Date:         Thu, 10 Feb 2000 12:31:07 -0800
Reply-To:     Steve Sullivan <Steve@NORTHWESTWATCH.ORG>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Sullivan <Steve@NORTHWESTWATCH.ORG>
Subject:      Stealth camping: pre-van
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

You stealth campers are wimps!

As you may remember from my initial post a couple weeks ago, I've been
stealth camping in a Honda Civic for up to 4 months at a time, for the past
several years. Yeah, been rousted by the cops more than once, it's hard to
hide in a glass box (sedan).

I avoided residential areas in favor for industrial parks. I'd look for
anywhere that no one was likely to wander by and notice me. That's the key
to successful urban camping. Yet it had to be a place where it looked normal
to see a car parked there all night, since, as I mentioned, you can't hide
in a car. If someone walks by, you're seen. And people wandering by in the
middle of the night are the last people I want to notice vulnerable old me.

Safety was my biggest concern. I'd drive around, sometimes for an hour or
more, just to find the "perfect" or "best" combination of not being noticed,
yet the 'hood being a place I felt secure. Sometimes that meant those
impersonal corporate office/industrial parks, sometimes it was a field next
to a suburban road where I couldn't be seen from the road, sometimes it was
a busy urban industrial area with on-street parking, or even a parking lot
where they were working 24hr shifts.

My motto: "If it's safe enough to pee-it's safe enough for me."

I don't like pee bottles, so another camp spot requirement was that it be
stealthy enough to allow me to get up in the middle of the night.

And so I found that great field in Albuquerque, the side street in the
industrial part of Oakland, the dirt road near the Rainer Brewery in
Seattle, the back alley in LA, an even better field near the railroad yards
in Portland, the factory parking lot in Minneapolis, and the corporate park
where the cops found me in Tucson.

Small towns and the outskirts of cities are the hardest. I look for
backroads near small towns, (or along most any highway outside a wilderness
area) but most of them turn out to be driveways. Suburban rings around
cities are barren of good campsites for car-campers.

My favorite spots are access roads near to railroad mainlines. I love
trains, and if you find a place to pull off railroad property (railroad
police allow no mercy-DO NOT trespass on railroad property, it's dangerous)
and no one else goes there usually.

I tried a church parking lot once, thinking, well, you know, it's a church,
they wouldn't turn me away. But I was awoken in the middle of the night by
drunk kids shining the headlites of their Bronco in my windows and honking
and screaming.

But I can't complain, I was car-camping by choice, not by necessity. Car
camping allowed me to take those trips, as I couldn't have afforded them
otherwise. So who's complaining?

Oh! But how I look forward to camping in my new Vanagon! After all, I was
always jealous that RV's can set up camp anywhere, be very obvious that they
are sleeping there, and not get hassled at all (must be because they figure
old folks are respectable sleeping in their vehicles, while us young-un's
aren't!?). So for them; now for me.

Yes, I did find a Van. I'm now the very proud owner of a 1984 White
Westfalia camper that's in great shape. It needs some work to get it ready
for Alaska (remember my CV boot question yesterday-there are more questions
coming), but it's the perfect vehicle for the trip. Tips from those who've
taken Vanagons up there about how they do in the dust and rocks of the
gravel roads are welcomed.

And the payback for answering my many questions of the next few months will
be that someday I'll know enough to be one of those answering questions for
the new folks . . .

Steve
84 Westy Camper
86 Civic Camper, Ret.