Interstate Exit Guide

We've spent the last 13 months creating a guide to interstate exits for you. It is a rather crazy project in scope but it's well worth it for us. Recently, we were traveling I-8 in 116 degree weather. We were wondering about gas fill ups between Yuma, AZ and the San Diego metro area. Using our interstate exit guide, we could check exits and see what had what. We learned there is a decent gap in services between El Centro, CA and San Diego, CA. Only a few places to fuel up between there and the long hot climb over the mountains.

We made it easy to find hotels closest to a particular exit. We also added gas stations, restaurants, repair shops, common chain stores and any other place we could find in the phone books that is close to that exit. We tried to indicate the direction from the exit that the business was located as well. But always go by the signs on the exit ramps first, in case our GPS data was wrong.

How do you access the internet as you travel to use this information? There are many options. You can research in advance, the night before, from wireless access at restaurants and truck stops or from cellular internet connections as you drive. It is getting easier and easier to find the web on the road.

Another benefit is in this scenario. You find the hotels at the upcoming exit. You can then use AllStays to find the hotels, call direct and see if they have rooms. You can try getting a rate direct by phone, you can walk-in or book online. If you are not chain specific, you may look at all the hotels by the exit and get an idea of the price ranges before contacting them. Many times the rates will be different for each booking option. I've gotten much better rates sitting in the parking lot of a chain motel than walking through the door when they think you are desperate and not likely to drive down the road.

We will keep adding data to this interstate guide to make it more useful, such as links to the official locations so you can have the phone number and addresses of the various places.

Airport Hotels and Locations

Our guide to just about every airport is now online. You can find over 2,000 airports and airstrips all over the United States. Many are small airstrips that you may not want to know about unless you are a pilot. From there, you can click a link that will search for hotels closest to that airport. Whether they are inside the airport or 50 miles away in the countryside, we'll find it for you. Sometimes, you go into a smaller airport and are not as familiar with the small towns surrounding it. This will make it easier to get your bearings for that business meeting or family event.

River Rapids Lodging Search and Maps

Whether you go rafting, kayaking, boating or just like the sound of rushing water, AllStays.com created a new guide that may be of interest to you. Our new guide for river rapids across the United States includes the exact location on map and satellite views. We then make it easy to search for the nearest hotels from those rapids.

Camping is usually closer connect to river rapids than hotels but we also know you may want a nice bed before or after your trip. More importantly, you may want to drop family off at a hotel while you feel the rush of the water. You don't have to stay dry forever just because you have family that can't do what you want to do. There are many reasons we created this river rapids guide but mostly just because we wanted it ourselves. We hope you like it too.

Feel free spread the word to your group members. You can also send a quick email to rewards@allstays.com to get a $10 cash discount off your room rate for yourself and your group.

Defined: What is boondocking? (Free Camping)

RV Parks are expensive if you are out on the road for any extended period of time. And if you are full time? Well, you know how expensive they are. RVers have long looked for free places to park and do so in greater numbers today. They may call it dry camping, Wal-Mart parking (parking in a parking lot overnight) or boondocking. All of these are just camping without hookups. People used to refer to living out in the boondocks, so boondocking came from that. Camping out in the country far away from utilities and crowds. Dry camping, referring to no water/sewer hookups, can be done in many RV parks, state parks, forest parks or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.

A more recent reference to this term is parking in rest areas, casinos, Walmart (and others) store parking lots and truck stops. The noise is getting louder and these are all thrown in together. At AllStays, we have guides for store parking lots, truck stops and then we have campground listings. We don't mix them at this time. We do have more remote and primitive camping listings than anyone else but they are listed together with pay locations. So you have all the options.

We have also found some small towns that allow free overnight parking right in their town parks. These are few and far between but we are working on a guide to find them.

Boondocking now encompasses all of these methods but we prefer to still think of it as being out in the remote wilderness with only the sounds of birds and scurrying animals, not truck engines.

Wal-mart Managers

This is just a note to clarify something about stores that have "No Parking" signs, as well as those noted as such on our site. If you are at the store or stopping in anyway, go ahead and ask the manager. It may be a local ordinance and they have no choice but to send you away. In many cases, we've heard from travelers where they were welcomed anyway. The signs may be posted as part of a screening process or to discourage trucks and vagrants. Or even to eliminate those who don't bother to ask. They may be happy to have you stay the night if you are a nice respectable RV. Be nice, courteous and brief.

Check our Wal-Mart store guide for help, locations and maps.

Gay-Friendly Cities Prosper

A recent segment of CNN's Inn The Money featured a professor from George Mason University by the name of Richard Florida. He is the author of the book The Rise of the Creative Class and stated that the more "gay-friendly" a city is, the more economically prosperous it can be.

He said that the college educated youth are moving to the most "gay-friendly" cities because those cities tend to have the best job markets. Think of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Microsoft (and now Google in their expansion) and Seattle. Other cities at the top include Boston, Portland Oregon and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida. These are cities where open-mindedness leads to innovation and new technology. These cities are prospering and tend to be both more expensive and culturally interesting. You almost don't have to look at hotel room rates in the top and bottom of these lists to know which is doing much better. The gay-friendly cities are much more expensive to visit.

The cities at the bottom end of gay-friendly cities? They include Pittsburgh, Birmingham AL, Detroit, Buffalo, Charlotte NC, and Oklahoma City. These are not the most prosperous, open-minded cities these days. The kids are leaving and not many new jobs are coming in. The educated youth then goes to where the money and ideas are growing.

Free City Campgrounds

We pass by many small towns all over the country. We see them fading away with time. Businesses close, people move away, young people relocate to big cities and the population goes down. The only thing expanding is the cemetery.

We head to RV Parks in and outside of cities. We pass by rest areas on interstates. We head to State Parks in the country. We pass by Wal-marts and other large stores that let you park for free. They want to treat their customers well and get them in the store to spend money.

So why can't small towns do the same?

We recently were driving across North Dakota and found a small town of Towner. No pun intended. There are some open businesses and even more closed businesses. One of the showcases of Towner was the Winger Cheese Factory. They have closed due to a lack of small dairy farmers.

The town had a nice city park with a couple of hookups, a playground and restrooms. They welcomed RVs to stay there for free. We stopped with enthusiasm. We are happy to stop at the gas station, the local market or convenience store, the coffee shop, whatever a town has left to offer. In this case, the Winger Cheese Factory still had a store open a couple days a week. We bought some cheese.

When a town welcomes you to stop and stay, you stop and spend. It is a win for local businesses and the traveler. The loser could be a local campground if there is one. But in most of these towns, there isn't a local campground. These are towns that you bypass on the way to the next spot in Good Sam, Woodalls or whatever guide you are using.

Many of us will drive a little less if we can stay and enjoy your warm small town hospitality. So if you are on a local chamber or board, think about this. Do you have a park? Do you have an old parking lot? An old drive-in? An old motel? Maybe some old land that could be turned into something useful to welcome travelers to stay a bit and spend money in your town?