Camp WalMart

If getting there is half the fun and being there is the other half where does that leave getting home? No fun! It seemed like we were only on the road for a few hours before it got cold and we needed our coats to get out of the car.

The Jeep (only 6 cylinders) was having a tough time pulling the camper. It was hard to accelerate and sometimes the transmission would overheat. So we had to go slower than the posted maximum speed. This was a problem.

Because it can be time consuming to "set up" and "break down" each day, we tended to stop for the night in a WalMart parking lot. This actually isn't too bad because you can always go buy food (as long as it doesn't need to be cooked because the only power you have is to operate the lights). Plus there are typically restaurants nearby. We try to look at Google earth before stopping because sometimes the restaurants are all on the other side of a four to six lane highway and there's no way to get there.) Stopping in a WalMart parking lot is quick and easy. You only need to stay in the back of the lot, as far away from the store as you can get. (Unpleasant when you need to go buy something and it is cold or rainy.) You can drive until you just don't want to drive anymore and then stop without worrying about backing in or hooking anything up. If you're stopping at a campground you have to worry about getting stopped before it's dark so you can get into your space before it gets too dark to see or the office closes and forgets to put out your packet. And there probably won't be a restaurant across the street although you'll have full power if you need to cook, which is not usually something I want to do after riding/driving all day. We were lucky at Fiesta Key, the campground had a restaurant and the food was way better than we expected.

Anyway, staying at WalMart is fine for a night or two. The trip down to the keys was three days. We stayed in a WalMart parking lot two nights. But coming back was horrible. It took us five days to get back. I think we spent three nights in a WalMart parking lot but it seemed like a month. This is a problem. I don't like it. I don't mind a night or two, but three or four nights? No. I am not doing that again. Poor planning on our part. We need to rethink how we plan these trips.

We need to solve this problem.