May 16, 2017: It’s no secret among RVers in San Diego that the local indian casinos allow them to overnight park for free.
Viejas Casino in Alpine, CA maintains a policy of letting RVers park for 72 hours. Technically, they don’t welcome RVers to overnight there. Instead, they give you a 72 hour notice to vacate.
All you do is park your RV in their parking lot furthest to the east of the casino. It’s where all the tour buses park. Casino security will come by eventually and give you a registration form (or a 72 hour notice to vacate). You simply place the form in your window, and you’re good.
There are a lot of tour buses that park here, and they can be noisy. I found that I could keep my windows closed and it didn’t bother me. You can also run your generator here and no one cares. The parking lot has a gentle slope to it, and you may want to level out your rig.
The idea is that as long as you’re spending money at the casino, security is not gonna push you out.
We were actually able to stay 120 hours (5 nights).
What happened is that I visited the casino security office (located in the outlet center mall) and asked for another 72 hour extension. They actually refused. But I kept talking, and talked about how much we loved their casino. The security in charge stated that they would have no problem giving me another 72 hours as long as I had a
“players club card” with a history of spending money on machines. But since I didn’t have any such card, they didn’t want to extend my stay.
But after some more talking, he finally relented and let me stay another day.
So, we stayed another day, and then after that day went by, we continued to stay.
They never showed up to kick us out.
But we did leave after the 5th night. So technically, we got five nights instead of three.
The main thing is that the casino doesn’t want their parking lot looking like a campground. As long as you don’t put out chairs, roll out the awning, and fire up the BBQ, you’re pretty much under the radar. It’s probably a good idea to just move your RV to another area of the parking lot every couple of days to make them happy.
I actually witnessed a lot of RVers arriving at night and leaving the next morning. This is obviously a great place to overnight. I also saw a number of RVers staying for the 3 nights and leaving. If you’re looking to boondock and save yourself money on campgrounds, just be respectful, and stay under the radar. You’re likely able to get away with staying longer than 3 nights.
FYI: the casino has a gift shop, but it sells only gifts, no snacks or over-the-counter meds. There is an outlet mall with a food court (A Kentucky Fried Chicken in particular). Of course, the buffet at Viejas is awesome. The parking lot has trash cans, and that’s about it.
This is great info, thank you for sharing!
Interesting