In 2022 my wife and I took my recent unemployment as an opportunity to retire early and change our lives. We sold our house and everything in it, bought a new Grand Design Reflection 150, 30ft 5th wheel, and moved to Washington state.
We spent a year staying with our son and his wife, watching their new baby grow and helping them with their fixer-upper home. But having spent five decades in the warmth of Southern California, we didn’t want to go through another winter in the Pacific Northwest. No matter how cute the baby was! So my wife and I hit the road.
We had previously owned a Jayco Kiwi hybrid camping trailer for 22 years and had traveled most of the Western US, even Canada. But those trips were just a few weeks long, and reserving space was much easier then. Often times we didn’t even have a reservation, we just showed up and always found space.
Many more people are in the RV lifestyle now, especially post-Covid. When we decided to go full-time I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to find space every night, for six months straight. We tried Thousand Trails, but ultimately canceled it just 6 months later after using it just once. Another program we tried was Harvest Host.
The HH membership offers access to some five thousand locations offering free one-night stays for a $179 per year membership (now $199). Program ‘Hosts’ come in all types. They might be the parking lot of a business or church, a museum or casino, a farm or winery, a golf course, or even a private home. A few offer hookups, usually just electric and water. And generally for a small fee.
Most hosts allow just one night free but some offer up to five nights free, while others charge for additional nights. Also, though they are free, HH membership protocol ‘encourages’ members to make a purchase or donation. Usually no more than $25. Unless you are staying at a golf course, which all require a purchase of at least one round of golf. It is also important to remember that all guests need to be self-contained.
I intended to use my HH membership to find over-night spots along our journey to cut down on camping fees. I thought they’d be nicer than a rest stop or Walmart parking lot. In that first six-month trip across the Southwestern US we stayed at only four HH locations. Each was just for one night. And at each we found wonderful hosts. Most of them were themselves RV travelers who open up their homes and businesses to fellow travelers.
We had high hopes for HH. I thought we’d get to stay in unique places and get to meet other travelers. But unfortunately we were disappointed in the program. Here are the top 4 reasons we canceled our membership.
- Size Restrictions – For us this was the biggest issue. Each host site lists a size restriction, many can only accommodate up to 25ft. Sometimes even if they said they could take trailers up to 30ft, unhooking was often required and parking for my truck was not always convenient. Typically for us if we are just staying one night we try not to unhitch.
- Access– There are a number of Hosts that are winery’s and farms. Many of them looked great in pictures, beautiful places. Idyllic settings with rolling hills and sunsets. Unfortunately not only were most some distance from our journey, but typically they were miles down washboard dirt roads. And I don’t want to bust an axle just to camp free for one night.
- Undesirable Locations – Most of the commercial businesses offering space were less than desirable. Many of the ‘breweries’ were dive bars, often along some desolate stretch of road. Places that I would never patron. And most had live bands, which is another way of saying ‘noisy.’ Some of the businesses were in questionable parts of town in open parking lots visible to the street.
- Inaccurate Listings– On more than one occasion we ran into the problem of Hosts who had gone out of business, or residential hosts who had moved and not updated their listing. A few times we found sites who had stopped hosting, or changed their requirements. There were even hosts who didn’t respond for weeks, only to learn that they had gone on vacation and hadn’t updated their listing.
In the end, our one year membership at $179 got us four nights of camping, (we did not stay at the 5th place we reserved after we looked at it and ended up down the road in a KOA) It averaged $44.75 per night, which is higher than the $33.87 we spend per night on average. There are a lot of RV travelers for whom Harvest Host will work. It just wasn’t for us.