This has all been good for travelers up until the last few years when Walmart began slowly closing off its parking lots to travelers. In all fairness to Walmart, it’s not all Walmart’s doing. A lot of the traveling public does not know that the parking lots that a lot of the Walmart stores occupy are not Walmart property, but belong to property owners that lease to Walmart. In these cases, Walmart has no control over letting travelers spend the night in these lots.
Some of these Walmart stores are simply following Corporate Policy that seems to be slowly removing the overnight staying policy put in place by Sam Walton, the Founder of Walmart many years ago. Another reason is that in some cities, city ordinances are prohibiting overnight parking anywhere within city limits including Walmart. I’ve heard that these ordinances are coming about because of pressure brought by RV Parks who are losing revenue to the free lots. It does seem that Walmart stores in rural areas are more RV friendly and are not closing their parking lots down as their urban based stores are.
So, other than the reasons given above, why is Walmart shutting the van dwellers and other RV types from spending the night in their lots. In a nutshell, it’s the bad apples. It’s the RV’ers that arrive in a Walmart parking lot and let out their awnings, roll their slides out, set out the grills and chairs and become “squatters” and stay for days or even weeks in some cases. And then, there’s the RV’ers pulling a trailer. They drive in and park their trailer, unhook it from their tow vehicle and take off and don’t return, sometimes for days or weeks.
I’ve seen trash left, black tanks leakage and smelled the stench of urine or other gross smelling liquids left behind by these bad apples. This is why Walmart is slowly closing their parking lots to RV’ers. I can see a ways down the road when others like Cabela’s will also close their lots to overnight stays.
Quite frankly, I would much rather be parked by a beautiful lake or mountain stream or the beach than a Walmart in the city.
