Miles Driven: 296
Total Trip Miles: 296
I am a planner by nature. It's just what I do. But this was the one night I didn't plan. I figured, how hard can it be to find a campground right off the interstate in Nebraska?? All we need to do is sleep. We weren't even going to unhitch. Well, the answer is that it is really easy, but the part about any of these campgrounds having availability on a Friday night in June...that didn't really go so well.
So Matt and I quickly added "Camping in a Wal-Mart Parking Lot" to our bucket list (oddly we did not previously have this line item), and set out to find a Walmart...Okay, that was sort of a joke because the darn things are everywhere.
So here we are.
And here is what we learned:
1) It is true that law enforcement and the fire dept are called to Walmarts at an unusually high frequency. (Yes those are flashing lights up by the door.)
2) Yes a lot of people really camp in Walmart parking lots. We had about 20 neighbors...Fellow campers and truckers boon docking at Wally World.
3) Trains can sometimes sound like helicopters landing in the parking lot. (I can't seem to find the tracks, but let me assure you that they are VERY near.)
4) When dry camping (no hookups), the outlets in the camper don't work. (I honestly feel a little dumb about this one). Never mind the fact that you can't charge devices, plug in fans, etc...you can't make coffee in the morning!!!! (Which is a basic component of survival for our driver out here in the Wild West.) I'm serious kids; the trip just about ended before it really began.
5) The beauty of parking at a 24 hour Walmart is that you can get up at 5:00 am and purchase an adapter that allows you to plug the coffee maker into your truck cig lighter. But it couldn't power the coffee maker...
6) Lets talk about heat advisories. When dry camping you have no air conditioning and no plug ins for fans. And when the "feels like" temperature is 90 at 10:30pm you know sleeping will be hard. So this is my advertisement for the Fantastic Fan which Matt recently installed. It is a vent fan the will run off our batteries, and it really pulls air through the camper. Whew! Don't get me wrong. 90 is 90, but to have air flow was very nice.
7) It was a very nice parking lot; the street cleaner machine made sure of that around 5:00 this morning. Awesome.
8) The best thing we learned is that there are still really decent people in this world that would go to great lengths to help a complete stranger. Our parking lot neighbors were pulling a brand new camper from Illinois to Oregon to deliver it to an Alaskan State Trooper and his family (7 kids) after their truck broke down on their way home from Ohio where they picked the camper up from the factory. The state trooper had to get back home for work, so this couple who lived in the town where it broke down (complete strangers) offered to park it in their driveway and haul it out to Oregon to meet them. The good Samaritans even pulled it with their own truck (the state trooper's is still broke down in Illinois.) Well done fellow Midwesterners.
This morning at breakfast Cameron said. "This is the longest I've ever been at a Walmart." I asked if he wanted to do it again sometime and he thought about it and said, "No. I'm good." Me too buddy.
Let me back up to earlier in the day. We planned to leave at 4:00 pm and actually left at 5:00 pm, which we thought was pretty good.
I did one last sweep of the house to make sure we didn't forget anything. I met Matt at the door and as I was walking out the door I told him I felt good that I got everything. He looked down at my feet and said, "So you weren't planning to wear shoes?" Oops. Put shoes on and walked out the door. Whew!
Overall the trip went very well. Matt adjusted to reduce the bumpiness, but other than that it was smooth. Gas stations love us. We had a healthy side wind (look at the flag in the first picture.) And it only took 30 miles before someone had to go potty "really bad"...sounds about right.
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