To make it through our year financially, we’ve got to take advantage of free and low-cost camping whenever we can. RV resorts typically charge $40-$70 dollars a night and offer full hookups, laundry facilities, and sometimes a pool. State parks are a little less. National forests are often $10 or $15, without hook-ups. Harvest Hosts (www.harvesthosts.com) gives you access to farms and wineries where you can park for free, and we’ve used that once with success. We haven’t tried truck stops or a Walmart yet, but those often offer free overnight parking. Rest stops are an option in the western states, but we’ve heard that east of the Mississippi, they don’t look kindly on overnight resters.
Waylon Jennings RV Park
We use our trusty app AllStays to search for overnight options wherever we go. It points out places we would never find otherwise. Such as the Waylon Jennings RV Park in Littlefield, Texas (hometown of the country singer). You can stay there for up to four nights for free, and it includes water and electric hook-ups, as well as a dump station. Just west of Lubbock, it was a perfect evening stop for us after we left Santa Fe.
Its a funny little park in the small town, right on a main road and next to baseball fields and the largest horseshoe park I’ve ever seen: about 15 pits. The horseshoe field is named after Fannie Mae Whitfield, Waylon Jennings’ aunt. I wish I’d gotten a photo of the memorial poem engraved on a plaque. But it went something like:
Fannie Mae Horseshoe Club.
Be it as she were,
She walked above the rest on earth.
Be it as she is,
She walks above the angels in heaven.
We got there just in time for an exciting thunderstorm. We hunkered down in Bessie, turned off the lights, and watched streaks light up the sky. Listened to thunderclaps and pounding rain.
The storm was still going on the next morning, so we just stayed put until it let up around noon. There were only two other rigs in the park, no host, and it was a perfect little respite for us from dramatic Texas weather. Thank you, Waylon and Littlefield for the free night!
I know that sometimes, on the west coast, we hear horror stories about the weather in different parts of the country (i.e. Georgia, in our case) and then we check in with relatives and they chuckle and say: “Say Wha’?!?!” But tonight, after hearing from friends that the weather in Texas has been BAD, we watched the “news” and, sure ‘nuf, it sounds real bad. So do us a favor and don’t drive through stream beds and check ahead for weather forecasts and tornado forecasts before heading out, okay? (I don’t know anything about tornado forecasts, but they must exist, right???) I’m guessing what with the thunderstorms y’all didn’t get to try out Fannie Mae’s’s horseshoe pits…maybe on the way back… Claire
P.S. I’m on my fourth password for this site. For some reason, the software doesn’t seem to agree with my choices each time I return… But we ARE reading along with you both. Thanks for writing and including all the photos!!!
Yes, the weather has been CRAZY here! We’ve had some beautiful days in between thunderstorms. But we were in Austin for 4 inches of rain in an hour. My brother-in-law was driving us through the rain back to their cabin when alerts went off on all of our phones to take cover from a tornado close by. We got to a grocery store where they shut down and herded us all to the back. All was fine, but later we drove through Wimberly where a house full of people had been washed into the river. The bridge was knocked out and the rescue crews were all set up still searching for people. There is serious weather in Texas!! And we seem to be hitting all the hot spots, but dodging the worst. We are being very careful. And the weather has eased up.
Fannie Mae Horsehoe Club is on my to-do list now! Just love these little goodies you find along the way!