“How do you decide where you go?” As previously stated, I’m a bit of a homebody. I don’t have strong feelings about beaches, forests, or mountains. I enjoy them when the opportunity arises, I just don’t go and seek them out. Maybe someday. I do care about weather, people, work, opportunities, activities, stuff like that. At the moment, I’m more interested in lifestyle amenities such as fast internet and a gym nearby. So that’s how I make my decisions.
I like to travel with the weather. I like temps of 75F for a high and 55F for a low. So that’s what I chase. That means the very southern US in winter like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and northern US in summer. There is a slim window in fall and spring to move from the north to the south to keep up with these temps. It’s different every year, but its only about two months long. Here is a great video that shows how the temps creep across the country throughout the year (watch it at quarter speed). I usually decide the general area based upon weather. Once I get there, I have other considerations like businesses, activities etc.
We all have certain infrastructure requirements that need to be met for us to do life. I typically use business locations as my guideposts in the areas that I travel. Fortunately, many businesses are nationwide and have many locations all over the country. Some people hate this fact, but I use it to my own advantage for navigation. This is not to say that I don’t venture off of the beaten path, I just use existing businesses as a way to quickly understand and navigate new location that I am unfamiliar with.
Businesses spend a lot of time and money doing market research to determine good spots for their new locations. I know that I like businesses such as Chipotle, Aldi, and Planet Fitness, and generally the areas where those stores exist. When I’m traveling to a new place, I look for businesses like those as a starting point. Occasionally this can be deceiving though. Some people will get wide eyed when I tell them where I’ve been, and they want to know what the hell I was doing in such a bad area. I’ve learned that a bad area can be quite subjective.
Using businesses like Aldi, Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness, LA Fitness, Chipotle, Qdoba, Panera Bread, Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Apple store etc. can give you a quick idea of what that area of town is like. I’d say everyone values different things, so the actual stores you choose might change, but the concept is the same. Find stores that fit your idea of the kinds of areas you want to be in, and then start looking for those in the new areas of your travels.
I think the obvious tool of choice for this task is Google Maps. Using a tool like Google Maps, you can quickly find locations for a single thing, like say Little Caesars Pizza. It will show you the locations inside of your current zoom level for the map. But what if you want to find a location that has Little Caesars, Anytime Fitness, and Aldi all in close proximity?
Enter Google My Maps. Google My Maps is part of Google Drive. It is a subset of Google Maps that allows you to place your own locations on the map using multiple layers. By having each business franchise on it’s own layer, you can turn on/off various businesses and see the ones you want. So say if you want Little Caesars, Aldi, and Anytime Fitness, you can simply have those layers on and zoom around the map until you visually find a location that has those three in close proximity. This is amazing frankly. It makes navigating SO easy.
Adding locations to Google My Maps is best done by importing the information like address or lat/long coordinates from a CSV file. Datasets for various business and locations can be found around the web for a fee. Or, you could spend the time and create a data set yourself and import it. You could also spend the time adding each location by hand by clicking and adding to map. There is an investment in getting this system up and running, but the speed and ease with which it makes navigation is totally worth it to me.
You may also want to create other layers on Google My Maps for things like favorite locations or places to park. This way you can keep track of your travels and be able to retrace your steps in the future.
Also, when I’m in an area that I don’t know, I often use Google Maps to drive to a spot just a couple miles away. The reason is that I am driving a giant vehicle that doesn’t easily do U turns, or even left turns depending on the street. I map out each new route to see how Google Maps is sending me to see if there is some impossible maneuver planned, and if I should change that up. I’ve learned this the hard way. If you are in a decent sized vehicle, get some sort of dash mount for your phone and use Google Maps often. You won’t be disappointed.
Parking
Parking is the one thing that can sometimes be a challenge. Not all the time, but sometimes. There is a strategy to it for sure. In general, I tend to stay near civilization. If you prefer a rural or secluded type of living, parking is probably WAY easier. Maybe someday I will get there.
I am starting from the premise that the vehicle that you are in is stealthy, meaning that it isn’t a 1987 Winnebago RV that needs work and screams “I’m living in my vehicle, come over here and give me trouble”. Your vehicle should be in good repair and have little to no visible rust on it. A good stealthy vehicle often looks like a commercial vehicle like a work van or truck. Fundamentally, most people in society don’t care about work vehicles. It doesn’t concern them, so they tend to leave them alone. Unless that vehicle is causing problems, has been parked for “too long”, or somehow looks suspicious, people just don’t care. Life is too busy.
If your vehicle fits the stealthy definition, you have many options for parking. Overnight parking is the hardest. I sometimes view overnight parking the way an alcoholic views life; one night at a time. Here are my preferences for overnight parking in order:
1. Private property where the owner gives you permission to stay. Someone’s house or land. There will be no complaints.
2. Public street parking in an area that allows overnight parking. Almost as good as private property, but probably a lot more traffic and noise driving by. Industrial areas are best.
3. A multi tenant industrial park that that closes up shop by 6pm. Almost vacant at night and very few people to care or complain. As a former tenant of a similar space, I can attest to the fact that no one really cares as long as you aren’t doing shady stuff. Just another parked business vehicle. You will want to vacate this area early the next morning say by 6:30am or so. Do realize that you are indeed parking on private property and that technically is trespassing.
4. A 24 hour business that doesn’t have posted signage that prohibits overnight parking or has talk of tow away zones. Just because it isn’t posted doesn’t mean there won’t be trouble, but it’s a whole lot better if you aren’t parked right next to a sign telling you not to do that.
5. A 24 hour business that has posted “no overnight parking” or “tow away zone”. Welcome to Florida. Just because there are posted signs doesn’t automatically mean that the cops will be called and you will get towed, but you are pushing your luck. Many cities have ordinances against over night parking and/or sleeping in a vehicle.
If you’ve just arrived in an area, you kinda have to take what you can get until you can scope out some parking spots. Google maps with satellite view is the magic here. I’m usually looking for industrial areas, as I blend in really well there.
Story time. I had just arrived in Florida for the first time and had started to see these “tow away zone” signs for the first time in nearly every parking lot. Until then, I had not observed them en masse in any other state. I started tripping out as I had never seen them everywhere before, and was anxious about where I was going to park.
I just so happened to pull into a Walmart parking lot at midnight one night, and saw the newly familiar “no overnight parking” and “tow away zone” signs. In this very same parking lot were also no less than 3 giant RV’s and 3 semi trucks settled down and parked for the night. In fact, one was parked literally right next to the “no overnight parking” sign. ALSO PARKED in this Walmart lot was a police cruiser, in a normal parking spot. I could see no cop walking around handing out tickets or getting ready to tow any vehicles.
I figured the cop had to be in the store somewhere. I seriously wanted to chat with him to get some solid answers about this parking situation. I was able to find him in the store, and I went over to ask him about the situation outide; the signs, the obviously parked vehicles, his sincere lack of concern about people violating the posted signage…etc. He went on to say that the posted signage is essentially liability protection if something were to happen while vehicles were parked overnight. It also a tool for the store to have vehicles towed if they feel so inclined. He stated that given that stores are private property, it is up to them to make a complaint before there is officially a problem. If there is no complaint, there is no problem. Once a complaint is made, there is procedure that is followed such as a knock on the door, and then possible towing.
I felt a bit better after having chatted with the cop about it, but this was just one decent sized city in Florida. Every jurisdiction is different. I have read horror stories online. In the end, reality is mostly as the cop has stated, but that still doesn’t instantly put me at ease. For me personally, parking is still the biggest source of vanlife anxiety. It’s getting better slowly. Almost anywhere you park, you are technically trespassing or loitering after a certain dubious amount of time. I probably think about this topic too much, and I can’t wait till I reach the IDGAF point.
Stores want your business. In general, they want you to come and park in their lot so that you can buy their products and services. How long should a customer be parked in a lot in front of a store? That depends on the nature of the store, but for many place 3-4 hours isn’t too long. Some parking lots are actually car pool locations so having random vehicles parked for 8 hours straight is normal. In my experience, you can park in almost any decent sized parking lot for a good 6-8 hours. You might want it to be a business that you are actually visiting.
The method that seems to work really well for me is going to visit a business, and then coming back to the van and doing other stuff for a couple hours. Do some work, figure out what I’m doing next etc. You can easily add a couple hours to almost anything, anywhere. There are plenty of places you need to go; gyms, grocery stores, malls, other stores, home depot, etc. Filling up daytime hours with parking is pretty easy. That’s not even including any sight seeing or other stuff. Having a place to park when you sleep is the hard part.
It should be noted that “overnight parking” is really only parking between the hours of 12:00 midnight and about 5:00am. Outside of those hours, normal people are out and about living their normal life, so it’s really only a parked car between those hours that might look suspicious. One way that I have avoided this problem altogether is just sleeping different hours than that. You can go to sleep at 5:00pm and get up at 12:00 midnight and then go about your business. Or show up at 5:00am and sleep till noon. Being parked in a parking lot at night isn’t really the problem; it’s being parked and not aware of what’s going on. If you are awake at 3am and things are going on outside, you can react much more easily than if you are asleep.
In reality, I’m pretty sure I’m thinking WAY TOO MUCH about this and would do best to just live my life. Having a stealthy vehicle is the biggest step towards success, regardless of where you park at night. Don’t be hanging around outside your vehicle at night looking like trouble. Don’t make a bunch of noise that would make people wonder what is going on in your vehicle. Make it look like the van is parked and empty and you will probably be fine.
It seems pretty obvious to me that vanlife is not going away and is only gaining momentum. I predict that at some point in the future, we will start to have cheap or free designated overnight parking areas. Kinda like campgrounds, but in urban areas or at least designated areas. Basically like a highway rest area, but with sanctioned overnight parking and more amenities like shopping and food and such. All you would really need is a big open space with a small building that could house the restrooms and convenience food and such. Something a bit more than a parking lot, but not quite an RV park. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the gym chains started officially courting vanlife people and make it part of their marketing campaigns. With societal conditions as they are, there are fewer reasons every day for people to be bound to a single physical location. All of this is still way off as we are no where near a tipping point, but I can easily see this coming in the future.