Unusual places you have stayed the night.

[fill]

I submitted this question to a motorcycle / camping website and received several interesting stories about where people have spent the night. We are of the same ilk; my 6 1/2 foot motorcycle trailer folds out to a 13 foot Pop-up, with a king size bed.

Some of the more interesting ones were in the median on I-65 North of Nashville. Self-Serve car washes are not generally used during a rainstorm and provide more protection than a freeway overpass. One young kid in the Army spent the night on a California beach, and was hauled in to see the judge. He was fined $50. He explained that if he had $50 he would have gotten as room. Sometimes just going to the County Mounty they will let you use a cell.

So what are some of the unique places you have spent the night?

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’94 GL 1500 SE Extras: SIRUS Satellite Radio, Garmin GPS, SADDLEMAN Road Sofa and Touring Luggage, Touring Floodlights, Multiple Deer Whistles.
Pulling an ’80 Eagle 1 Trailer or ’12 Roll A Home (wide bed, brakes)

[dfrost]

Back in 1967, my parents took us on a month long vacation from Texas to Quebec, Canada where we attended Expo '67 then back down thru Boston, New York, and Washington DC, my Dad had converted a school bus into a motorhome! While in Washington, after visiting one of the Smithsonians we were parked on Pennsylvania Ave having dinner when a police officer knocked on the door. The officer told my Dad no staying allowed so my Dad asked where the closest campground was. The officer was obviously very curious about our bus, so Daddy invited him in! Wow, was he surprised at the inside! It looked like a commercially built RV, he was so impressed, he told us we could stay there all night, he would inform the next shift so we wouldn't be disturbed!! Was the coolest thing ever!!

Bet you wouldn't get away with that today!!

[Roy_Lynne]

I guess that the most interesting place I spent the night was in a Buddhist Monastery in Kobe Japan. The food (vegetarian of course) was wonderful, and it was one of my fondest memories of Japan.
Here in the US, I guess the many disaster shelters I lived and worked in

[Don_Shar]

this is not the strangest place but absolutely the most peaceful. Pull over area along the Alaskan highway with a stand of trees between us and the road.

The strangest place was in Las Vegas, we had some brake work done and the garage was really small. No place to park so we spent about 1 week sleeping in the motorhome parked on a side street in Las Vegas.
That was strange and a little nerve racking.

[fivealive]

Me and my girlfriend have been on the road for 15 months now and we have spent less then 10 nights in official campgrounds, and less then that in parking lots, we hate parking lots. Our typical everyday night would qualify for a reply in this thread. I have parked our camper in many crazy spots, but I guess what really takes the cake would be some of the urban camping I did with friends before I had the camper. In the sticks its easy to find good camping, but in a big urban city you have to get creative. Here is a shot from an urban campsite we setup in Chicago. The mill was abandoned and had a small established hobo camp in one of the outbuildings. We opted to stay clear of them and utilized a ladder we found and re-positioned to climb up to a higher level and make our way to the roof. We were able to pull the ladder up to prevent anyone from sneaking up there after us. I woke up to this sunrise and had to capture it.

Urban Camping by Five-Alive, on Flickr

I have spent several other nights on rooftops, in caves, and even a few nights in abandoned buildings. With the camper we have stayed everywhere from downtown city streets to coastal pullouts to amazing remote places that we accessed via seldom used single lane forest roads. Here is a shot from a really cool remote forest road system in the Olympic National Forest. Why people pay money to camp in crowds when you can camp in beautiful remote places like this for free will always puzzle me.

108.365 by Five-Alive, on Flickr

[JAXFL]

You don't need to give the cows beer to be able to tip them over....

[Geocritter]

mudhound wrote:
As a young person I spent a many of nights in a cow pasture.

Was that after a night of beer followed by cow tipping?

[mudhound]

As a young person I spent a many of nights in a cow pasture.
As a young adult I moved over to bunking while in the Air Force.
As a young family we hit several state parks in tents.
Now we cruise around in our 32 foot class c.
My how times have changed.

[pegdiver]

Several ferry docks both coming and going. Lots of spots by rivers in Alaska. A Chevy dealer lot in Virginia. WalMarts. Truck Stops. By the lighthouse (and fog horn) at Cape Race in Newfoundland. In many parking lots. By the side of an old road. In back of motels. In general, any placed we could find that was OK. That is why we are self-contained.

[DouglasC]

Back in 2007 we spent the night in our motorhome in the back lot of a funeral home! We were on our way from point A to point B and needed to stop at the funeral home to pay our respects to the family of a friend who had passed on. We also wanted to attend the funeral which was to be held the next morning at a nearby church (1/2 mile away) and so we asked the funeral director if we could spend the night in his back lot. He said that no one had ever asked him that question but he didn't no why we couldn't do it - if we didn't mind being locked in for the night! We said that we had now plans to go anywhere until the morning - - so that's how we spent the night at a funeral home!

[Heavy_Metal_Doc]

Just back in the fall DW and I had a get-away weekend planned in the Poconos. It was supposed to be "easy and simple" - no towing, no set up, just go and relax.
We got there and checked in to the hotel, put our stuff in the room and went to dinner. Later, I realized there was a serious air quality issue with the room and I could not sleep there. By midnight, we had our stuff in the van and the desk clerk was apologizing that they didn't even have any other rooms available. We left and drove west 'till I felt calm enough to try to sleep again. We attempted to find another hotel only to find it was Penn State home coming weekend and every hotel in the area was booked up solid. Checked the GPS and drove out of town to state game land area and cold camped in the entry way to a gated forest service road. Woke up to the birds singing and sunlight through the trees...we promised each other to stick with camping from now on.

[Geocritter]

2milesup wrote:
I could tell you about some unusual places I've spent the night, but DW might read this...

:W

And perhaps vice versa too.

[2milesup]

I could tell you about some unusual places I've spent the night, but DW might read this...

:W

[pnichols]

We overnighted in our RV in the original retail store parking lot of Cosmos Creations - with their permission after buying some of their fantastic caramel baked corn late one afternoon in Oregon.

[cpurves]

Not really unusual for the place but definitely unusual for the time.
We were on our way to Medicine Hat Alberta for a show in May.
We made the Icefields Center for the night. Only us and one other unit.
We parked beside one of the ice buses for the night.



Not bad for camping but it was COLD 15F. The furnace ran for 15 minutes and shutoff for 3 all night long.

Woke up early in the morning to see this out our window.



Well worth living with the cold. Overall it was a good trip and another adventure for us.
Cheers
Chris

[Canadian_Rainbi]

Mid-Late 1980s, DW and dog spent two nights in the Larkspur Ferry Terminal on San Francisco Bay while I spent a couple of nights in a hospital in San Francisco with a bleeding ulcer. Cost for DW in the parking lot? Free. Cost for me? $5,000.00