6 SPOTS TO FIND RV WATER! Finding Potable Water doesn't have to be difficult...

There's water everywhere if you know where to find it, so today I'm going to give you my top six places that I get water to fill my RV fresh tank on the road. Hey everybody, it's Robin with CreativityRV and welcome to episode 9 of Be a Nomad, Change Your Life, my Sunday series where I try and give you all the information you need to become a full-time nomad in one playlist. So I'm going a little bit out of order today because a lot of you have asked me recently where I get water and I remember back to when I was researching my nomadic life and even for my first few months on the road this was really difficult for me. I couldn't find a lot of YouTubers that had given information on this and I always thought that I had to go to a dump station to find water and through my time on the road I have found that this is not the case and so today I'm going to give you my top six places that I get water on a regular basis to fill up my RV fresh tank. So this means potable water, most of it is free, so let's go ahead and start with my least favorite to my most favorite and wait until the end because the final one absolutely changed my game on the road. So let's get the ball rolling with number six. For me, my sixth favorite place to fill up with water is an RV campground with hookups. Now I prefer a state park or a forest campground if I'm going to pay for a place and usually I boondock but every once in a while I do pay for an RV campground that has hookups so I can get my laundry done, maybe get a wi-fi signal and get some water. So these places are generally 40, 50, 60 bucks a night depending on where you go and if you belong to Passport America that helps because it cuts that cost in half but I do this every once in a while. You might have it in your budget to do it all the time but if that were the case you probably wouldn't be watching this video on other places to get water so let's keep it going with the next one on my list. So my fifth favorite place to get water on the road is a gas station but not at the gas pumps themselves. What I do is I go to a gas station and I look around the side or the back of the building and I look for a spigot that looks like this. If you see something like that on the side of the building your hose will extend to it and you're not impeding traffic then you can go in, prepay, go to the counter, don't pay at the pump because paying inside gives you an opportunity to talk to them and say hey I'm filling up my gas tank here I was wondering if you would mind if I topped off my RV tank with some fresh water at your spigot. Now I've never been turned down when I've asked this. A couple of times people have said well we don't have a hose and I say no problem I've got a hose and they say yeah go ahead just don't don't block any traffic and it's usually a totally painless thing but you do have to go in and ask. My fourth favorite place to get water on the road is actually at United States Forest campgrounds. Now these campgrounds can have a camp host or sometimes that there's no camp host like the place I'm in today but when you go near the bathrooms you're going to see a spigot that looks like this. Now sometimes there are signs saying don't fill your tanks and if that's the case I don't and I generally try and just use it to top off my tanks because I know sometimes the water in these areas are limited but in a pinch they were great because if you're in the mountains like I am a lot these campgrounds are everywhere but you'll notice in this picture that this faucet doesn't have any threads on it so I recommend that you get something called a water bandit and here's how this works. When you run into a place that doesn't have threads on the spigot or the threads are worn down which happens all the time you put this big end over the spigot itself and you tie this end into your hose and just beware if the flow of water is strong you have to actually hold it on there or else it'll shoot off. So I think this was eight dollars. I'll put a link for this below. It's been a lifesaver for me more than once when I've only had one option for water and I needed this to get it in my tanks. So while I'm talking about stuff let me also recommend this. Most of us have these big rooly white water hoses right and you have to have a white hose because if you have a regular garden hose the toxins can leach off into your tank and then if you drink that water that can be dangerous over time. So for a long time I have this big unruly thing and you know it's hard to undo and redo so I recommend that in addition to that you get a little shorty like this one. So if I need to be really quick where I'm getting water for whatever reason there's somebody behind me or I'm trying to get it on the fly or stealth or something like that this little guy is great and I don't have to make a big deal about it. It just folds up right like that and goes in the bay where I get my water. It's also handy because it extends the other hose that I have tucked in another place if I'm really far from the water source. I'll put the link to this also below. My third favorite place to get water is actually in state parks. Now if you're going to be in a certain area for a lot of time like I'm spending this summer in Colorado, you can get a state park pass. In Colorado I believe it was $60. I got it last year. It's about to expire so I could be off a little bit. But there are great state park passes in most states and those state parks have campgrounds inside of them and just outside of the campground they generally have dump stations that look like this. Now sometimes there will be signs that say dump station use for campers only or something like that. But I've talked to some rangers in these places and I've said hey I have a park pass. Is it okay if I fill up with water? Again no one's ever had a problem with it. I feel okay with it because I paid for the park pass. I don't actually use the dump station as you guys know because I have a composting toilet but I think that's fine also. So you just go up to a bay like this or there might be a dump station and a water station in different places like you'll see up in this place. These pictures are from a place outside of Estes Park that I showed you a couple of weeks ago with a day use fee of five dollars or I believe a park pass for that area. You can use the dump stations there as well. These state parks are also everywhere and they're a great place to visit during the day if you've got the pass anyway. So enjoy the park, use the pass, fill up with water, and head to your next destination. Okay we've made it to my top two and these two might surprise you. I've never heard of anybody else talk about these but I'm going to hit you with them right now and see what you think. My second favorite place to get water believe it or not is U-Haul. Now I'm going to do a separate video on where and how to get propane because some of you have asked me for that as well but when I go get my propane I usually do it at a U-Haul because they're everywhere. They're a franchise and you can find them in almost every town. So what you want to do is search on Google or whatever for U-Hauls that have RV propane fill and they're going to have a tank that looks like this or it'll be a horizontal one right. This is good because you can leverage that purchase for some water just like you did at the gas station where you said hey I'm filling up my tank and I was wondering if I can get some water. This is not a very usual thing I think at U-Haul because every time I've done it they seem like it's the first time anyone's ever asked but again no one's ever turned me down. So what I do is I find a U-Haul that has this kind of a tank and then I find their water spigot before I call the guy to come out and fill up my propane tank. So you're looking for a water spigot just like the one that you looked at for at the gas station and you know they've got them and they've got a few of them usually because they're having to rinse off the trucks that they just rented out right. So I say hey I'm filling up my propane tank here is it okay if I top off my water and every time I've asked everyone's always said yes. The only iffy situation I had was up by Lake George, Colorado. The guy said yeah no problem you can fill it up but I don't know if it's potable because it's well water. No problem I didn't drink it I just used it to shower and do my dishes. Okay big drum roll let's get to the number one place that I get water and it's my absolute favorite. It's free, it's everywhere and you don't have to ask anybody if you can have some and that place is Truck Stops. Now hold the phone. I'm not talking about truck stops that cater to RVers like Little America or something like that where they're going to have a water spigot in the RV area. What I'm talking about is going to get potable water in the commercial truck area. Now I'm going to stop right here like I always do and say be good to the truckers out there we want them to be safe they want us to be safe. They're on a timeline so when you go over to the commercial trucker area do look to see if you know there's a line of truckers and you know wait. Normally in our lives we have a little more time than they do so go get a burger or something if you know if you're in a real hurry yeah get in line and go go get your water but otherwise let the truckers go. So look at this picture right here. I'm going to pan over through all of the trucks and then you're going to see that yellow water spigot. Now that is actually right next to the gas pump which also by the way has DEF fluid right at the pump if you need to get that for your diesel engine. So here's the deal if you have a gas engine go ahead and fuel up on the other side and then just drive over and like really quick with a little hose just fill up your water tank. But if you have a diesel engine here's what you want to do. First of all unless you're a commercial trucker don't prepay at the pump because your credit card company will probably put a fraud alert on your card like they did with me the first time I tried that. So what you want to do is run inside and prepay whatever amount you want to pay and then go outside and while you're pumping your gas you can also fill up your fresh water. So it's potable it's free you don't have to ask anybody and it's there for you to use just again be good to the truckers. So I have to tell you finding out that there is potable water on the section of a truck stop was a game changer for me but all of these other things have worked in other ways for me as well. I mean when I said look for a spigot on the side of the gas station I do that now in all kinds of places. I've gotten gas outside of a laundromat where I saw a spigot and just said hey can I top my tank off. One time I was in a small town at a pizza place and I was using their wi-fi and I got a slice and on the way out I asked the owner if he knew a good place where I could fill up my RV water tank and he said oh yeah I've got a spigot outside but I don't have a hose and I said I've got a hose. So you see where I'm getting with this when you go to city parks or you go to different businesses where you have to go anyway a lot of times you'll see that little spigot on the outside of the building or you're already going through a campground or you're driving by a state park or you're off of an interstate where there's a truck stop where you can get water. So don't be daunted out there there actually is water everywhere and I'll do some videos coming up in the future on how to conserve water so that the water that you have lasts you longer but for now I hope that this was helpful for you guys. Please do share it with your friends if they can use this information on your way out of the video. Please do hit the little like button if you liked it and RV community please do put down in the comments below if I missed anything if there's any favorite spots that you would like to share with everybody else. 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