the snow, and waited for the little remaining tourist traffic to die away before actually camping. I levelled the truck on a couple of rocks rather than using my obvious bright yellow levelling ramps, didn't place anything outside, minimised the use of lights inside and even brought the steps in so anyone passing would just see a parked vehicle.
I did recently make a mistake. Near Glacier NP we drove down a dirt road heading for a national forest area when we found a quiet area in a gorge where we could pull off the dirt road into an area just below and out of site of the road. I thought it was public land - there were certainly no signs indicating it was private.
So as you've probably guessed, at about 9 PM there was the sound of a diesel engine drawing up to the camper. I threw on my shoes and stepped out smiling and said "Hi, my name's Steve". His name was Jerry and it was his land and actually the public land started only a mile down the road where there was a proper campground. I apologised and said it was my mistake. He said his main worry was high school kids coming and messing around. He said he wasn't going to run us out providing we didn't start any fires or shoot anything. I assured him that we certainly were not going to be doing either and thanked him for his understanding.
Had I known it was private land I wouldn't have camped there. Even in retrospect, knowing that Jerry let me do it. I'm also aware that the situation could have worked out very different if I had taken a different stance with Jerry, if I had spread stuff around the camper, maybe even if I didn't have an English accent.
Steve.
