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"Camping" at Wal-Mart:
Not a meaningful experience with nature
By Chuck Woodbury
Bambi and Thumper are nowhere in sight, nor are pine trees, picnic tables or
campfire rings. Yet with none of the trappings of a traditional campground, on
any given night at Wal-Mart parking lots across America thousands of
recreational vehicle enthusiasts snooze the night away in the comfort of their
self-contained RVs.
"Perhaps nine of ten Wal-Marts allow RVers to stay the
night," said Chuck Woodbury, editor of RVtravel.com (http://www.RVtravel.com). A
recent survey of his website's readers, in fact, revealed that nearly half (47%)
of the 1,800 respondents had spent the night at least once in a Wal-Mart parking
lot.
"With millions of RVers on the road each year, this is a huge number of
stays," said Woodbury, who noted that some RVers stay night after night. "To
some of these folks, it's like a sport. They cart along their Wal-Mart road
atlas, and plot their day's journey according to where there's a store for that
night's rest."
The private campground industry has been vocal in opposing the
practice and in some communities has promoted legislation to ban the freebie
visits.
"They claim it hurts their business, which I'm sure it does," said
Woodbury. "But the situation is that many RVers believe it's a waste of money to
spend $25 or $30 a night for a spot in an RV park when all they need is to grab
a few hours of sleep before moving on. They don't need a swimming pool or
showers or anything beyond a flat out-of-the-way place. For these folks, a
Wal-Mart parking lot fits the bill."
Woodbury noted that the readership of
his RVtravel.com website and its weekly 60,000-circulation email newsletter is
skewed heavily toward avid RVers, with three-quarters spending more than a month
a year on the road. Staying at a Wal-Mart for most of these people is about
convenience, he said, not about a meaningful experience with nature.
Although
Woodbury believes that Wal-Mart provides a valuable service to RVers in allowing
the free overnight stays, he opposes RVers using the parking lots to replace
campgrounds.
"Staying a night when you're too tired to drive on or when
there isn't a campground nearby is one thing," he says. "But mooching night
after night is simply abusing a good deal and will likely force Wal-Mart to
ultimately say 'enough is enough.'"
Already hundreds of stores have banned
stays in RVs. "Sometimes it's because of local laws," said Woodbury. "But most
times, it's the store's decision after RVers trashed the lots, leaked sewage,
cracked the pavement with their levelers, disturbed neighbors with their
stereos, or simply arrived in such huge numbers that shoppers couldn't find a
place to park."
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