I know a couple of young guys who just completed a 1600+ mile trip that took them through some of the eastern US states. They mentioned that they'd gotten in the habit of staying for free at state campgrounds since most are now reservation-only and have no entrance gates or night-time staff. They would simply ride in late in the day, set up wherever was vacant, get up early and ride out. No one ever questioned them and other campers treated them like royalty. This wouldn't have worked just a few years ago when most campgrounds had staffed entrances because not everyone had a smart phone.

Now I'm not condoning what they did and I busted their chops about it, but it got me thinking. Given that most of these campgrounds would charge 25-40 bucks just to set up a tent and use none of the campground amenities except the bathroom, and given it's the off season and most of the campgrounds are practically empty...maybe I should cut them a break.

According to the guys, they got the idea on-line from Blogs, Vlogs and other posts. Apparently, "everybody is doing it".

I camp in state campgrounds almost exclusively, NY State and DEC, Conn., Vermont, NH and Maine and have never seen a campground that does not have staff at the gate until late in the evening. You would have to be arriving after dark to boondock.

It varies a lot from state to state. Even within a state, it can differ between populated regions and less populated ones.

I am within 40 miles of four TX state parks. These are close to the "Texas Triangle" (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth) where ~75% of the state population lives, or ~20 million people. These parks are popular, fill up or mostly fill up months in advance for the prime Spring/Fall periods. They have staffed entrance gates, but the staff also goes home say after 5pm when there is an honor system of paying and dropping your fees in an envelope. There are also "campground hosts" who keep an eye on things in return of an ability to stay free in the parks for extended times. Off season is more like hot parts of the summer when there are day visitors but campsites are easier to get.

So it might work in other states or in parts of Texas that aren't as populated but I don't see this as a good plan for nearby TX state parks I visit and I don't see "everybody doing it" here.

Why do people think that state parks are over-funded? When you don't see staff, perhaps it is because of more job cuts. Several decades ago a state park employee at a state park I was at (in a different state) was bragging about how their park was the only park in their state that had enough visitors that they were fully funded by the entrance fees and their contracts with concession companies that leased some of the facilities. I suspect that none of the parks in my state are self sufficient on fees.

Seems like that is essentially theft from all of the other users of the campgrounds who do pay, and all of the tax payers who make up any difference between the campground's take and its costs.

I’m rode to a NJ state park yesterday and am spending two nights there. I would never dream of stealing a stay, and not only because park police were on patrol last night and early this morning.

I come to this place several times a year and have built relationships with employees. They are always very nice to me and will do things like deliver wood to my site.

And I’d like to know what stat’s parks require reservations. NJ and PA don’t. And the last time I stayed in VT and NY state parks I didn’t need reservations.

Sound like big time selfishness.

This is one of the most popular state parks in Wisconsin.
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/park...eation/camping

Photo of the lake that the park is named after below was in early spring, lake was still frozen.



I do not know about other parks in Wisc.

I know some of the really popular Minnesota parks need reservations. I think this is the most popular Minnesota state park.
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_pa...6#reservations

Needed because they are popular and you probably won’t get a site if you show up without a reservation or necessary regardless of occupancy rate?

I go the Cape Henlopen State Park in DE a couple of times a year. You may camp there without a reservation, but good luck snaring a site during the height of summer if you don’t have a reservation. I booked my site for this past Easter weekend in January. Nearly all the tent sites were already reserved.

Normalizing poor behavior is not a good thing.

Ah, yes.
That's what Hiker/biker sites accomplish.
Especially if you are on a long tour,
it's hard to say with any certainty that you'll be there July 11th.

I am not convinced that ACA has continued to pursue this with state park systems.
Earlier leadership believed this was important for long-distance cycle touring.
And it makes things easier for shorter tours, too.

At present, both the NPS and state park systems are totally RV-oriented.
I get it - if you pay $400,000 for a metal box, you want some place to park it.
But when they get as big as the Queen Mary, someone might want to pause.
And reassess.

Oregon Stage Parks started these in the 1970s/1980s.
California and Washington followed suit to a lesser degree.
All three park systems are struggling with funding now.

Because bicycle touring appears to be declining,
parks see little reason to retain hiker/biker sites.

I would not call the many NY State DEC facilities, of which there are near 60 campgrounds, “RV oriented” as they don’t provide hookups of any kind. They have recently started allowing walk in/bike in camping, in that they rescinded the requirement to make a reservation online prior to arrival day. That at least no allows cyclists with no access to Reserve America the ability to just show up at a campground, though they don’t as yet have bike sites,

Perhaps not NY, but there are 49 other states - -
And most are rushing to service RV campers.
It's where the demand is, it's where the money is.

I did look at New York State Parks,
And, yes, they do seem to be running counter to the trend.

Ohio -
https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-lea...rovements-2025
North Dakota -
https://www.parkrec.nd.gov/business/...ate-parks-fall
Missouri -
https://mostateparks.com/basic-page/revenue-bonds
Georgia -
https://gastateparks.org/Vogel/Construction
Arizona -
https://azstateparks.com/press/patag...ar-anniversary
Etc,

One of the joys, for me anyway, of bicycle touring is the absence of a schedule. Hiker/Biker sites are fine with me. they usually have grass instead of gravel to pitch my tent on.

Many of the campgrounds as operated by the NY State Parks dept. have no hookups. But as well, very few Vermont state sites, few NH sites and maybe 2 out of 12 Maine facilities have hookups. That’s not to say that they don’t get RV’s, they do.

I was raised not to steal. I consider that stealing since you are expected to pay. The fact that they waited til a certain hour to do this screams that they know it's wrong They could have used Warm Showers. They could have done better/other research and found churches or bb fields, etc to sleep at in city. Our downward spiraling society is caused, in part, by those who lack respect for others and rules. Your friends, along with "everyone" who's doing it is the reason why fences go up, cameras are used, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to find places to free camp. - From a chick who has been living on her bike for the past decade in the western U.S. (and not by choice)

Yes. Even where I am in NJ right now added hookups at some sites maybe 3 years ago. When I look online, they are often booked, at least on the weekends and during the week during beach season. (The closest shore town is only about 11 miles away. I rode there today.) The nice thing is that those sites are in their own area away from most of the other sites.

Caoe Henlopen, which I mentioned above, also added hookups maybe 6 years ago. They are also away from tents sites, and generators are still not allowed in anywhere in the park.

I did a tour in VT in 2020. I stayed almost exclusively in state parks. I don’t remember seeing hookups. One interesting thing is that at at least some of the parks they had small cottages/dwellings where an employee lived. Guess it’s a good way to attract workers when there are no population centers close.

Like others, I can’t condone the “let’s sneak in” behavior. It’s a service that costs money to provide, so pay your share. For the record, there are no hookups at Vermont State Parks (except for hosts). You would definitely need reservations at some of them, due to popularity.

Our big trip this year is Western Iowa -> LaCrosse Wi --> Sault Ste Marie ON --> Kingston ON, --> Buffalo NY --> Pittsburgh PA, camping through many different states/provinces. We start mid July and have already booked some popular sites near the Elroy/Sparta. Other than that we generally call the day before or go on-line to book a site. In the past, the weekends have sometimes been an issue (arrrrrgh!), but we always figure something out. And the hospitality of people when you are travelling by bike is often extremely kind, offering us a place to stay or camp. So we pay and generally try to be good ambassadors for those on a bike, please try and do the same.

I think the need for reservations really boils down to how busy a campground is, either public or privately owned. Weekends vs weekdays, busy season or not, etc., those are all factors. State parks are often located because of the rare or unusual natural features there. Thus some state parks can be almost as hard to get a campsite as the Grand Canyon. But others rarely fill.

And parks that have reservations that fill up, if they do not offer refunds for cancelations, then nobody will bother to cancel if they change their plans and are not coming. Two years ago I called a campground and asked if I could reserve a site for that same day on Labor Day weekend. They said they had one cancelation for an RV site that I could take and use for tenting. But when I got there, I found that two other people with tent site reservations had canceled after I had called. So, I had a choice of two different tent sites instead of the RV site. That campground offered refunds for reservation cancelations if the campground could re-rent that site later. Thus, if you had a reservation and could not come, you had an incentive to cancel because you might get your money back.

I usually try to finish my bike tours before or in mid July, I try to avoid late July or August when everyone else is vacationing and filling up the campgrounds in mid latitude regions. (I am not talking about Florida here, I found campgrounds were full in February in the Florida Keys.)

In June in mid or northern latitudes, I have often been the only tent camper in a campground on a weekday. But two years ago on a weekend, I got the next to last campsite available at a Provincial Park on a Friday night, 20 minutes later the last site was taken so the campground was full, in middle of June. I was really surprised to find how full the campgrounds were on that trip.

I am planning a tour right now for UK, I leave in two and a half weeks. Part of my route has very few campgrounds so for part of my route I have laid out a daily plan of which campgrounds I will stay at for eight consecutive days. I am rolling the dice, not making reservations because I want the flexibility to take a zero day if there are high winds. But when there are no campgrounds for fifty or sixty miles, it makes it a lot harder to just go riding until you feel like calling it a day. In laying out my plans, I was surprised to find some campgrounds are limited to members only, some do not allow tent camping, I am not used to seeing those types of restrictions in USA or Canada.

My tour two years ago, a lot of the campgrounds on my map did not exist anymore. So, this tour I am being much more thorough in my pre-trip planning to plot campgrounds on my GPS as waypoints if they exist. If they do not have a website, or if their website does not have any evidence of activity in 2026, I am not considering it to exist. But because of some of the restrictions at some campgrounds, I have added one more criteria, I want their website to actually say the word tent in the pricing, so that I know tenting is allowed, or have a photo that shows tents.

If you planned to take the ferry from Kingston Ontario to Wolfe Island, and then the ferry to Cape Vincent, NY, double check that the ferry between NY and Wolfe Island is still running. I took that ferry between USA and Canada two years ago, but last year it was no longer operating.

If you are interested in my trip two years ago, more at this link:
Bike Tour near Lake Ontario and part of Erie Canal - June 2024

I added an addendum to that trip log last September with a note on the ferry not operating.

Wow! Thank you very much. Indeed, it is not running this year, but hopefully next year, so we will adjust our route. We were on it 3 years back. You show up on the Wolfe Island side and wait until the guy that runs it (now retired) determines there are enough cars to go, can be hours. Reading the local news suggests that there is a strong push on both sides (Canada/US) to make it happen again. I hope it does...a wonderful crossing...we love ferries.

Yeah, a lot of people would like to see the ferry start up again. I think the Kingston to Wolfe Island ferry is the more important one, as Wolfe Island has a lot of people living there. Not as many people crossed USA to Wolfe Island, or the other way, but enough that it kept a small ferry profitable.

I pulled up to the NY side of the ferry. They were raising the ramp, asked me if I wanted to cross and I said yes. They said it was $5 and lowered the ramp for me, and a pickup pulled up behind me. There were two cars and the pickup besides me on that crossing. It happened so fast that I did not have a chance to take any photos on land at that point.



The truck and cars beat me off the ferry so I had to wait about five minutes to see a Canadian border agent.

The Wolfe Island ferry had a long line of cars waiting for it. And it was going to take a while, so I dug out my food and made lunch while waiting. Then the next ferry to Kingston.



You have a nice looking tandem.

I am glad I had a chance to stop you from learning the hard way that the ferry was no longer running. If your posting did not say Kingston, I would not have thought to warn you.

I too wish ACA, BikePacking.com, etc. would push for every public camping ground to have a "no-turn-away" policy and/or at least 1 hiker/biker site. It is not like we are trying to berth the Queen Mary. Just some level 10x10 spot would suffice, preferably relatively near the restrooms.

When I rode the Pacific Coast route, I very politely suggested an improvement to a staffer at a California State Park. She responded that we are lucky to even have hiker biker sites at some parks because we are low revenue. And she stormed off.

In my state (Wisc), if a state park employee acted like that, they would have a very serious talk with a supervisor about their attitude.

Bike campers are probably much neater than motorized ones. I often find abandoned tent stakes while searching for the softest place to pitch my tent. Bicycles campers carry so little equipment, we notice if a piece is missing.

The 1000 islands bridge sidewalk may be open this year, but not sure. We will cross that bridge when we come to it