My ex and I were drving late at night in terrible fog. Visibility was the worst I’ve ever experienced driving, so we pulled into a rest stop which had a gas station and 24-hour donut shop and McDonald’s. We slept in our car in the parking lot. In the morning here were about 20 other people who were also waking up from having done the very same thing.
I know coming home from Pennsic 8 or 9 years ago [we left saturday late afternoon] there was a torrential downpour so we and a huge passel of people waited out about 4 hours of downpour until it cleared up enough to actually see the road.
See, I prefer to leave myself plenty of travel time just for such occurrances. I hate being rushed. Being rushed makes you drive when you are tired and really need to be off the road for a bit of a nap. Very dangerous.
I traveled from Tennessee to New Mexico earlier this year, and slept in truck stops in Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee without any disturbance.
I’ve also slept in rest stops and parking lots over the years without ever being bothered.
Why do you assume we did not have ample time to reach our destination or that we were in any way rushed? We were not rushed at all. Sometimes even the best laid plans are thwarted. Weather that was not predicted can cause delays, an accident 10 miles away can mean a 5 hour delay, a washout can mean a 30 mile detour. It is not necessarily a sign that people failed to plan ahead. You can give yourself 10 hours to make a 5-hour trip, but if the one and only highway is closed by police until morning, you still won’t finish the trip that day.
Slept a few blocks off the highway in an industrial area. Policeman woke me up to check if I was OK, and to move my car to the proper side of the road.
It definitely increases your chances of getting into an accident.
When a friend and I drove across the country in our youth, we would sleep in our car in a motel parking lot. In the morning after waking up we would walk in the door like we owned the place and help ourselves to the continental breakfast, then be on our way.
My preference is farm roads. There is little or no light and you can get far enough out of sight of the highway that there is no chance of someone stumbling upon you.
The only time I’ve been woken up by a cop I was falling asleep at the wheel so I pulled over at an exit and got off the road. I didn’t even make it off the on ramp. I laid my seat back and was asleep for about two hour before I was woken up but by that point I was well rested I finished my drive with no problems.
In my last year of college, my best friend and I decided to go to Misquamicut Beach (RI) for the weekend. We spend all day Saturday at the beach, and when it got dark, there were no rooms to be had.
So we plled off onto a rural road, and pt the front seats back, and wnt to sleep. About 1:00 AM, we were awakened by a local cop-he said :“I’m coming back in 15 minutes-if you are still here, you will be arrested”.
We took off and found a real fleabag hotel-where we slept soundly.
If you’re good driving at night, you can park at a lot of public places during the day with far less hassle than if you try it at night. I’ve gotten some of my best naps on a blanket on a grassy lawn in a public park. If you have to sleep at night, I’d second (or third) the suggestion to park in a commonly traveled, well-lit truck stop.
A solar shade for your dashboard might come in handy for both daytime and nighttime sleeping.
I’ve only been woken up by cops once while sleeping at night, when I was young and my mom drove us to visit relatives near Woodstock. We couldn’t find their place and so late at night we pulled into what looked like an empty lot. Got woken up by a cop who made a call and said it was okay if we slept here that night.
When we woke up we found it was a construction site! Tractors and earthmovers tearing down a hillside not 100 feet from us.
I had no problems doing this in Bulgaria or Albania. However, near Amman I woke to the sound of a truck full of armed Jordanian soldiers surrounding my car. Clear sign that I chose the wrong place to park. They were nice though and recommended a much better locatioin.
I sleep in my car fairly regularly when I travel. I enjoy it and find it very restful to sleep in the back seat. I pick my location carefully and so far have never been bothered by anyone. If I am driving along the Interstate, my preference is large truck stops, such as Flying J or Love’s. Rest stops are hit or miss. I won’t stay overnight at any that don’t have a lot of traffic into them all night. My favorite are along the New Jersey Turnpike, where I have slept without incident several times. If I was female I probably wouldn’t do this so often.
Some other places I have stayed:
-hospital parking lots/garages
-county fairgrounds - especially easy to blend in if an event is going on there and people are staying overnight in campers and vans already
-casino parking lots - casinos are usually open 24 hours and very busy. Plus, they often times have food available (and cheap) even at 3am before I go to sleep
-campgrounds - usually only go to these if I am desperate because they usually aren’t free
-side streets - I only really consider them if I am in a big city, like NY, where there aren’t any other options
-airport parking lots/garages - cheapest is to go to the long term lot.
-24 hour stores (Wal-Mart, Target. etc.) - some don’t allow it, but if they do I park my car where the RVs are. If I am desperate, I’ll park where the employees park, but won’t stay there for more than a few hours.
-closed gas stations in tiny towns - a few time I’ve been so low on gas I had to pull into a closed gas station in the middle of the night and park at a pump until the morning
-(National) Park areas - not all of them allow overnight parking in non-campground areas, but some of them do, especially lower profile areas. Oftentimes I will park at a closed visitor center or a trail head.
-National forest logging roads - most National Forests allow “dispersed camping” along any road off the main highways that bisect them. I won’t do this in bear country.
If you find an all-night gas station or convenience store and go inside and ask if you can park off to one side out of the way and sleep, almost always they say yes. If you shake their hand with a $10 in it they always say yes.
Around here, the airport would cost MUCH more than a single night in a campground. Many campgrounds also have an overflow parking area for a nominal fee.
I have also slept in the parking lot of an apartment building. I’ll find complexes that don’t have assigned parking spaces (like my old complex), pull towards the back and sleep a couple hours. I have also taken short naps in rest stops, but I’m always too jumpy to stay for long.
I used to drive to a nearby park on my lunch hour. I’d eat my lunch, recline my seat, take a power nap and head back. Did that almost every day all summer. Never had any problems from anyone.
Or…they might think you’re in distress and have become unresponsive.
Hello, security.
You changed your screen name!
I took a spontaneous drive to Canada several years ago. When it came time to sleep, I pulled into a church parking lot (I’m afraid of the dark and paranoid anyway so I figured just in case I’m wrong about the whole atheist thing, a church might be a safe bet) and stretched out in the back of my minivan. Pastor woke me up in the AM and said I was more than welcome to come inside and wished me safe travels and what not.
When we travel cross country with our RV, we use KOAs for overnights. There are still quite a few of them. We’ve seen people park overnight in their car while there. I see the attraction of having restrooms and a safe place to park, but their cheapest rates are 20-25 bucks a night. Better than a motel, I guess.
Back when I was in my early 20’s, my cousin and I went to a dog show somewhere up in Northern Illinois, I had my Gordon Setter and she had her German Shepherd. We didn’t have the money for a motel room so we improvsed. We went to the fairgrounds where the show was being held, and parked behind the restrooms. We were in a little hatchback car and put the back seat down, leaving the windows down and the hatch open. We tossed a sheet over the hatch for a little privacy, set the exercise pen up around the back or the car so the dogs could come and go as the wanted, and slept in the hatch area in seeping bags with the dogs. Very cheap way to sleep for the weekend, and it was a helluva lot of fun to boot!