Harvest Hosts

Posted by Rick: 

What do we get for our yearly fee? Well we can choose from over 830+ vineyards, farms, museums, breweries, and other attractions and stay for free. If you choose the golf upgrade that adds about 350 more locations. These locations are spread all across North America. Yes it’s free, but as good etiquette campers should use and pay for the services the host provides. It’s a great trade off. They add many more hosts monthly.

It is dry camping at most hosts, meaning that there are no hookups. But you are given an incredible camping experience in that once to host closes for the night you are there either alone or with a couple other campers to enjoy the experience. Some hosts will have some limited hookups that are shared between campers and some will also charge a small fee if using their hookups.

Our first host Plum Hill Vineyards had room for 3-4 RV’s. We shared a spot with a young family of four who were traveling for a year trying to see the lower 48 states, Alaska, and all of the National Parks. They were so kind as they were there first and were able to plug into the hosts 50amp service and water. After their batteries were topped off they let us share the power. I don’t recall their names but certainly appreciate their kindness.

At the host we each had a tasting flight of wines. They were delicious to me but I am certainly not a wine expert. Some asked how to determine a good wine. My thought is one that I enjoy. We also had toasted sandwiches and chips there for dinner that we also enjoyed very much.

We were free to walk the grounds and use and enjoy their patio in which I enjoyed my morning coffee there looking out over the grapes. They also had a fenced dog run at this vineyard which was a plus for those of us with pets.

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From Lizzies point of view it was a winner for her. It was a very dog friendly place so she had other dogs to play with. She got to inspect the grapes and also just enjoyed the downtime and peacefulness of this place.

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Our next host Laurel Ridge Winery was about 15-20 miles away. It too was a very fun experience. I tried a sampler here also and had a meat and cheese platter that was also very nice. We purchased a couple bottles of wine and some other goodies that we saw in their gift area that caught our eyes.

This Winery was equally beautiful with great views and wonderful areas to walk Lizzie. They offered no hookups here as that was fine as our solar kept up during the day and our batteries kept everything running during the night. The spot they had us park was very level next to a very young hazelnut orchard. We weren’t allowed her to walk up into the actual vineyard as they had that all fenced off but it was still a very large piece of property to walk around on to get our exercise for us and Lizzie.

Over all our experience was wonderful. We don’t tend to travel this fast in that we normally stay for a week or more in any give location. But that being said if we want to break up out travel days with a short stopover it works great. They are offering a referral program that we can offer and you can receive a 15% discount. You just need to use our link of http://harvesthosts.refr.cc/rickgarboden. We both get a little out of it and also get to enjoy these great places.

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We can’t wait to have the opportunity to use this program again. With so many different types of venues to stay at we will certainly use this as much as we can. Everyone was so friendly.

If you’d like to join Harvest Host with our referral link and we’ll get a little bonus.