Sleeping in a Walmart Parking Lot! My Nighttime Routine + Tips & Tricks for Stealth Camping & Safety

hey everyone so tonight i'm going to be sleeping in a walmart parking lot it's something i've done many times while traveling cross-country in over 35 different states so here i'm going to show you my nighttime routine and different tips and tricks for sleeping at walmart and for safety so stay tuned for that but first here i'm going to show you how to find really good walmarts on the map all right so here is how i find walmarts that are good to sleep in so basically i go to google maps and i just search for walmart supercenter and it will bring up a list and first i'll show you the walmart that we're going to be staying at tonight and i'll show you the reason why i like that so i i look at all the walmarts and then i switch it to satellite view and you can zoom in and look at the parking lot and see exactly what it looks like so this is the one this is like an ideal walmart parking lot and i'll show you why for starters it's really big the bigger the parking lot the better and um this one in specific is like a perfect parking lot because it has these little sections see right there the little sections of parking spaces right there and right there and all the trees planted everywhere and you you want a walmart that is separate by itself like this and not in a shopping center and not surrounded by businesses everywhere all right on our way there now [Music] all right so here we are at the walmart and i got here a little early it's only 8 30 usually i get here get to walmart's a lot later than that all right so normally i don't cook in walmart parking lots but tonight i am mainly because i've been eating so much fast food lately and i'm going to cook a nice healthy meal in my instant pot pressure cooker that i have in the back so tonight i'm going to be cooking greek salad with garbanzo beans or chickpeas so i got to go inside to get the groceries red onion chickpeas a dollar eighteen a bag can't beat that all right so i'm back in the car and uh first i'll just show you this parking lot what it looks like and what the good spots in this parking lot look like before i cook i've been sitting here for a little while just doing some work and stuff it's uh 10 30 right now walmart's about to close okay so here we are in the back of the parking lot over here these are the good spots that i was talking about where they have like divided sections of parking spot like right here see this divided section these three parking spots those are perfect parking spots to to park overnight like you have your own little private thing right here and there's a few more up here like right here see the store is down there and uh right here here's another little section there's like five spots in this one it's another little private thing down here is good too um and see also like like these spots right here are up against this rail and like the reason i like these is because they have there's like trees that are uh in the background like there's it's not like a street directly on the other side where people can look into your windshield so these are nice uh stealth private spots and actually yeah there are a lot of good spots in this parking lot like the kind of walmart parking lots i don't like are the ones that are just a big open square parking lot i don't like that i like these where there's like trees planted and there's all these like concrete medians everywhere and yeah so i'll probably park over here in one of these little private uh cut out spot areas i normally don't cook where i am going to sleep i go on like somewhere else sometimes i'll go to a whole different like property i'll go to a park or something but it's it's okay to do it in a walmart parking lot for the most part as long as you're not like staying there for weeks at a time cooking outside every single night and just you know making a scene and everything else so this is the little side parking lot that i showed on the map that i'm about to go to right up here and i don't really like this one and the main reason is because it's so uh dark like look how dark there's no uh street lights in here see how dark it is well there's i just turned my light bar on so you can see better but this is a nice little parking lot but i don't like parking in the dark overnight that that that can be dangerous you want to park in a well-lit area all right so i'm over here in this parking lot the side parking lot and i'm about to cook my food so i have green pepper red onion tomatoes and a cucumber and i'm gonna dice it all up and put it in here and i'm gonna cook my garbanzo beans or chickpeas in this instant pot pressure cooker and then mix it all together with olive oil and black pepper come here come here you want tomato yeah all right so i just diced up all the vegetables and i'm waiting on the beans to finish pressure cooking and i'm just sitting over here and nobody could care less that i'm over here doing whatever as long as like i said as long as you're not doing anything illegal or causing a scene or littering or anything nobody even really notices you so it just started raining i think this is rain from that hurricane that just hit the east coast or whatever and so i am just going to go pull in my spot set up camp and eat over there so here i'm going to my spot right now i'm going to go down to here to one of those little um sections that have like little uh private spots on the side so here's the spot right here and i like to get spots that are on the side like right up against the curb either on the left side or the right side so i'm just gonna park right here you can see i'm and i pull as far forward because i don't want someone crashing into me or bumping into me from any side while i'm in here or ever but yeah you can see i'm right i'm i park as close to the curb as i can and then from here i put in my windshield cover and then i put in the window covers on the side right here and then on this side and then yeah like i said before i do this i make sure these window covers all the back window covers are all in all these back windows have the covers in all right so yeah i turned on my accent lights in the back and so now my prius is completely light proof meaning no light leaks from the outside because i have window covers in so i can do whatever i want in here so yeah now from here i lock the doors put the e-brake on and i just hop in the back and set and set up my sleeping platform and get everything ready to sleep on and also i set up my dog's bed um she sleeps in the front sometimes i put her in the back and i put this tub up here in the front seat but yeah this is her bed right here and i just wedge it into the seat and she sleeps there nice and comfortable yeah all right so now i'm gonna hop in the back and get everything set up and i injured my left shoulder really bad recently so i'm gonna be doing mostly everything with my right arm so that might that's why it looks kind of weird some of the things i do so now i push my seat forward put my trash can up here set up the sleeping platform all right so here's what it looks like when i have it set up uh it's a little crowded right now i just got this thing this is my inflatable kayak it takes up so much room it goes into this bag and normally there's nothing on this is my sleeping bag and air mattress i set that up when i go to bed so that's normally not there normally it's just this tub there and i can set my laptop there or you know use it as like a little like dresser shelf type of thing so here's my little backrest pillow thing i have it leaning against the seat and i just chill here and do whatever the food came out really good it was uh it's greek salad like i said garbanzo beans and tomatoes and cucumbers and red onion and uh green pepper i put olive oil and uh parsley and sea salt and black pepper on it came out delicious so yeah that's how easy it is to just pull into a walmart and post up and go to bed for the night some walmarts have a no parking no overnight parking sign around but most of the time if you call them and ask them if you can park overnight in the parking lot they'll say yes that happened to me three times where i got to a walmart and it said no overnight parking sometimes it says no rv or truck parking overnight but they never enforce it never it's crazy like all three times i called well i've seen that sign more times but yeah i just called up i talked to the front desk or front desk the customer service and they said yeah that's fine like they don't care nobody at walmart really cares as long as you're not doing anything illegal or trashing the property or anything they do not care i've never had a problem with a walmart employee but yeah just like make sure you're respectful like i don't even get out of my car when i pull in the spot i'm in my car for the night and i don't get out until the next morning i usually just drive off and get go somewhere you know don't leave trash that's obvious just make sure that you don't give them a reason to ban overnight parking and then like in terms of safety i would say you know use common sense don't some walmart's can be in a little bit of a you know high crime area and you got to watch out for that like inner city walmarts often are kind of like that i normally stay out of inner city walmarts i like i like rural walmarts and uh walmarts that are in wealthy areas i have a few weapons in my car i would say at least keep a pepper spray on you in your car at all times just in case and always park where it's well lit don't park in like a dark corner somewhere and also walmart is not the only store that allows uh overnight parking there's some other stores that do like cracker barrel is really good about it but they specialize in like rv parking they have like spots for our visa park what else what other stores do it costco sometimes does it i've heard that bass pro shops and cabela's do it i don't stay in those places though for me like when i'm traveling cross-country it's either i'm either camping on public lands like a national forest or blm land i'm either doing that or i'm in a walmart parking lot like 99.9 of the time that's what i'm doing when i'm traveling around but um sometimes i will be in a rare situation where i can't find a campsite on public grounds and i can't find a good walmart to sleep at and in that case i will stay either in a hotel parking lot or on a side street in a like a residential area or like a little residential parking lot somewhere i've only done that a few times though i don't like hotel parking lots because it's like you know it's not really allowed and i don't like doing anything illegal i want to park and sleep for the night only where i know it's completely legal a lot of people i've watched a lot of videos where people stay at rest areas or uh truck stops i don't like those areas um first i mean for starters rest areas you know you hear all kinds of stories and you know it's just it's such a small parking lot and when you see a car at a rest area everyone knows that you're in there you know what i mean it's just i don't know i don't like that it just feels a little weird to me i don't know everyone's different that's just my preference i prefer walmart or public lands one of those all right so here i am the next morning and as you can see i still have my nice little private spot over here and as expected no one bothered me no one ever bothers me i always get a full peaceful night of sleep in walmart parking lots all right so that's it for now there's a lot more that i wanted to cover about stealth camping and walmarts and stuff but uh it's too much for one video i'll cover it more in future videos for rvs i'll just go ahead and say you want to be a little bit more cautious i think with rvs because when you're in an rv it's kind of like an open target you know what i mean because everyone knows that you're in there and rvs take up so much more room i have a toyota prius so i can just pull in any parking spot anywhere and put my window covers up and nobody would ever know i was in there and when you use like shiny silver reflectix or you know clothes i've seen towels and shirts and all kinds of stuff that people put up in the windows to block it's like block light and for privacy um it's a good idea to have tinted windows and i as you can see i have black window covers so that really uh helps with uh privacy and staying stealth and stuff and the other thing is um i have an instagram account i haven't been using it lately but i'm gonna start getting it uh going again and it's wbs under dash prius under dash travel i'll put a link in the description also i really appreciate uh the support that i've gotten from people uh with donations and stuff i wanted to say thank you to nelia de bachchan i'm sorry if i mispronounced that korrina chung linda wines and linds and parker i didn't get y'all's last names but thank you all very much for the support that's very kind of you and uh yeah thanks i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Mountain Springs Adventures

Views: 556,314

Keywords: Boondocking, boondock, national forest, BLM, land, public, camping, stealth, Prius, camper, VanLife, van, life, truck driver, RV, rvers, trailer, road trip, travel, backpacking, conversion, van build, tour, car camping, van life, wal mart, walmart, free camping, stealth camping, camper van

Id: jYTe5xUrWgA

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 12 2021