CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – With the official Fall season here, and with Fall weather around the corner, people are always looking for alternative ways to spend their Autumn season.
One app called Hipcamp, essentially an Airbnb for camping, is letting people camp on others’ property right in your own backyard in Conway.
Casa de Carroll, a Hipcamp site in Conway, is owned by James Carroll who says there’s a lot more privacy involved with Hipcamp sites than there would be at a normal campground.
“I’ve been with them a year and a half to two years, and the reason I did it was is I just thought it sounded like a neat deal,” said Carroll. “Most campers that I’ve met are really neat people and all.”
Peace and quiet is what comes with booking at a Hipcamp site, on their app that allows you to book camping sites on private land that has never been accessible, until now.
Carroll has one of the only, if not the only, Hipcamp site in the small town of Conway.
“I think it’s more people that expand their options of where to stay. You know, sometimes we have people that just want to be by themselves,” Carroll said. “I had a guy last month that was traveling on a motorcycle, and he just had a tent in the back of it, came here to stay for a night, and was gone the next morning.”
The app just recently added a Fall filter that allows you to find unique campsites too, like ones that you wouldn’t normally find at ordinary campsites, ones with apple picking, corn mazes or pumpkin patches.
When Carroll decided to use his land for the first time with the app, he had no idea that it would eventually benefit his family too. But now, folks can build a fire, walk the property and if you’ve got horses, you can ride them on the land.
Meeting the families who choose to stay, Carroll says, is the best part.
“They had a trailer that they had built to camp in, and it was Eddie, his wife, their two children, and a dog,” said Carroll. “Ended up, they came here, we hung out with them, they ended up staying almost two weeks.”
As the word spreads, Carroll says people are always looking for an alternative, and more Hipcamp sites could be popping up in small towns like Conway.
To view James Carroll’s Casa de Carroll Hipcamp site, click here.
