Boondocking Safety and Etiquette

The term boondocking comes from the Filipino word Bundók meaning “mountain”. U.S soldiers brought the word back with them after the Philippine-American war in 1900. “The boonies” short for boondocks became a synonym for “the middle of nowhere”. In the early 1900s, Model-T owners became the first to car camp anywhere they could on open land or city streets. RVs from the 1950-90s began seeking out public land and forest roads to camp on. But before RVs in the 1800s, early outdoorsmen, ranchers, and explorers slept in wagons or tents on undeveloped land. Fast forward to 2025 and the term boondocking has taken on the meaning of stealth camping in urban or suburban areas.

Boondocking Etiquette

We will first honor the residents of the communities being discussed. The homeowners and tenants who live in these communities have a right to privacy and their property respected. Boondockers can live in harmony with homeowners if they follow basic boondocking manners. In this section, we will go over some do’s and don’ts of boondocking etiquette.

Here are some guidelines to follow to respect residents of the community.

- Out of Sight, Out of Mind

When choosing a spot, do not park directly in front of doors or windows. You do not want to be the first thing a resident sees when they open their front door or gaze from the window. Living outside an occupants door might feel for them like an invasion of privacy. Instead, find a spot on the side of a property next to hedges or a high fence. While staying completely out of sight is hard in a city or town, actively seeking out more discreet locations will help to keep everyone feeling good about the arrangement. If a resident doesn’t know you’re there, chances are they don’t care.

- Late in, Early Out

Find your spot after dark and leave first thing in the morning. Arriving late and departing early will not get you noticed. Seek out day use areas after leaving your sleep spot in the morning.

- Switch Spots

Do not spend more than one consecutive night in the same spot. You are not a part of the neighborhood. Do not write letters to the neighbors thanking them for letting you be a part of the community. Vans are made to move. Explore another local street or go to a different city. Some occupants will go as far as slapping fake police notice stickers on your window to get you to move. As a boondocking community, we can follow these etiquette guidelines to improve the relationship between boondocker and homeowner. Move spots, you can return to the same spot in the future.

- Privacy

Neighbors walking their dogs do not want to see you living in your vehicle. VanEssentials makes window covers that work well to provide privacy. Open the doors and spread out at parks and on open land. Close the doors when you are with your van in a neighborhood. Passersby might not want to be forced to watch you cook, clean or go about your business. There needs to be a line and forcing the community to join you in your living room is crossing it.

- Leave No Trace

Install a grey water tank and get yourself a toilet. You should not be dumping grey or black water on the street of the community you are staying. Leave the spot in better condition than when you arrived.

How to stay safe while boondocking

After learning how to respect the neighbors, we need to learn how to respect ourselves by staying safe. Staying safe boondocking means choosing a spot free of any kind of danger including bodily harm, vandalism, theft or legal action. These guidelines should set us down the path of boondocking safety. Here are some things to consider:

- Neighborhood Safety

Like most other things in life, there is a level of risk involved with boondocking. It is impossible to say you will be 100% safe in any location at any given time. There are always going to be outlier situations that may occur. However, the risk can be mitigated by paying attention to a few things.

• The crime rate in impoverished areas is higher than its affluent counterpart. Avoiding impoverished areas might minimize the risks associated with vandalism and theft. But staying in a wealthy neighborhood may not be a good idea either, as your chance of having the police called on you is higher. A safe bet might be staying somewhere in-between, a neighborhood where people aren’t extravagantly rich or desperately poor. Humans can be more unpredictable than wild animals. Pay attention to your intuition and move if something doesn’t feel right.

- Vehicle Placement on the Road

After determining the neighborhood to be just right, the next step is deciding where to park your vehicle to stay out of harms way. The most important safety consideration is to position yourself in a spot where the risk of being hit is lowest. We can follow this guideline to help minimize risk.

• Parallel parking spots between two cars are ideal. A car in front of and behind your vehicle will minimize the risk of being hit from each respective direction. Be conscious of your position on the road. Don’t choose to stay the night on a fast paced road without protection from behind. Don’t situate yourself in an intersection where someone making a quick turn might not see you. Use cars and anything else as barriers as much as you can.

- Rude Awakenings

Part of staying safe while on the road is avoiding run ins with the law. We’ve had four knocks in five years of full-time van living. Let’s look at a couple situations and what we learned.

The first was in a residential suburban neighborhood in Louisiana. We were the only van parked on a street in what we should have known was a private community. At around midnight, we were asleep when a security guard shone a bright light through the cracked back doors of our old Ford Econoline van and directly into my eyes. He told us we had to leave.

Cause:: There were no other cars parked on the streets of this neighborhood which should have been our indicator that we should not be there. The neighborhood had a third party security company monitoring the community. When they saw a random van parked on the street, we were obviously out of place.

Lesson: Don’t park in neighborhoods without other vehicles parked on the road near by. One of the goals of boondocking is to remain unnoticed. Being the only van on an otherwise empty street is a giveaway.

The second knock came years later in a small coastal Oregonian town. We were driving up the coast looking for a place to stay. The app iOverlander informed us that there weren’t many spots in our location to boondock. One of the spots said you’ll get a knock. We had no other options so we decided to give it a try. We were in bed for about an hour on a residential street when a police officer shone his flashlight through our window and gave a loud knock. The officer told us to leave but that we can stay a few miles outside of town.

Cause: We were tired driving of up and down the coast looking for a spot. We felt we had no other options and needed to make a decision to try to get some rest.

Lesson: Highway pull-offs can be a safer bet than small towns. Trust online sources, if they say you will get a knock, don’t try anyway. Do research into the area you’re going and make a plan if the place you’re traveling doesn’t appear to have many options.

- Follow Local Laws and Regulations

Paying attention to street signs is a good place to start when considering where to stay the night. Looking for street signs indicating no parking should be the first thing you do. Sometimes there are “no parking 2-6am” signs or “no overnight parking” signs. If no signs are present that’s a good first step in the direction of choosing a valid spot.

Boondocking facilitates the blend between freedom, flexibility and community within a city environment. If done properly it can be highly rewarding and unlock experiences in places you would not have seen and contributed to otherwise. As long as boondockers follow ethical and safety guidelines, I believe we can live in harmony with our home owning counterparts.