I heard or read somewhere that some guy had a book or magazine article or youtube channel or something about not just camping, but doing longish backpacking trips in highway medians, the rationale being that NOONE ever goes there. Apparently he found all sorts of wildlife becasue those little hidey holes got zero people traffic, even from homeless. Maybe it's this guy up there^^?? Sounded interesting, cool even, but did not make me want to plan a trip.
I dont think it's "stealth camping", but plenty of long climbing trips in my younger days where I had gas money, money for the trip, but only if I camped for free. It was always easy to find a place to camp if there was any blm or forest service land around, and many small to mid-size towns had free little campgrounds in town parks at the time (this would be late 80's/early 90's) where there was room for a tent or two, a fire ring and picnic table, and a sign that just said "camping allowed, 1 or 2-night stay maximum, clean up/littering law enforced" or something like that. They were always clean and well cared for and seemed like those towns appreciated having people come in and buy gas, maybe some groceries, etc on our way through. All up and down the east side of the sierras, around the intermountain west, I never got hassled by anyone, local or law enforcement, despite having longish hair, out of state plates, obviously "living" in my vehicle, etc. Travelled all over northern canada, alaska, australia away from the coast, and it was always very easy and "normal" to simply pull over and pitch a tent on a flat spot or pulloff. But man, some places it was like everyone wanted nothing more than to have visitors like me stay away. Tried to sleep in our truck in a parking lot in santa cruz one night and got hassled by police repeatedly. Broke down in Wall, south dakota one trip...managed to limp into town at midnight friday night of memorial day weekend in the midst of a torrential multi-day rain storm, pulled into a gas station and actually asked a cop--literally, "my car isnt running, everything is closed, is there a parking lot or something we can crash in even if its the police station parking lot until we can find a hotel room tomorrow?", and the asshole actually told us to go away, there was nowhere to go and we also couldnt sleep in our car. Found a dirt road outside of town (at greatly reduced speed) and crashed there anyway and had another cop roust us. So we went back to the gas station and sat in our car until it opened (cop#1: "you cant park here". Me: It's a highway gas station, the car is broken & limited to 4 mph, where would you like us to go?" Cop#1: " "), then proceeded to watch it rain from inside wall drug for the next 3 days (despite generous advertising they actually are quite stingy about giving free donuts to skiers and all the other groups they promise them to) until a mechanic opened who proceeded to financially rape us...unfortunately all the parks, etc were fully closed from the flooding so not many other options.
Guess with that sort of a welcoming committee I dont see the attrraction of trying to camp where I'm not welcome.
