Harvest Host--Our First Year Summary

Last spring we paid for an annual membership into a camping option called Harvest Host. If you aren't familiar with this concept, it provides descriptions and directions to businesses that allow self-contained RVs to stay overnight on their property. We paid the annual membership of $67.15, and even upgraded to include golf courses for an additional $19.95. We thought it might be helpful in finding camping spots when we headed west during the busy summer 2021 camping season. Almost all of the camping options provided by these businesses have no hook-ups, but they are free. But you are only allowed to stay for one night, and you should request permission to stay in advance because many of the businesses have limited parking options. Also, Harvest Host asks that campers spend $20 for merchandise from the businesses that provide a night of free camping. We were excited to use this new camping option last spring as we started our trip north from south Texas. Our first overnight stay was at a winery in central Texas. We were granted a reservation, and had a beautiful camp site beside a lake with views of the vineyard.

Because the winery was closed the day we visited, we weren't able to make our $20 purchase. We were relieved, as we aren't wine drinkers and we weren't sure what we would buy. So it was an over-all positive experience. The only negative was having to drive several miles out of our way on dirt roads to get there.

Our second Harvest Host experience was at a tiger refuge in eastern Texas. This was a huge parking lot, and we could hear the wild cats roaring overnight. Instead of purchasing merchandise, campers were required to buy tickets to the zoo-like refuge. It was interesting, and we enjoyed our day seeing all the cats. But it wasn't a cheap camping experience.

When we traveled and camped in Alaska, we looked at some Harvest Host options. But that state has so many beautiful free places to park, it would have been silly to camp in a business's parking lot. So it was useless to us in Alaska. We didn't use it again until the summer, when we used it twice in Colorado. Our third Harvest Host experience was in Pueblo, Colorado. We lucked into a cool front that allowed for a cool night stay at this lower elevation stop. Our hosts at the Trolley Turner welcomed us as soon as we arrived, and invited us to a wood lathe demonstration later that evening. It was fascinating, and we enjoyed it and learned a lot! We even got a turn at the lathe during the demonstration. We don't have room in the motor home for one of the lovely wooden bowls that we saw created, and they are quite pricy. So it was harder to find something to buy at this stop. But the hosts were great, and they invited us into their home for coffee and conversation that evening.

This is our windshield view of their yard where we overnighted, as well as the wooden mallet that we helped create on the lathe!

Our fourth Harvest Host stay was at a golf course in Colorado Springs. This was great because we couldn't find an open campground space on the weekend anywhere near this popular tourist city. This golf course didn't require you to golf, but we learned that most of the Harvest Host golf option do. To show our appreciation, we picked up trash around the parking lot.

We tried and tried and use our Harvest Host membership during our busy summer travel season. We looked forward to staying at farms or orchards where we could buy fresh produce to fulfill our $20 commitment. But when we contacted several different ones that were on our way, they were all booked up. Other times during the summer it was just too hot to spend the night in the motor home without electric hookups to keep it cooled. When we got closer to the cooler coast, we found a great vineyard in a great location. But to spend a "free" night they required a minimum purchase of two bottles of wine per person. After looking at their price list, it would have cost us over $100 (of a product that we didn't want) for this "free" night of camping. Sheesh! We also found that all the golf course camping options near the coast required that you make a tee time reservation before camping. Since we don't even carry golf clubs with us, that wasn't an option. We had read that eating at the golf clubhouse could count as your purchase, but we didn't find that to be true most of the time.

So we are at the end of our year of our Harvest Host membership, and it doesn't feel like it was a good value for us. While the summer was too hot to get much good from it, our winter trip was too cold. But as we neared southern Texas, we found a good option. Boykin Pecan Farm is on our way, and is 102 miles from last night's stay at Choke Canyon State Park. They accepted our reservation request, and Mr. Boykin met us at the road to lead us down the lane between his pecan trees. We didn't even need to unhook the pickup for our one-night stay.

He planted this pecan orchard many years ago, and has been harvesting them and selling them in bulk to grocery stores in southern Texas. But now his biggest grocery store clients want the pecans shelled and vacuum sealed, and he doesn't have the equipment to do that. Selling them to Harvest Host campers is a good option for them.

He and his wife invited us into their home, and we had an hour-long visit around their kitchen table. We learned about growing pecans in this southern climate, and new problems of selling them. Because we just picked up free pecans to shell a couple weeks ago, we really didn't need any more. But we needed to make our required Harvest Host purchase. Their minimum-size bag is two pounds, so our purchase was $30 for this overnight stay.

They gave us one of their pecans still in the shell and it was huge! We compared it to the free pecans we picked up not long ago. Wow!

This fifth Harvest Host stop was a success. We had a good sleeping temperature, a good visit, and those big pecans are quite yummy. The timing was also good because we needed to exercise our generator before we pulled into our next full hook-up site where we'll be staying for a while. The other good news is their orchard is only a mile off the highway that we were traveling down. Sometimes Harvest Host camp sites are out of the way on questionable roads for big rigs like ours.

So we have mixed reviews from our first year using Harvest Host. It was not a bargain, since we weren't able to use it as much as we would have liked. It also puts you in an awkward position to have to make a purchase. We don't have much room for anything new in a motor home. But it did give us some unique experiences that we thoroughly enjoyed. Will we do it again? We're not sure, as the price has gone up. But we're always looking for unique experiences as we continue to wander God's wonders.