Information About this Share a Caravan Ride Travel North America Site

This site is intended as a means for travelers to hook up with those willing to share a ride, bed or couch in their caravan, while offering North American caravanners the means to save on gas costs and meet fellow travelers. It can also be used as a regular share a ride site, but preferably for travelers. Based on demand I may eventually add more cities to each state or province (I just didn't want the dropdown list to be too long, and it will require restructuring the form), and I can expand this database to other continents if there is interest. So far there is this one and one for Europe (link at the bottom of page).

The reason why I set up this site was because several years ago I moved myself and my translation business into a caravan truck so that I could freely travel around Europe and the world. This was about three years after my test pilot trip in North America, to Baja Mexico. I left a comfy existence in Prague but one of the things I lacked was all the friends I left behind. It was difficult hooking up with fellow travelers so I thought this site could help me with this purpose. In fact, I found the same problem during my roadtrip in North America. Seems that the culture of hitch hiking is simply not as prevalent as it used to. But through this site you have the opportunity to get to know your fellow traveler a bit before offering them a ride.
If you own a caravan you might be interested in my caravan survival tips, how to hook up electricity in a caravan, or internet connection while traveling. I'm pretty tech savvy and can get pretty creative with my survival, so hopefully you'll find something interesting and useful there. Through the flash presentation at the top you can link to my cheap travel Europe tour guide page if you'd like to hook up with me during my crazy travels, which you can read about on my travel stories.
This is a much more interesting way to travel than by some standard bus tour. Those can be expensive and they'll always stop to feed you at some expensive greasy place where they probably get extra commission for bringing you there. My favourite is a more random approach, because this is how you can find the real jewels off the beaten track and discover the natural beauties of North America at your own pace. You can always jump onto the beaten track anytime you like, but I find it a great pleasure to wind randomly through the lovely nature of North America through the broad front window, rather than through the tinted glass of a tour bus. Not to mention a much better choice of music! Or park on a beach, go for a jog/swim, watch the sun go down and cook a fantastic meal right by the sea. The flexibility of this way of traveling makes it a much richer travel experience.
Imagine finding a secluded lake somewhere, setting up the volleyball net, outdoor grill, write a note to back home while powered into the solar panels, or surf the internet to find some interesting places to visit. An autonomous, self contained unit in paradise. No bus tour will offer you anything like this.

Soon I hope to set up a forum where travelers can post ads they are looking for a ride or seek out travel information in general. And where caravaners can do the same.
Below I have compiled some links which I thought might be useful. If you have any suggestions feel free to contact me!

Links to Other Share a Ride Travel Sites in North America

Links to Caravan Sites in North America

Some Keywords Relating to Share a Caravan Ride Travel North America

Well, for you to enjoy this great website you'd have to find it, which requires getting it to the top of the search engines in the appropriate keywords, for which I needed to apply my robust search engine optimization skills and the following text shouldn't really be interesting for you to read but just a bunch of blabber with the right wording. So you can totally ignore this text below!

Traveling by caravan and sharing my ride in North America has been great. My pilot travel trip was from Vancouver to the southern tip of Baja, and the natural scenery along the way was absolutely fantastic. I made a great caravan travel flick but there are some copyright issues so I couldn't submit it to any North American film festivals - although several people said I should. I wanted to do a better movie about traveling by caravan and share a ride for Europe while paying attention to possible copyright issues (background music etc., dancers who didn't want their choreography publicized), but the nature just wasn't stunning enough to duplicated the caravan travel trip I filmed in North America. For my European trip I found it was better to focus on the people and its culture. Although the population of Europe is about 50% larger than that of North America, its land mass is about half the size. Canada is larger than the US but its population is less than California, most of its inhabitants strung like a stretched out rubber band just to the north of the border in the warmest climate they could find - at the most southern section of the country. But most of the population is based there also for economic reasons and the fact that, historically, the U.S. has always been its greatest trading partner.
But even in the US the population is relatively sparse compared to the total land area and it is easy to find majestic caravan drives through nature with not a soul in site.

This I'd say is the strength of caravanning in North America.
But with all the freaks who have crawled out of the woodworks in this new and crazy age, seems that the culture of hitch hiking and picking up hitch hikers, or ride sharing has subsided substantially from the old hippy days. Which is another benefit this site has to offer, because it gives those who own a caravan and who are willing to share a ride or pick up hitch hikers an opportunity to get to know the person first, before they share a ride with them. I guess one problem is that the average people who live and travel in a caravan might be older and not so interested in sharing a ride or picking up hitch hikers. I hope this might change with the internet and the ability to take one's work on the road, or live and work permanently in a caravan, like I have done. It's a wonderful gypsy lifestyle and I wouldn't want to crawl back into stinky city life ever again. People crammed into boxes called apartments, smelling each others' armpits on public transport during rush hour traffic, little nature and often dilapidated urban neighbourhoods splattered with graffiti - an expression of a frustrated youth who should really get out into nature for their peace of mind. One of Canada's great Prime Ministers started a program which would take troubled youth from urban communities and send them out into nature to build trails, learn how to canoe and build strong bonds with same-aged persons. Every year or my childhood I had the fortune of spending the summer in similar types of camps and I must say it had a very positive impact on my character development. I feel that, without this, I would have probably grown up a more frustrated individual and I can see how a childhood spent growing up in urban communities can lead to boredom, frustration, and eventually a life of crime.
People flock to the cities for employment, but when I asked several people about their work, most agreed that they could do much of it at home. It would be good if there was some pressure or tax benefits to allow people to perform as much of their work at home and through the internet as they could. If this were possible people could go to work at different times and not have to compete so vociferously in rush hour traffic. Or perhaps they could spend a few days in the country, perhaps live in a caravan and share a ride or pick up hitch hikers like I do, and work productively in a stress-free environment before plunging back into the big city. I believe this would alleviate the stress of city life in general and hopefully lead to reduced crime.
Of course, the frustrated community of criminals is often not the same lot who could find white collar work through which they could escape the stressful city life and work through the internet, but perhaps if many were able to get away from the city in small doses, they could come back, spread their more peaceful disposition, and be inspired to bring some of the country and nature into the dense cities.

But if you can do all your work through the internet like myself, then you can go a step further and drive all out into nature and work there - living in a caravan, share your rides and pick up the occasional hitch hiker. When not distracted by high-strung city life I find I am much more productive and enjoy my work better. But I lose out on the companionship, which is why I made this share a caravan ride website. In any case, during my many solitary moments over the past three years while living the caravan life, I came to the conclusion that city companionship is not such a necessity as I used to believe. What do people talk about anyway? A lot of times the same nonsense you can discuss with pretty well anyone anywhere in the world. What I found refreshing about hooking up with hitch hikers and travelers is that they are adventurous gypsies like myself, willing to sleep in some stranger's caravan, and it was very easy to get into the nonsensical discussions I left back home with the added benefit that I have met someone new and I could discover all sorts of interesting things that I couldn't with long standing friends, with which we have mulled over practically all the topics we could think of and our conversation seemed to slow down to a sputter with lots of gaps in between.
Another thing I didn't like about city life was the routine I inadvertently always seemed to settle into. Sure, it was nice to be active and have a full and productive schedule, but in the end it just felt like stagnation and I have really grown to appreciate the constant random elements I am forced to adjust to while traveling in a caravan and picking up the occasional hitch hiker to share with them a ride. Especially if you throw into that the opportunity to meet new people. And especially if those new people are of a different race from completely different cultural backgrounds. It has given me the opportunity to learn the perception of people from different parts of the world, which I found much more interesting than going over the same old grind and bar jokes.
Sometimes though I'd pick up a hitch hiker, shared my ride and accommodation with them, but found it rather difficult to get rid of them (like Tommy the party preacher who I picked up in Montenegro). But even in spite of the rather traumatic difficulty of removing his presence from my royal caravan palace, I'd say the overall experience was hilarious, we had a great time together and he pointed me to some places I would have never gone on my own. In any case, I learned my lesson and before sharing my caravan and accommodation again I'd like to email with them a bit, check out their online profile, and party for an evening before heading out on the road together. On the other hand, one can never be careful enough, and the more careful you are the less adventure you'll have. But some balance and reason can be sensible.
Therefore, ideally, I'd like to park my caravan in secluded nature during the week, and perhaps spend the weekend traveling around with new friends, sharing my ride with them and possibly even pick up more hitch hikers. It gets a bit hectic and difficult to work when I have guests, but I certainly do enjoy their company and learning from them. And I love the secluded, beautiful and peaceful nature in between. Other times I may befriend a local and decide I like a certain region and buckle down there for a while. Overall I'd say it's a great lifestyle and I hope to improve it by spicing it with more travel companions (with whom, you guessed it, I'd like to share a ride in my beautiful caravan). I guess one of my big problems is that I am not very gregarious, or a bit shy, so I find it more difficult to meet locals. But I'm fairly approachable so I end up depending on gregarious people to instead spark a conversation with me.
And thus I have surrendered to spicing my travels with more fellow companions and hitch hikers by making websites such as these. A passive approach I guess, but one must do what they must do to improve the quality of their life in the direction that they want to, n'est pas?
Hope you enjoyed reading my nonsense.

This same site but share a caravan ride in Europe.