When budgets are tight and the family wants to go camping these choices offer free or nearly free camping in Alaska where your dollars stay in your wallet without skimping on all the fun.
Guide to finding Free Camping in Alaska from tent camping to RV wilderness and WalMart styles of overnighting in the last frontier. Both Cheap and totally free camping in Alaska is readily accessible if you know where to find it.
From Boondocking along the roadsides to all out camping is some of the more primitive campsites open to the public, free camping in Alaska is a very popular and fun type of outdoor recreation that needs to be preserved.
When we first arrived in Alaska some 40 years ago there were so many places that didn't charge for camping we could never have named them all. It was in the later part of the 1980's when the state dropped into a oil bust recession that things really started to change all throughout the state. Where there was once all of this free camping and open land we began seeing signs requiring a state issued pass to park, play or camp in these same places we had been coming to for years.
Today all of these places are gone. Deep Creek, Ninilchik and even the Homer Spit all charge a fee for camping, boat launching and even to park when going for a walk too. Some of those fees are the most expensive we encounter in our travels in any state or country. Sadly there are no discounts for veterans nor for families with disabled children either.
One of the most common free ways for you to enjoy free camping is to become a campground host. Most every campground in the state looks for host campers in the early spring. In Alaska campground host jobs are are seen advertised beginning in May of each year. The duties of a campground host include firewood sales, trash pickup, fee collection, minor grounds maintenance and in some instances, campground facilities maintenance. Compensation for host duties includes RV site, a small monthly salary and a propane/fuel reimbursement.
Free RV Camping in Alaska
Pretty much a thing of the past, free RV camping is something you are most likely to find in old news articles and such but not very common in today's Alaska. A few of the Walmart and Fred Meyer stores offer camping to patrons in their parking lots and the Soldotna Fred Meyer even has potable water and a dump station to assist you in your visit to Alaska. When the situation deemed necessary we have camped at some of the all night convenience stores where we fuel up. Granted, we typically only use these places when we get caught in a pinch. The Soldotna and Kenai area is such an area during the heights of the sockeye salmon runs. Just be sure to ask permission first as the city governments are making it difficult on businesses allowing this practice even to customers.
Get away from the main roads and you will find unlimited free tent campsites and some of them are even maintained and have limited facilities too. his is best done by hiring a bush plane to drop you off in the wilderness of Alaska. This amazing experience is well worth the time and costs about what a week of RV camping in the main stream RV Parks and campgrounds costs you. A lot of these drop offs can be as short as a 10 minute flight from the departure point and you will believe you have been taken to some distant land far from civilization, and that's not all that far from the truth. Enjoy the ultimate backcountry camping, hiking, trekking and other types of wilderness experience by choosing to hire a drop off air charter trip in remote Alaska. No charge for the camping.
Hike in camping also used to be free but today you need to have the $50.00 Annual Day Use - Parking Pass in most areas for parking at the trailheads. Can you find areas that are still free to the public? Yes but you need to look at areas like along the Denali Highway or up in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park along Nabesna Road. Other than that it's drying up pretty fast. Sure, people park along roads and in gravel pits but if there is a trailhead near by and it's on State of Alaska land it typically requires a pass of some kind or another.
Believe it or not there are ways to get paid for camping in Alaska. No you're not going to get rich, or even pay all the bills, but it will help defray the costs of camping in some of Alaska's most popular areas. What we're talking about is being a campground host for the summer. So if you don't mind cleaning other peoples toilets for $15.00 a day this might be something to concider.
