We've overnighted at Walmarts, Cracker Barrels, and even a casino or two. Those stops are free, and you get what you pay for: a parking lot, some road noise, and no hookups. Love's RV Stops sit in a different tier. Ours cost about $74 for the night, which is more than plenty of full-service campgrounds charge. So the question we wanted to answer in this video was simple: do you actually get $74 of value, or is it just a fancy parking lot behind a truck stop?
What a Love's RV Stop actually is
If you've only seen the regular Love's truck stops along the interstate, the RV Stop is a separate area with actual RV sites: full hookups, pull-throughs, and its own entrance away from the truck parking. You book a numbered site, not a patch of asphalt. That alone puts it ahead of the usual overnight options, but it also means it gets judged like a campground, not like free parking.
The level test: staying hitched with the slides out
Travel-day stops only save time if you can skip the full setup. Our test for any one-night stay is whether we can stay hitched to the truck and still put the slides out, and that comes down to how level the site is. Our site passed. We stayed hitched, ran the slides, and were set up in minutes instead of the usual unhitch-and-level routine. For a one-night stop, that matters more than almost anything else.
Water hookups and what came out of the tap
The site had water and full hookups, and we ran everything through our Blu Tech AR3 filter like we always do after finding lead in a campground's water earlier this year. If you're curious what the filter caught this time, the results are in the video. Short version: we're glad we don't drink campground water unfiltered anymore.
The amenities surprised us
We expected a glorified parking lot. We got a playground, a dog park, a tennis court, and laundry on site. Fabiola found the laundry almost by accident, and it honestly changed the math for us. On a travel day, knocking out a few loads while you sleep somewhere with full hookups is real value, especially compared with hunting down a laundromat later in the week.
The one thing nobody warns you about
Here's the catch we didn't see coming: site spacing. At some point in the evening we looked up and realized our neighbor's window lined up directly with ours, close enough to wave. If you've watched our channel for a while, you know we'll trade privacy for convenience on a travel day, but light sleepers and long-stayers should know these sites sit tight together. This is a one-night stop, not a destination.
The diesel discount that offsets the price
The part that changes the whole value question: Love's participates in the Open Roads diesel discount program, and on this stop we saved about $1.20 per gallon. Fill a truck like ours and a chunk of that $74 site fee comes right back. If you tow with a diesel and you're not using a discount program yet, that's the first thing we'd fix.
So is it worth $74?
For a travel day, yes, with caveats. You're paying for a level pull-through, full hookups, laundry, and fuel savings in one stop, and that combination beats a free parking lot by more than the price difference when you're tired and rolling in late. What you're not getting is space, quiet, or a reason to stay a second night. We'd stop at one again on a long haul. We wouldn't plan a weekend around it.
Watch the full stay, including the level test and the filter results, on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.