John, 100 miles as a 12-year old is amazing.  When I was that age, my idea of adventure was riding around town with my buddies, popping wheelies, jumping curbs and leaving tire marks on the pavement while skidding to a stop.

Your search from campground to beach to 7-11 for a place to sleep is a great story, regardless of age.

"... despite the No Camping signs. Within 5 minutes a policeman escorted us off and said we would charged with vagrancy and spend the night in jail until someone bailed us out if he caught us on the beach again."

What a flagrant act of bullying, in the name of "the law".  The cop was older and more experienced in the way The System worked of course, and he had the full Weight of Authority behind him by virtue of his badge if nothing else, so he knew that any threat he made would be taken seriously by three 12-year-olds.  But still... that sort of thing just pisses me off.

It would have been much better, from any number of perspectives, if he had made even the slightest effort to help you connect with your parents instead of immediately deploying the Bad Cop Threat Truncheon.

The 7-11 guy was a much better example of kindness and understanding.

Remember, this was 1969 and I think the townfolk had experience with families coming to the beach early in the am and finding it looked like Woodstock (same year!) - half naked people, dope smoking, etc.  I really can't fault the town or the policeman.

Good cop example on the same trip: on the way back there was a stretch of Sunrise Highway that was a limited access highway and bikes weren't allowed but we just kept going. A policeman pulled off ahead of us and said "Are you idiots from here?" and my friend Russell said no but my aunt lives around here. We told the cop our sad story and he ended up jamming our 3 bikes in his trunk and driving us to Russell's aunt's house and we got to eat actual food and sleep in real beds!

The more amazing thing is that three 12 year olds went to their parents and said "We are going to strap sleeping bags on our bikes and ride to Montauk and back" - and they all basically said "OK, see you when you get back."

One mom did say "But, you have to promise me you won't go in the ocean, I hear about sharks and rip tides killing all the children out there." So, Russell didn't go in the ocean.

None of our parents were worried at all about us biking on busy roads for 200 miles roundtrip -and it turned out there really had nothing to worry about.

The more amazing thing is that three 12 year olds went to their parents and said "We are going to strap sleeping bags on our bikes and ride to Montauk and back" - and they all basically said "OK, see you when you get back."

That could be a whole separate thread, especially for those of us of a certain age where our parents would kick us out the door in the morning with no idea what we were doing all day...

When I was 10-11 (5th grade) my friend asked if I wanted to go ride the new signed bike route in town.  So off we went, me on my purple stingray, with banana seat bike, to ride a hilly, on-road 30-mile signed bike route.

We had no water, food, or training, and since it was the 70's no way to contact anyone.  I recall it taking all day and near the end my friend produced a whole dollar to split when a White Castle hamburger joint appeared.  It was the only money we had.

Strangely I don't recall any fanfare when I returned home.  I may not have even mentioned it.  

My mom probably said, "You're late for dinner, go wash your hands...", and that was that.

Or maybe I said I went for a bike ride with Matt.  Who knows, but I wonder if that kind of thing would happen today?

The sleeping place wasn’t so unusual, but a gunpoint wake up call was unique for my cycle touring memories.  It happened on my first night in Israel in the summer of 1979, on a cycle tour which had begun in England a few months earlier.

With another couple of cycle tourers who I’d met on board the Piraeus to Haifa ferry, I’d rough camped (just in my sleeping bag under the stars with no tent) on a beach near Haifa. We’d run out of enough sunlight to cycle safely after disembarking and doing the border entry formalities.

At about 2am I was awoken by shouting, a bright spotlight and the close-up view of the business end of the barrel of a military-jeep mounted machine gun pointed directly at us from a few metres away. The lads in uniform behind the gun clearly weren’t happy about us camping on the beach.

Welcome to Israel, and a lesson of how twitchy their military are. There was no negotiation about a sleep-in. They insisted we pack our sleeping gear and roll the bikes off the beach which we of course did. Being high summer, there was only a few hours  to wait roadside until dawn and an earlier than usual ride start.

It seems that I am in good company with regards to having slept in a graveyard.  My incident was circa 1978 - my wife dropped me and my bike off in Fayetteville, AR at a friend's house and he and I proceeded by bicycle on highway 16 with the plan to eventually intercept the famous "pig-trail" (highway 23) and ride it south into the Arkansas River Valley.  I didn't have any sophisticated touring gear back then, and an overnight tour like this required only that I strap a sleeping bag onto the rear rack - each of us had a sleeping bag and 1 water bottle and that's all the gear we had.  We got a mid-afternoon start and set off with no idea where we might sleep that night, and no idea where or how we would eat; such trivial concerns just weren't an issue for crazy youth, we were just happy to be on an adventure.  As we were beginning to run out of daylight we approached the small town of St Paul and noticed a cemetery off the road a bit, well-hidden in the trees.  So we rolled into St Paul, and there was a small grocery store that closed in 5 minutes - the butcher made us each a huge sandwich, and we hurriedly hit the road because it was getting dark and we had no lights - 2 miles later we rolled off the highway and onto the dark road that led to the cemetery.  

We set up "camp" (parked our bikes and laid out the sleeping bags) in the rear of the cemetery and were quite certain that we were isolated and well-hidden and expected a peaceful night.  We ate our sandwiches and prepared for sleep, then suddenly we were flooded with light.  A pickup truck with hunters illegally "spotlighting" for deer had pulled into the cemetery and the powerful spotlights mounted atop the truck lit up the place like it was high noon.  The truck rolled slowly past us and the 2 guys standing up in the back end with deer rifles gave us a bit of a scowl because we had apparently disturbed their favorite illegal hunting spot, then they drove on and left us.  

The excitement from that incident slowly faded away and we once again prepared for sleep.  But then I heard someone yelling my name from the highway!  I ran out and found a friend who had discovered that we left Fayetteville on this adventure -so he drove down in the night and estimated about how far he thought we would get before dark and started yelling out my name as he drove along slowly - and it worked, he found us!  This was in the days before cell phones, so it's amazing that he was able to locate us - but he knew when we had left Fayetteville and he knew that we would camp somewhere close to the highway.  He had brought along an adequate supply of beer, and we consumed it all sitting on our sleeping bags under the stars in this little cemetery in the Ozark mountains.  With several beers in me I slept well that night, but I haven't camped in a cemetery since.

While we haven't ever spent the night in a cemetery, we have had a number of memorable nights when staying with Warm Shower hosts. The most unique one was with a Mennonite family in Alabama. The husband's hobby was roasting coffee and we got to sleep on the floor among the roasters in his coffee shed. It smelled pretty good! 

Interesting.   I’ve only heard of them called snow caves. And I would hope not to stay in one on a cycle tour. 

Stealth camping hasn't happened yet for me, but I'm finding myself looking at the countryside and thinking "This would (or would not) be a good place to stealth camp."

I'm now realizing just how much of the land around me is conspicuously marked as Private Property: No Trespassing, or is fenced.  Much of the rest appears unsuitable because it is either too exposed, there's too much underbrush, and/or steep slopes make it infeasible to melt away into the woods.

So, for the time being at least, I'm living the life of orthodox, planned stays in approved places designated specifically as camping-acceptable.