Interstate-specific boondocking strategies?

[Mansderm161]

Good to know. I travel with my bike too, on a rack on the back.

[InterBlog]

Urban context boondocking --

HMMMMM.... this could be a valuable type of thing, IF you can find it in your city.

I have zero objections to paying for parking on a 24-hour basis. Zero. The problem is that, in Texas, most pay lot owners prohibit overnight parking for perceived liability reasons.

This is an example of a surface parking lot that encourages it. They are a third party so they don't know if you are actually staying in that nearby hotel or not (as far as I can tell). All they care about is that their meter gets fed. Which I wish were true everywhere because it would make my life a lot easier.

[InterBlog]

Today I offer you this Ode to Slow Learning.

Or, from another metaphorical perspective, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To an investor, every square inch of urban property looks like a money-maker, no matter how unconventional it may be.

I did not notice until this past week the prevalence of scraped slabs in the urban cores of Texas cities. The first wave of development a hundred-ish years ago resulted in small, inefficient buildings. Most of those were later razed to make way for more intensive development. But if the original tracts were small and unable to be incorporated into larger projects (e.g., if adjacent landowners would not sell), they basically get scraped, patched, and put into service as portions of pay parking lots.

Case in point. If you have to park in a dense urban core, there's a lot that can be said for these things, as long as you are careful not to launch yourself off the edge of them:

[eyechip]

One strategy I have used is for specific hotel parking lots. That is knowing what is the hotel's normal staffing and ability to enforce who is parked.

1. Normal sized Hampton Inns and Courtyard Marriotts as an example rarely employ security which is left to normal front desk staff to take care of. As a result no one ever really pays attention to who is parked in the lot. A 22 year old college student manning the front desk at night is hardly worried about the van parked in one of their spots. Clearly using common sense while parked there is good. Short overnights, no generator, don't extend your awning and lounge outside, lol.
2. On the flip side do NOT try it at larger full service hotels like Hyatt or Marriott. They have full-time security patrolling the lots 24/7 and will bang on the door. Although a friend did manage a parking lot at the Fairmont Lake Louise in Canada and was even so bold as to go in to the lobby each morning for free coffee and to use the bathrooms, lol.

[Alex AVI]

Originally Posted by eyechip

and was even so bold as to go in to the lobby each morning for free coffee and to use the bathrooms, lol.

EYECHIP - That what I call real chutzpah or cheapzpah

[eyechip]

Originally Posted by Alex AVI

EYECHIP - That what I call real chutzpah or cheapzpah

Yeah, lol. I remember him saying this summer about it.."and they had a great selection of complimentary newspapers as well."

[InterBlog]

There's a Cracker Barrel somewhere in New Jersey and its parking lot is contiguous with one of those lesser hotels you mention.

Except that the hotel's parking lot is slightly more level, so I will creep just over the property line and occupy one of their spots.

They don't turf my butt out, but I wake up in the morning to find traffic cones placed in the connector between the two lots, because they know that Cracker Barrel boondockers are spilling over.

I then have to move the cones aside, drive through, and replace, like I was never there (SSHHH!!). Because I DO need my Cracker Barrel omelette before I push through to Bangor.