 Hey everybody, it's Robin with Creativity RV. Today is March 18, 2020 and a lot of you have been asking me for any information I have on camping closures because of COVID-19. Now I'm going to go ahead and say right here up front, this is not a political video as usual. This is just a video to help you guys get the information that you need. And I'm also going to say things are changing hourly. So please take some of the information I'm going to give you and research your spots yourself right before you go because things are changing. Now I'll tell you guys for me, my plans have been completely upended because of the closures and I have a lot of people that think this is not affecting us. It doesn't affect us as much because we're away from other people. So we're already socially distanced, right? But you know, I was camping here with a couple of people. We went to the grocery store at 4.30 in the morning the other day and the shelves were bare. So we're having trouble getting some of the stuff we need just like everybody else. The other problem is that there is this completely disparate reaction to people camping in different areas that are causing different closures. For me and for some of my friends, our plan this summer was to do the New Mexico State Park Pass, which is under $300 dollars for non-residents and then you can camp for free at any New Mexico State Park. Well, about, I don't know, I got it seems like forever ago now but it was probably just a week ago, New Mexico announced that it's closing overnight camping at all of the state parks. So then we all regrouped and we decided to go boondocking in Moab. Well, it's raining right now so I was going to leave in the morning and head for Moab and today Moab banned any new overnight camping visitors from Moab. And you guys, here's why. Moab has a lot of visitors this time of year. It gets completely slammed with non-residents and they only have a regional hospital. So if people start to get sick, they can't handle it and I don't blame them for doing that. Well, I'm getting other news from all over the place and have been trying to find what I can do for myself. I'm going to link below the best resource that I found, which is the Campendium app and the link to this page I'll have below, has a state by state campground closure listing and I would say call the local BLM office. I called local BLM offices in Colorado and in Utah to ask about closures because I was thinking of heading back towards Colorado. What I got from both of those offices was things are changing quickly, they're evolving, so call your local BLM office for the actual area that you're going to be camping in, not the state office. But if you go to BLM.gov and you search for the campground you want to go to, they have local administrative offices, which could be closing. But here's the thing, there is a chance, according to both states, that there could be closures on designated dispersed camping areas. Now, these are not paid campgrounds. In some places they are free campgrounds, like we're used to. But think about places that maybe have one road that goes in and then like a big circle with a bunch of campgrounds that is monitored by the BLM. In those places it's possible that they will put up a barrier. Now, it hasn't been announced yet, the people just wanted to let me know that things are evolving. The reason that they might need to do that, according to the people I talked to, is because they don't have the staff to monitor those campgrounds or maybe fire hazards, like they did before, because those people are working from home. But they also said that in the vast array of public camping that we have out there on BLM land, if it's not designated BLM camping like a BLM campground, if it's just like a BLM spot that you go out to like in the desert or something and there's a pullout, it's impossible to monitor those. You're also going to be away from services probably if you choose to go that route. But it looks like right now that it's still available to us. I'll tell you in the scramble, most RV parks are booking up and every state is handling it differently. So New Mexico shut down and I actually have not looked this up in the last hour, so check for yourself. I heard New York was making their campgrounds free because they want people to go out away from each other, which makes sense to me. But if you look at this site with Campendium, it's like Alaska's not reporting. The Navajo Nation in Arizona is closed, but the Arizona State Parks are open. Arkansas is open. California is closed. So you get me, right? I will tell you what I finally ended up doing just so I could get somewhere where I knew I had a spot and I knew I had cell service and I knew that I had water and maybe was near a town if I needed groceries at some point. What I ended up doing is calling a friend with some land and so I'm going to go and camp on his land. Boondocking, he's got a few acres, very nice of him to let me do that. I know other people are doing this. Now I'm planning to go out there, get my feet under me, you know, wait for a little bit of this to subside and then take my, you know, truck out and scope for other areas that I can go to. But that's what I decided to do for myself for now. I know not everybody has a friend that they can call. If there's people out there that have land that other people can stay on, please get on Facebook, get out of here in the comments, tell people, like the kind of people that are on Boondocker's Welcome or something like that that may have a spot because I know a lot of you out there are scrambling right now. Um, one-state closed rest areas, for example. Again, please look at the most recent information. For a lot of us that Boondock, there is a lot of space in the U.S. that has free dispersed camping and if you've looked at the videos I've done before in the maps, it is a huge portion of the United States. So if people want to find boondocking, they should still be able to find even if some of the designated campgrounds are closed. The tough part is if you don't already know a spot, finding one on the fly that isn't already taken and where you know there's going to be a cell signal. So please, everybody, check out this link I'm going to put below to Campendia. If you Google campground closures COVID-19, there are a lot of news articles state by state that gives you information but this one is compiling it as of this point and it's only 19 hours old as of when I'm putting this video out. So we're going to all scramble for a little bit just like everybody else. The good news for me is that, you know, we normally are socially isolating anyway. The bad news is that, you know, I have some friends, several of them in different rigs that I was planning to hang out with this year and camp with and it's kind of a drag that we're having to go our separate ways to find different places but, you know, I'm confident that soon everything will be more clear and then we can all plan a little bit better. But for right now, whatever your plan is for camping, absolutely do research your spot right before you go and expect that it might change. If you're in one place and you can hunker down for now until things become a little more clear, probably a good idea. I hope you're all doing well out there and I hope you're all staying positive and healthy and I hope to see you on the road soon. Until then, everybody have happy travels or happy sheltering in place and be free.