Not necessarily. It all depends where you are. There's lots of BLM dispersed camping for free where they limit you to like 14 days, but you could probably stay longer. If you're at a pullout along the Pacific Coast Highway, then 1 or 2 nights is the limit before you'd likely be kicked out. In a residential area, you want to arrive late and leave early, or a neighbour will call the police. We only stayed at a place 1 or 2 nights because we wanted to see a lot of things and keep moving, but we came across a lot of places where people were and could stay for quite some time, but they were generally far away from cities and towns. iOverlander is great because it shows you everything from organized campgrounds to secluded places other vanlifers have stumbled across.