Reading blog posts and watching Youtube videos about rv and van
life, one of the things that gently shocked me is that people sleep
overnight in Walmart parking lots. For years, many (but not all)
Walmarts have made their parking lots open to motor homes and travel
trailers for overnight stays and sometimes longer. For people who like
Walmarts, I suppose it has some advantages. A parking lot stay is
cheaper than a campground. Security keeps an eye on the parking lot.And if you need something, it’s just a short walk across the parking lot
to a Walmart.
But it’s not just motor homes and travel trailers. Some people stay
overnight in converted vans, mini-vans, or (gasp) cars. Online, I’ve
seen some fascinating conversions of cars as small as a Prius that have
been converted into tiny camping vehicles with beds. That made me
wonder if my Ford Escape could be set up for camping. Thanks to the
Internet, I found that it’s been done before. The back seat of a Ford
escape partially folds down. But if you remove the seat part of the
back seat, it folds down all the way flat. By sliding the front
passenger seat all the way forward, I actually have room to stretch out
my 5’11” frame comfortably on top of a thick foam sleeping pad.
Now you might think I’m going to tie the above two paragraphs
together and admit to sleeping in my car at the local Walmart parking
lot, but you would be wrong. Though I’m not overly fond of Walmarts, my
wife has an intense dislike of Walmarts, and she would literally hold
it against me if I ever overnighted there. In fact, when I first
mentioned that some people camp in Walmart parking lots, she almost lost
it and said:
“We…will…never…camp…in…a…Walmart…parking lot.”
So, anyway, back to the story. I planned a weekend of camping and
hiking along the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, but I couldn’t
leave until after supper on Thursday night so that Julia could take over
care for Justin, our son in a power wheelchair. I didn’t really see
the point in paying for camping on Thursday night. I would be setting
up in the dark and not able to enjoy the park at all on Thursday, except
for sleeping. It seemed like a good time to try stealth sleeping in
the Ford Escape, especially because predicted temperatures were in the
high 20’s.
Because I wasn’t going to sleep in a Walmart, I got online to do some
research. Surfing over to freecampsites.net, I learned that the
Mystique Casino
in Dubuque, Iowa has allowed RV campers to overnight in the past.
Unfortunately, the Mystique changed its name to the Q Casino, and I
couldn’t find any recent reports that camping was allowed after the name
change. The last report was four years ago. I decided to take my
chances.
After arriving at the casino parking lot around 8 p.m. I circled
around a bit to see where the other “Rv’s” were parked. Unfortunately, I
didn’t see any. There was an area of the parking lot in the back
(towards the river) where several semi-trucks parked. I moved far
enough away from the trucks so that I couldn’t hear or smell the diesel
engines, and backed in close to the dog kennel fence (there’s a dog
racing track here too), so that people couldn’t walk behind my Escape.
Then I walked into the casino and enjoyed myself for a couple of
hours. I had a pretty good steak sandwich with fries, accompanied by two
Saga IPA’s, brewed by the Summit Brewing Company in St. Paul,
Minnesota. I walked around, watched people play roulette, poker, and
slots. After a stop in the nice indoor bathrooms, I quietly slipped into
the back of my SUV.
It was 29 degrees when I woke up at 6:30 a.m. No wake-ups by
security. I parked far enough away from the crowd that I didn’t hear
another person all night. In the morning, my front window frosted up
(on the inside). After a couple of minutes of scraping, I headed back
across the bridge to Wisconsin.
A few miles up the road, I found the Grant River Recreational Area,
which includes an Army Corps of Engineers’ campground along the
Mississippi River. It was so peaceful and quiet. My mind felt at ease,
as I continued my weekend on the Mississippi River.
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