WalMart campground?

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Lorna:

Sorry you ran into that situation with improper camping at WM. 

In our first three years of Rving we have had only pleasant experiences at WM and everyone extremely well behaved.  One thing we like about staying overnight at WM is that we tend to meet the more serious full timers and longhaulers as opposed to the more predominant weekenders at CGs.  Nothing against weekenders, we were once among them.  But I don;t ever find them at WMS and it is fun to roam among some serious long haulers as an alternate experieince.  I have learned an awful lot from meeting people at WM in the evenings.

Just as an example, in Gillette Wyoming, on our way out here, we meet a man that made weekly runs back and forth between the mountains of West Virginia, and Idaho, carrying a rare breed of horse.  He owned ranches in both states and moved his stock back and forth in the most beautiful combo horse van / RV I have ever seen.  It was huge and the human living part of it was at least a 35 footer, and three horses in the additional van portion of it. 

He would do these runs in 72 hours.  I asked him why so fast, why not enjoy the roses along the way.  He laughed and explained he carried only enough feed for 72 hours and needed to empty the manure rack before it got too ripe.  :D  His living quarters were awesome.  Even the horse quarters were awesome.  He was a most interesting fellow and I would never have come across someone like him in a regular campground.

This is just one of many many examples of interesting people I have met on the "long haul" circuit.  These people are not bums but are very savvy travelers, and many of them are very well to do and successful.

We were aided in our happy landing here at El Mirage by another person we met in Ohio, who compared the merits of Tucson, Phoenix, and Yuma having spent many years at each location.

I might add there are also some very gorgeous WM locations.  I have watched sunrises at Ogden and sunsets at Laramie, and was overtaken by the scenic beauty in those places along with a number of other scenic WMs.

I feel no embarrassment or reason to excuse the fact that we find WMs great places to overnight in, especially when on the move.  I am very thankful that WM provides these convenient rest stops adjacent to the Interstates.  I love regular campgrounds too!  :D :D
 
caltex said:
Tom, I'm guessing that you were in the WalMart on Hammer Lane. It's as real junky place. My experience is that the stores mirror the  neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, poor stores.

Not just Wal-Mart.  I've seen many chain stores, grocery, hardware, and other where I"ve visited more than one store in the chain.

In most all cases you could tell what the inside of the store would look like by looking around the outside.

Graffitty on the walls, trash lying about, Junk cars parked along every street... Drive on

Clean and neat, well mowed lawns, prperly painted houses which appeared well maintained... Stop in

In fact, even the Service is different... My wife was complaining about a grocery store (Supermarket) where she was getting worse and worse servcie... I found her another store in the same chain...Of course it's in a better neighborhood... But she could not believe they were the same chain... Was for sure a different store.

Where as the "City" store was "What do you want?" (with attidute) the suburban store was "how can we help you?"
 
Tom said:
We once overnighted near a marina where I was "working" an event when our boat club brought 80 boats into the marina for the weekend (all paid their dues of course). At 2.00am I awoke to a loud rapping on the door of the coach and a bright light shining through the blinds. I knew this had to be the local police and decided to lay there quietly, pretending nobody was home. Right then Chris awoke yelling "someone's at the door".

Why should I care if the post I reply to is more than 120 days old?  Anyway, your recent post to the link here led me to this one.

I want to mention that once Tom & I parked for the night in the desert, down a dirt road, a good 100 miles west of Las Vegas (about 20 years ago in our 84 class B Chevy van). It was dark and we assumed we were far enough from the freeway. But was wrong, we could be seen from the interstate at first light (that's when I am always in my deepest sleep!)  Anyway, far from the interstate, at first light a cop banged on the door and woke us up. He wanted to know what we were doing there and he  checked our ID's and so on, because (he said) "many people have been murdered in Vegas lately and often bodies are dumped right around the area we were in."

Other than that little minor detail, I don't think there was any problem with us boondocking there. ;D

-Don- SF, CA​

 
Tom said:
Oh no, I see another TP discussion starting  ;D

Anyone wishing to read about the infamous RV Forum Toilet paper test, developed by George Mullen, and its results click the Library button above, select the Miscellaneous category and click Toilet paper test results.

Whatever happened to George? I remember he was quite active when this forum was on Compuserve.

-Don- SF, CA​
 
[quote author=DonTom2]Whatever happened to George?[/quote]

George comes by occasionally, but not very often. He hasn't been a regular since we moved off CS.
 
DonTom said:
Whatever happened to George? I remember he was quite active when this forum was on Compuserve.

George is still around.  I have lunch with him everytime I get to SD.

PhilB
 
Phil said:
George is still around.  I have lunch with him everytime I get to SD.

PhilB

Great! Tell him we all miss him and to get back on line here! 

Besides, maybe he will have a new TP test for us. ;D

-Don- SF, CA​
 
I like the Walmart Policies about overnight parking.  If I am traveling and just passing through, Wallmart it is.  If I am staying a while I like an RV park where I can hook up, put out my slide, take a shower and relax.  Ofter these times I stop early and stay late.  No hurry to get back on the road.

But if I am passing through.  I stop crawl in the front of the trailer and go to bed.  Sleep a few hours and hit the Road. 
 
When we are travelling and have been driving about 6 hours and it is getting dark.  We usually will stop at a Walmart to sleep then leave first thing in the am.

It goes like this:  Stop at 7pm; close the curtains, enter Walmart, buy supplies (RV) Groceries, toys for the kids, magazines, movies, etc...  Eat at the McDonalds, etc...
Head back to the RV, kids watch a movie on the battery powered DVD player or the laptop, we relax and read a book or a magazine, etc...

Usually we have at this point spent well over $200.00  So NO, I do not feel guilty for staying there till the morning, when we enter once again and get breakfast.

In fact it would be more affordable going to a CG - NOT ABOUT SAVING MONEY, it is about convenience and having Walmart to fall back on instead of searching around for a place to park for 6-7 hours.
This is why Walmart allows this.  They make huge profits on RVers.

Usually when we are at a walmart there are only 2 -3 others doing the same.

Jason
 
As a courtesy and also for your security, you should ask permission from the store manager to stay overnight and where they would prefer you park.
 
Tom said:
I guess I don't share that view Ron. Like WalMart or any other business, campgrounds need to make money to survive. Boycotting CGs in an area that has such an ordinance merely helps to drive CGs out of business and that can only hurt RVers. Why strongly support anything that can hurt RVers?
While I agree with you that campgrounds, like other businesses, need to make money, I'm with Ron when he says that he boycotts towns that have passed a "you can't park any place but in an RV park" ordinances at the behest of the RV parks...Billings, MT is a prime example a few years back.

Think about it this way:  What if all the restaurants in a town banned together and had a law passed that all RVers were prohibited from eating in their own rig, but had to, instead, eat at one of the restaurants in the area?  Outrageous, right?  Well, it's the same principal.

If RV parks would provide an area within their campground where people could come in an dry camp for a reasonable fee (certainly not more than $10, $5 would be better), they'd probably get a lot of "Wal Mart campers" to use their place. 

I agree that there are people who abuse the intent of overnight parking at Wal Mart, or other parking lots.  We've seen RVs with their jacks/levelers down, their awnings and slides out, toads or tow vehicles unhooked...and in some cases, nowhere in evidence.  Parking lots, ideally, should be used for those people who drive late into the evening and are gone first thing in the morning.

Having said all the above, we are not Wal-Mart overnighters...or any other parking lot, for that matter.  Mainly because we're usually off the road by 2 PM and who wants to spend the afternoon and early evening in a parking lot?  Certainly not us!  We also have a dog and a parking lot is a terrible place for walking a dog.  Finally, our fifth wheel has 3 slides and the downstairs is unuseable with the two big slides in. 

On the other hand, we rarely stay in RV parks, either.  There are lots of city/county/BLM/USFS/COE/NP and other places where we can park for free or for very little to be using expensive RV parks.  Tom, maybe you can afford to spend $25 and up per night for an RV park, but we came to the conclusion after our first year of fulltiming back in 1998, that if we continued to do that, we'd soon go broke and one of us would have to go back to work! ;)
 
LindaH, that was an old message you quoted/replied to. I don't even remember posting it, but our (my) views on camping at WM haven't changed in almost 25 years of RVing.

...I'm with Ron when he says that he boycotts towns that have passed a "you can't park any place but in an RV park" ...

I wouldn't have a clue where to find a list of such towns but, if I did, I might be more inclined to stay there.

What if all the restaurants in a town banned together and had a law passed that all RVers were prohibited from eating in their own rig, but had to, instead, eat at one of the restaurants in the area?

Hypothetical of course, and not the same thing. No town, city or state would/could pass such a law. Might as well try to pass a law that folks aren't allowed to breath while in their RV.

If RV parks would provide an area within their campground where people could come in an dry camp for a reasonable fee (certainly not more than $10, $5 would be better), they'd probably get a lot of "Wal Mart campers" to use their place.

I'd be supportive of such a move. RV parks might enjoy some additional business, but I doubt it would be from folks who are habitual WM campers. The rationale I hear from these folks has more to do with proximity to freeways/highways and easy access (no check in) than to saving money; I always hear/read that it costs them more to camp at WM because of the incremental money they spend in the store that they wouldn't have spent if they stayed in a regular campground.  
 
Hypothetical of course, and not the same thing. No town, city or state would/could pass such a law. Might as well try to pass a law that folks aren't allowed to breath while in their RV.

Lets put it in terms you might understand better.

They just passed a law that you can not spend the night on your boat anywhere on the delta except tied up at dock in a marina.   ;D
 
Tom said:
LOL Don, another hypothetical scenario.

Why is it hypothetical? They did it in Billings, MT and Clark County, NV. The only difference is the type of vehicle. Until they changed the law I couldn't even park at my sons house in Henderson. All it would take is all the marina owners to convince the county commissioners to pass the ordinance.

The campground owners in Clark County couldn't get the county commissioners to pass the ordnance so they went to the health department and convinced them that it was a health issue. After all we all know that any boats that aren't tied up to a dock is dumping their trash and pumping their sewage overboard. Which makes as much sense as saying that all RVs that park anywhere other than a campground dumps their tanks on the ground. We both know that's bull but that's what the campground owners convinced the Clark County Health Dept.
 
Tom said:
Hypothetical of course, and not the same thing. No town, city or state would/could pass such a law. Might as well try to pass a law that folks aren't allowed to breath while in their RV.
Of course it's hypothetical.  And of course no town would pass such a law. 

However, that's not the point.  The point I was trying to get across is that there is no difference between a bunch of restaurants getting together and trying to get their community to pass a law that RVers must use one of their establishments to eat at than there is for a bunch of RV parks to get together and get their community to pass a law that RVers must use one of THEIR establishments to spend the night.

It's also no different than Don's hypothetical case of marinas getting together and trying to get a law pass that boaters can't stay any place other than a marina.  And, frankly, I'm surprised they haven't tried!
 
Don,

I've previously reported that our county chose to "clarify the building code" to disallow the parking of RVs, boats, or (boat) trailers. The actual wording is that no more 80% may be visible from the street. I also reported that I received a ticket while away on a trip for a small boat trailer sitting in my side yard. More recently, I reported that we got a ticket stuck on our coach by the local Sheriff when it was parked in the street for approx 90 minutes; When I called the Sheriff's office to challenge it, I was told by the Desk Sergeant to be sure to move it after 72 hours, but it must be moved more than a foot.

Our local ordinances are a bit confusing; There's a sign as you enter our community that clearly says "on-street parking of RVs and trailers limited to 3 hours". There's a separate rule that gives us a 72 hour waiver for "loading and unloading". Then the county threw in the additional wrinkle.

These rules were not driven by campgrounds or marinas, and none of this has anything to do with why we don't camp at WalMart.
 
[quote author=LindaH]The point I was trying to get across is ....[/quote]

Understood your point, but the point in my original message in this old topic was that I don't support a boycott of campgrounds in a town having a "no stay at WalMart" ordinance, as this could result in campgrounds going out of business and ultimately hurt RVers.

And, frankly, I'm surprised they haven't tried!

If local marinas were successful in such a move (highly unlikely), they wouldn't have the berths to accommodate the additional demand. Expanding wouldn't be an option in most cases, although a few clearly have that option if they're prepared to go through the permitting process.
 
ya just gotta love it all, codes,rules,lawsuits and such. They tried, the city that is, one of those NO OVERNIGHT PARKING rules in our town once, after half a dozen wal-mart trucks got tickets sitting in a wal-mart parking lot, that rule, or LAW went away.

I gotta say my feelings on this are as follows. I drive until I get there or I'm too tired to carry on(I know that's not save) anyway, I will stop at a truck stop, or a wal-mart or a cg whatever is closest or eaisest to get to. I have no problem with the noise at the truckstops, and the lot lizard's don't  usually come around a MH. The wal-marts I park beside the trucks and stay outta the way,after talking to the manger first.

our last trip to florida, I tried to stay at cg's only which meant stoping earlier than I'm used to, and I gotta say some of these cg's are in need of upgrades, and just overall clean up. Either way ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
 

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