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pigman1's avatar
pigman1
Explorer
Feb 01, 2016

Cottonwood, AZ Walmart

For those who keep a listing of the Walmarts that allow or don't allow overnighting, you may need to change your Cottonwood, AZ listing from ALLOW to DOES NOT ALLOW. Last year there was an altercation in the parking lot that resulted in the murder of a homeless individual that had been living in a car and panhandling patrons. The Cottonwood city council passed an ordinance prohibiting overnighting in parking lots and it's being enforced. For those looking for a place for an overnight or up to 2 weeks stay, 4.2 miles south of the WM on state route 260 there is a road called Thousand Trails road. This road goes through the Prescott National Forest land and allows boondocking for up to 2 weeks. No facilities though. Just pull off the road in a vacant area.
  • This century's homeless encampment
    Was last century's hobo jungle

    Difference... More people of both sexes and even families
    And it's now in town, instead of outside of town
  • There is a very nice state park nearby.Dead Horse Ranch has water and electric hookups and as nice views of Tuzigoot and Jerome.Both of those place are worth visiting.We also visited Ft Verde,an old cavalry post from the 1880's.
  • We have squatters camping underneath freeway underpasses in Los Angeles, near downtown. Doesn't even feel safe in a car with locked doors waiting in traffic to get on the freeway on ramp, with them there. Police does nothing.

    Parasites.
  • The squatters were FROM Idaho! It gets cold up here and we don't have many free programs for folks to take from. This stance by local governments hold down some of the problems.
    It is disheartening to see and hear about free loaders camping in box store lots for days. As much as I enjoy having a place to slip into for the night, I understand the laws being upheld.
  • Blazing Zippers wrote:
    The squatters were FROM Idaho! It gets cold up here and we don't have many free programs for folks to take from. This stance by local governments hold down some of the problems.
    It is disheartening to see and hear about free loaders camping in box store lots for days. As much as I enjoy having a place to slip into for the night, I understand the laws being upheld.


    Sounds like I should consider moving to Idaho. Last time I was in Boise, there were some very pissed off Canuckistaners in 40 ft plus diesel pusher RV's that got kicked out of one of the WalMarts, despite signs being posted everywhere for no over nighting.

    One thing for certain, if I overnight, you can bet come daybreak, if I pulled in late at night, I'll be going inside and be a paying customer for something, to make myself a valuable customer, and thank the manager of the store with a few bags of groceries and other needs in my cart on my way out.

    All it takes is the abuse of the few to spoil it for many.
  • Regardless of the signs in the parking lot, we ALWAYS ask inside before planning to stay overnight. In a number of cases, we've been told it's OK if we park in a certain area, identify our coach by make, model, type, give them a phone contact, or give them other info. We have never had a problem with anything the store asked for and have stayed in WM's all over the US and Canada. When we've asked the reasons for the signs, or the contact/identity info we've been told it's so they can remove those RV's that are loud, making a mess, or otherwise are causing problems for the stores. I have had no problems with that at all. As a matter of fact, when we had a propane leak in a Can Not Stay WM (we were just shopping), and explained our problem to the manager that we'd rather not travel with the leak, the manager told us to stay until the leak was fixed.

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