The scenic route: More RVers staying in Wal-Mart parking lots

Charlotte Pinick takes a quick inventory: Five recreational vehicles parked in a nearby truck stop parking lot; a few more up the road at the Emporia. Kan., Wal-Mart.

That's more than $120 the owner of Emporia RV Park won't be bringing in this day as travelers choose free parking over the campsites with water, electricity, dump station and wireless Internet service Pinick and her husband are offering for $22.50 a night.

"We don't like it, but it's one of those things," Pinick said of the RVs that could have been filling the 20-some empty spaces in her RV park.

With $2 gas prices making their hobby more expensive, RV enthusiasts are trimming their travel costs any way they can, whether it's taking fewer and shorter trips or spending a few nights in the local Wal-Mart parking lot, experts say.

They're also looking for convenience, security and familiarity as they drive their travel trailers or $100,000-plus motor homes from one end of the country to the other.

"There are those nights when you're forced to drive in the dark to find someplace to park and you just don't know what you're going to find," said Chuck Woodbury, who publishes RV-related articles on the Internet. "You say to yourself, 'there's a Wal-Mart over there. I'm going to make life easy for myself."'

Woodbury operates what he calls the largest book store exclusively focused on recreational vehicles. Among the offerings on rvbookstore.com is a publication that lists all the Wal-Marts where overnight parking is not allowed, and a Wal-Mart locater guide, complete with maps to every Wal-Mart store in the country except those in Hawaii.

Those are a must-have for serious RVers, he said.

"Boondocking," also known as primitive camping, is the RVer term for camping without the use of such conveniences as electricity and water. The subject, especially as it pertains to Wal-Mart lots, is a favorite topic among Internet-savvy travelers on such sites as freecamping.com, fulltimerver.com and Woodbury's rvtravel.com.

Tim Bryant, manager of the Cape Girardeau Wal-Mart Supercenter, said that he hasn't seen any RVers taking up residence at the Wal-Mart parking lot this year.

While the Cape Girardeau store does not have a policy on RV parking, he said, "we prefer they don't because we have no dumping station."

Still, "sometimes people will call and ask about using our parking lot. The reply is: We don't have a problem with that," Bryant said.

He said campers wouldn't be asked to leave unless they created some kind of traffic hazard.

Hillary Eye, assistant manager of the Jackson Wal-Mart, said she'd seen no campers recently. She didn't want to issue a statement on store policy Saturday because she was unable to get in touch with the store manager or the Wal-Mart home office.

Critics of boondocking -- especially campground owners who feel they are losing money because of it -- argue that people who can afford to drive vehicles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars across the country surely can afford to pay the $20 or $30 nightly fee for a campsite.

Kay and John Raisch, attendants at the recently opened Cape Camping and RV Park, who've been camping for 30 years, said a lot of people don't want to park there because they don't want to pay the fee of $25 or $26 per night for electricity.

"We had one man in here that pitched a hissy fit because he had to pay for the electricity even if he wasn't going to use it," Kay Raisch said. "He said they'd go right on down to Wal-Mart and park."

But RVers say it's not always about saving money. Most Wal-Marts are easy to find, the lots are lit up at night and usually have security cameras. Campers can restock their supplies, get something to eat and be back on the highway with ease -- which is important to people who have someplace else to be.

Pinick, the campground owner, said most transient campers she sees -- the ones who are just passing through, rather than the "snowbirds" who park there for extended stays -- alternate between parking in campgrounds and overnighting in places where they don't have to pay.

"Most people are every other day," Pinick said. "If there's a Wal-Mart, they'll stay there one night, and the next come to places like this and get water and dump their tanks."

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Christi Gallagher said there are 3,167 Wal-Marts and Sam's Club stores scattered across the United States in communities of all sizes. The company whose founder, Sam Walton, was said to be an RV enthusiast, encourages RVers to park in its lots wherever it's allowed, she said.

"From Wal-Mart's perspective, RVers are customers and we're certainly happy to host them in our parking lot when we can," she said.

Yuma, Ariz., is one of those places where overnighting at Wal-Mart is not allowed. Richard Fuller found that out the hard way.

"I've only had one problem with parking at Wal-Mart," said Fuller, of Mesa, Ariz., as he loaded bottled water into a motor home in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Emporia, Kan. "I pulled in around 10 o'clock at night. There were other RVs there, but in the middle of the night, a cop knocked on our door and said we couldn't park there."

James Stover, public affairs manager in Yuma, said the city has a 20-year-old ban on any overnight camping without a permit. Campgrounds are big business in Arizona, he said, and allowing travelers to camp overnight for free does not help the business community.

Woodbury said that's not uncommon in places where the weather is nice year-round.

"If you look, the areas where staying at Wal-Mart is not allowed are generally places like Florida, Arizona, Southern California, where you get winter snowbirds who would go in and occupy parking lots and there would be no room for cars," he said. "Also, there are small towns where campground owners go to the city council and say it's hurting their business."

Staff writer Chris Pagano contributed to this report.