Hipcamp connects campers with private sites. This summer I booked eight stays during a trip up and down the California coast. Of these, five were amazing and even inspiring. They felt restful, safe, clean, convenient and even inspiring! I didn’t leave bad reviews for the three that didn’t leave me with these impressions, mostly because those places seemed to be struggling - they didn’t feel unsafe, but were a bit sad and discouraging. One of the sketchy places marketed itself as a “resort,” one as an educational “farm” with not much evidence that anything was growing or much obvious animal husbandry, another offered a bed inside a grubby “glamping” trailer with flat tire and escaped cattle (manure everywhere hosts called this “free range”) - when I pulled back the sheets on the bed there was dirt and human hair. The port-a-potty there (hint, it’s in Lompoc, CA) appeared and smelled FULL / unmaintained - yuck yuck yuck. Having no other accommodations, I used my sleeping bag that night and noticed that the family staying in the other trailer had “wide” eyes and appeared uneasy - and they hightailed it out of there before sunrise. My advice: read the reviews! The “resort” had several complaining about a poor experience and I should have heeded this over pretty pictures put up by the hosts.All this aside, I look forward to future HipCamping and really appreciate the service.

I love Hipcamp! We much prefer camping remote and primitive, rather than in campgrounds, surrounded by so many others and strict curfew when it comes to noise. We never really knew or know how to find off the beaten path, remote camp sites, especially without a four wheel drive. This solves all those issues! My frustration with the app itself is that you can’t read or exchange messages, which seems just silly when this is, for all intentions a travel app, if I’m out and need to locate a quick spot for the night and Thus not near a computer, how silly is it I can’t access messages to send one to a host or read previously exchanged ones? Hipcamp has been saying for like a year they were working on that and still nada. Lastly for either hosts or for Hipcamp, engineers maybe have a mandatory section for hosts to fill out that describes any potential noise or other animals on their property to be concerned about. We’ve stayed at a couple different spots where noise from roosters and other animals that were pets kept coming to our spot and this is just annoying that it wasn’t something added to their description. Something really important to us is to have a quiet spot, I don’t want to be woken up to roosters and farm animals. I love them don’t get me wrong but I don’t want to live or sleep near them. I also don’t want the hosts dogs or other pets coming to our camp begging for food. Yes I love pets we bring our own but I don’t want others pets begging when I have my own.

I’ve booked several times but they keep canceling it because the owners of the property don’t keep their calendar updated you wait one day or more and they either don’t respond so the booking gets canceled or they decline. It makes it very difficult to plan anything. One accepted the booking and then canceled a few days later. Also, it looks like people are starting to get greedy and charging higher prices to sleep in the middle of a field. I’m disappointed. the idea is great but there hasto be someway to hold the owner accountable for not having their calendar updated excepting bookings and canceling out. One more thing, they charge you immediately. It takes a few days to get the money back. Note that there’s a $10 cancellation fee that they give you a credit for on your next booking but like I said I haven’t been able to make any booking since the first one. Good concept but not very good for someone wanting a real reservation with reputable people. You cannot rate the people that cancel you out the week after your reservation they only let you rate people who you have stayed with. It would help if you could rate people that either didn’t update their calendar or let you make a reservation and then cancel you a week later because they have other people scheduled to come.

That’s a quote from my wife for whom this was a surprise trip. We stayed at Camelot and friends for a night while on the way east. It looked like it would be an amazing adventure with the menagerie that Mickey described on Hipcamp, but he made it even better in person. Mickey met us on arrival and gave us a tour, introducing us to all of the animals. There were so many adorable piglets, Nigerian dwarf goats and donkeys you just have to see to believe. The Emus were so impressive as were all the doves and homing pigeons, horses, Texas longhorns, pea fowl and chicks, chickens and turkeys, a sheep, a llama and even a camel! Oh, and a pile of Frenchies rounded things out. He was a wealth of information about animal husbandry and a pretty good example of human husbandry himself, if that’s a thing. He is just an all around good guy, doing good things as much as he can. The campsite was level, had water and power and there was no road noise during sleeping hours. But remember, this is a farm with all of the requisite animal noises- cooing doves, squealing piglets, braying donkeys and crowing roosters. I loved it!Don’t hesitate. This is practically a destination camp all by itself. Totally worth it and then some.