Originally Posted by
John N
Yes, I have and would again just show-up in LA, NYC, and other major metro areas as they do not have 100% occupancy and there are a TON more options to stay.
However, you still have not said what you would do if you could not get a campsite and basically saying I am an idiot for even considering illegal camping if no option exists. I sincerely love your vast geographic knowledge when it comes to bike touring, but you do have a slight tendency to give doom and gloom without a solution/alternative or downplay the cons of some of your suggestions. I was really hoping for something from you that I had missed if the PLANNED options fell through and was only left (in my eyes) with camping illegally. While all of your suggestions are good, none of them work in you can't make it to your reserved campsite with no viable option other than to illegally camp. Again, illegally camping is not my first or even second choice but my last choice. I was just hoping you had a pearl of wisdom on what to do if all planning is out the window and no options left.
Mostly agree with this on several spots. I have cycled through both LA and NYC and none of those cases did I have a reservation. Relative to the sizes of the urban areas - and how far one can travel by bicycle, there are a large number of options if you start looking long enough before dark.
As far as the illegal camping thing goes, I work it mostly as a set of probabilities and set things up to keep the need for illegal camping vanishingly low but not zero. This includes:
- trying to make internet based reservations at reasonable time, even if a week or few days before
- expanding the modes to include hostels; a hotel overnight, etc.
- if still stuck - going through the campground and asking if I might double up with someone. We know there is a certain amount of churn or even people that don't show up in their sites but I would mostly ask/offer to help pay - or try to turn it into a problem solving exercise with others e.g. at campground if they are aware of anything else to do...
- eventually as last resort camp if I needed to do that
So far, I've been lucky - both with parks and also other situations where I've traveled and at times bookings were mostly full or places overseas where there were no hotels