The Living in Your Car Podcast
The Living in Your Car Podcast
The Lawyer's Guide to Urban Camping Laws: How I Figure It Out
Can you really sleep in your car without running into legal trouble? Discover the truth behind urban camping laws as attorney, Elizabeth Off Grid, unravel the complexities of sleeping in your vehicle across various cities. In this episode of Living in your Car, we dive into four example cities in Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, and Montana, using iOverlander to gather user-generated reports and learn where it's safe to park overnight. By analyzing real experiences, we investigate the likelihood of encounters with local authorities and the strategic use of locations like Walmart or Home Depot parking lots.
Navigating overnight parking regulations can be tricky, especially in places like Grand Junction, Colorado. We delve into the specifics of Planet Fitness and Walmart policies, as well as local ordinances that may affect your stay. I share crucial insights on why having backup plans and choosing less obvious parking spots can make all the difference. Additionally, we explore Boise's parking laws and discuss the critical differences between camping in public spaces and stealth parking, highlighting the importance of tactical planning for vehicle dwellers.
Finally, we tackle the broader challenges of urban camping policies and their enforcement. Reflecting on the blurred lines between homelessness and van life, I offer personal strategies for finding safe, legal overnight parking through both digital tools and on-the-ground assessments. We also shed light on the variability of parking law enforcement across cities and the necessity of having contingency plans. Plus, get a sneak peek into our upcoming episode that will focus on dispersed camping and how to discover these off-the-grid spots. Join me for an in-depth exploration that promises to equip you with practical knowledge and strategies for your nomadic journey.
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https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethoffgrid
Hi, this is Elizabeth Off Grid, and you are listening to the Living in your Car podcast, where we talk about all aspects of living in a car, suv, pickup or minivan, whether you're a full-time nomad, temporarily staying in a vehicle until you get life figured out or just going on a road trip, join us for all kinds of topics that apply to you. Hey, in today's episode of the podcast, what I'm going to be doing is kind of going through a tutorial and showing you exactly how I figure out whether or not it is legal to sleep in a vehicle somewhere. Specifically, in this one, we're looking at cities and towns. I'm going to do a different video about sleeping in dispersed campsites and figuring out if it's legal to sleep there and also how many days and all that kind of stuff, because it's a completely different way I go about looking for that. Okay, so what I'm going to do is actually show you how I do this for four different places, and I literally just randomly picked places, like I used a random city generator to do this. So we're gonna look at Boise, idaho, mesa, arizona, grand Junction, colorado I actually already know the answer to that one, but we're still gonna look at it and Bozeman, montana. So these are places that are actually close to a lot of great places to go, and so you might be traveling in your car, your RV, your van, your SUV, your truck and you're pulling a trailer, whatever and you want to stop in a town on the way to somewhere or back from somewhere, or, obviously, you could just be living in a city permanently because you work there or that's where you lived in the first place, or you're moving to a place to visit friends, whatever.
Speaker 1:So the first step is I look in iOverlander. I'm not saying iOverlander gives you the answer or gives you the legal answer. It actually doesn't contain legal type of information. What iOverlander does if you haven't used it before is it is people's on the ground reports of what happened when they try to sleep somewhere and also other things. It has things about how to find where you can find water and where you can dump your tanks, all that kind of stuff, but I'm specifically going to be looking for sleeping places. So what I did was I'm using the website iOverlander. You can do this on the app too, but I actually find the website is good for these kinds of purposes, because I can go to all kinds of different cities and move things around a little bit easier, and also I'm recording it for you all. Oh, by the way, for those of you who are listening to the audio podcast, I also recorded this as a video podcast and there I do a screen capture of what I'm doing so you could go to YouTube and check that out on the Elizabeth Off Grid channel.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's look at iOverlander. So first thing we're gonna do is put in the place types. I already selected this. There's a pull down menu, because otherwise it's going to tell you everything from where there are laundromats, where there are showers, where there's water. We don't need that for this. Okay, what we're looking for is established campgrounds, informal campsites. Actually, we can take off established campgrounds. We're going to look for informal campsites, wild camping and overnight prohibited. Okay, those three things are going to be what we're going to look at for these purposes.
Speaker 1:And what we're looking for is people who were trying to sleep somewhere. Did they get in trouble? And who they got in trouble with. Did they get in trouble with security or did they get in trouble with the cops? Okay, and the cops could be local city police, could be a sheriff, whatever. Could also be National Park Service or somebody, if they accidentally were parking on land that belonged to the federal government. And typically I'm looking for can you sleep in the parking lot of a Walmart or a Home Depot or whatever? Can you sleep on the side of the road? Those are the kind of things that we're looking for. Can you sleep in some pullout somewhere? That kind of stuff? All right.
Speaker 1:So let's go find Boise. I'm going to go up here, all right, and now it has red, which means there's a whole lot of reports from Boise, idaho. I'm going to zoom in, zoom in and the whole point here is to just figure out what has happened to people who were doing this. Boots on the ground, tires on the ground, whatever. And C? Does anyone report? You can't do it. All right.
Speaker 1:So here is street camping near park, and then I'm actually going to click on motor details and open up into a new tab. Nice business district has anybody said it's a problem? We've stayed here multiple times. Be discreet. We've stayed here multiple times. Be discreet. We've stayed here multiple times. Randomly, someone in a utility truck sped by and yelled it's time to get up, very rudely, but I don't see anyone reporting that they had a problem. Also, one of the things you want to look at is when was the last time someone reported? This is June 2024. I'm recording this in late August 2024. So relatively recent, because these laws change on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:All right, this looks like a place that was just in a neighborhood. Okay, another place in the neighborhood? Let's see. Pay by app parking $10 all day parking. I'm going to actually click on this and open it up. This is actually very interesting because I can see how is it to stay in this place $10 all day parking. The day ends at 6 am, and let's see $6. It's kind of loud. Two hour parking is free, from 8 pm to 8 am.
Speaker 1:So someone actually, though, said not much boondocking in Boise. So I don't quite sure why there is not much boondocking in Boise, because there's. These people are saying that it's okay. All right, let's see Cracker Barrel. And then they're saying it's okay to stay if you ask the front desk, et cetera, and what I'm looking for is someone saying we got kicked out by the cops. Okay, let's look at this. Cabela's moderator says please remove, because camping is illegal here.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing Is it illegal or is it not allowed? So what I'm talking about is illegal. There's a law against it, which would be a city ordinance. Oh, I've also had people comment in other places that a city ordinance isn't a law. Okay honey, all right, a city ordinance I'm a lawyer. A city ordinance is a law.
Speaker 1:Law doesn't actually really mean anything. It just means some government has made a rule that you legally have to comply with, or you have committed a crime so, and the crime may be just a speeding ticket kind of level of crime or maybe a crime crime. But here we're really talking about the kind of things you get a ticket for, just like a speeding ticket. So it could be the federal government has made a law where Congress passed something. It could be the federal government has made a regulation where some government agency has made a rule. It could be a court has ruled something that made it a law. It could be a state, it could be a city, it could be a county. All those things are laws. You can call them ordinances, statutes, court cases, whatever. They're all laws. They could make things be illegal for you, but the legal doesn't necessarily.
Speaker 1:It's not a felony. It's like the kind of thing you get a ticket for and to pay a certain amount of money. Most of the time they actually just tell you to leave. You usually don't give a ticket if it's a repeated thing or you refuse to leave. That's different than a security guard coming and telling you you're not allowed.
Speaker 1:If someone owns a parking lot, they can tell you you can't park there. Right, they own it, they're the property owner. So that's what I'm talking about is some places it will be illegal and then some places it's just the local property owners. That doesn't make it to be allowed. So we have in 2022, it said it was fine. In 2021, said it's not allowed, and 2020 said it's allowed. So obviously it depends on who's the manager. 2020 said it's allowed. So obviously it depends on who's the manager. And so this is something that wasn't. This isn't actually illegal.
Speaker 1:Even though it says in the description place removed because camping is illegal here, signs posted and enforced. That doesn't mean that it's illegal necessarily. That may mean it's not allowed by the property owner, not saying that you should park there. But there's a difference. All right, truck stop, so. And there's some places that says you're not allowed to park there. So a lot of times, parks will have rules that you can't Okay. So here's a thing where it says at this road city ordinance prohibits camping within city limits. It must go six miles north. You can't camp here because it's private property. So that's another thing too if it's private property. So what I'm looking at here, hold on. So what I'm looking at here is it seems that there may be a city ordinance in Boise but it doesn't get enforced a lot of times. And in certain places they are. Certain private landowners are enforcing it, but of course they can do that because they own the property.
Speaker 1:Okay, so now let's look at Mesa, arizona. So we're going to go look at the ordinances, don't get me wrong. But now we're going to look at Mesa, arizona. So here is the Phoenix metropolitan area. Right, I'm going to zoom out so you can see. And Mesa and Phoenix are kind of all just squished together. So we're going to zoom in on Mesa and see if we can get some information about Mesa.
Speaker 1:Okay, public parking place Da-da-da-da-da, good spot. Stayed two nights, no issues. This one was good. Please don't park there with an RV. We did have a slide-in camper, okay. So I didn't see anything about someone saying it's illegal there. Actually, you have a theory that it is, but we're going to find out.
Speaker 1:Camping World has anyone had trouble at Camping World? It was too late, there was no signage. Not ideal. Arizona tends to have a lot of. Well, this might actually be in Tempe, okay, so this doesn't seem to be. It's actually very hard to tell just from looking at a map of what is the, where the lines are. There's other maps that tell you where the lines are between places, but not this one. Okay, then there is a large lot, but by the Red Lobster drag assistant, there were several rigs, including a box truck, left at 7am. There's a no overnight trailer parking sign, and then things were, or there was no overnight trailer parking sign. Actually, I don't. That's unclear. There is a sign that says no overnight trailer parking, but we didn't have any issues. Now, that sign doesn't make it illegal in the sense of like oh, there's a law against it, but it may mean that you weren't trespassing because you're not allowed. However, it doesn't mean that anyone's going to actually do anything. All right, so, mesa, I may not have any rules, but we are going to look that up.
Speaker 1:Grand Junction, colorado so, grand Junction Colorado I actually recently have looked up, and that's because I plan to go there very soon. So we got to. Let's look at Planet Fitness and let's look at Walmart. Walmart's got a big red thing. Okay, planet Fitness this is one of the days where they're open 24 hours. There was a lot, a lot of people, a lot of the front desk doesn't care. They're open 24 seven. Actually, I think that one might that Planet Fitness might be only open 24 five. Now Walmart overnight parking is not allowed because the city of Grand Junction has prohibited overnight parking. However, in April of 2024, some people were parking there. So I think that sometimes it's maybe the law against it, but it doesn't always get enforced. So there's no overnight parking. Please remove this vehicle from our property. There's an ordinance as long as you don't park near the store. So probably there's an ordinance there. We're going to look that up.
Speaker 1:This is a good way to kind of get an idea of what's going on. That's why I do it. Bozeman, montana I don't remember the things from montana, mn sydney, orleans prove it's camping within parking limits. Walmart there's. There's signs that say no overnight parking, but packed with rvs and trailers. Some people had their slides out. Yeah, let's see if there's any other places that we can get some information from.
Speaker 1:So obviously sometimes this is not a conclusive thing and, to be honest, I always actually plan when I get somewhere. If I'm going to sleep in a town that I may have to leave, I need to always have backup places and something that that's something I definitely do. Oh, the fairgrounds $5 water. This isn't really a place to camp. What are you doing there? Website Okay, street parking. Let's check this out. It is whoops let me zoom. Extremely run down, did not feel safe, but someone obviously slept there. At least one person slept there. One of the many collections of campers, very run down collections of RVs around budget hotels. Several cops drove by at 11 PMm but no one told them to leave. That was in July of 2024. Someone said it was an interesting spot and a lot of it's run down in RVs.
Speaker 1:So one kind of side note is you know, I'm living in my car, in my Subaru. I don't park on streets where there's 20 RVs because it's just too obvious. You know what I mean. Like I like to park in places where maybe there's one RV or something. You know, I don't look for an RV to park by, I'm just saying like there's one or two, that's fine. But if there's like it is like an area. No, I don't want to deal with that. Not that there's anything wrong with the people who are in the RVs. It's more that it's just obvious. It's not stealth. It's not stealth. Rvs are not stealth. That's part of the reason I'm on a car, but that's a whole other video.
Speaker 1:Okay, so now let's look at what the next step is. Okay, so what we want to do is see is there a ordinance and do they actually enforce it? We already have some information on that right From the Iowa lander thing. So all these places may actually have ordinances. So, boise the ho, oops, ho, parking ordinances. It can be hard to find this information, this information. No, that's da, da, da, da. And then you can see ooh, they had a lawsuit spot. So this is one of the things I also do. One of the reasons I Googled this is because I want to see how many news articles are there about people sleeping in town. So, 2021, there's a homeless camping ordinance. There was a lawsuit that they had to settle of $1.3 million in homeless camping case.
Speaker 1:Now, the homeless camping rules may not apply to you sleeping in a car. They may be really geared towards people sleeping in tents or just in public, on public property. And while a street is public property, it is a different dynamic than someone literally sleeping in a tent on the sidewalk. Right, obviously not stealth, but is this a big issue in the town such that they are very obviously trying to enforce these things, especially now after the Grants Pass case, right? So let's see what their rule says Now. This may not be updated, but I just want to get an idea.
Speaker 1:Camping in public places Okay, boise Code Prohibitions. It shall be unlawful for any person to use a street, sidewalk, park or public place as a camping place at any time, or cause or permit any vehicle to remain in any of these said places for the detriment of public travel or cause any life-size. The word camp or camping shall mean the use of public property as temporary or permanent place of dwelling, lodging or residence or as living accommodation at any time between sunrise and sunset. Indicia of camping may include storage, personal belongings, tents, cooking activities in combination of preparing to sleep, and then they talk about shelter and all that kind of stuff. So it seems like their law is really about obstructing the street or something that's obviously camping, and so Boise seems to be really focusing on the camping looking aspects of things, and then they talk about shelter being available and all that kind of stuff. Now they could also have.
Speaker 1:One of the things is parking. I always look under parking regulations and see if they're extended. Parking prohibited Okay, they have a 72-hour rule, and this is actually a common rule in a lot of places is that you're not allowed to park on the street for more than 72 hours, except allowed by a permit. So moving a vehicle for a distance less than 600 feet for less than 24 hours is the same. So you can't just move it a tiny bit. It has to be more than 600 feet. Parking trailers and all this stuff can't and you can't like leave the trailer longer than 72 hours same kind of thing. So this is really going to be an issue if you park somewhere and you don't move the car. I always move my car. I never just stay somewhere because that would be boring and I need to go to the bathroom and I'm in transit, you know. But that is definitely something to think about which is, are you the kind of person who stops somewhere or goes place, place, place and in this case I'm going place, place, place.
Speaker 1:Parking within city parks. I want to see if there's yeah, place, place, place Parking within city parks. I want to just see if there's yeah. So Boise, idaho, they have a rule 72 hours rule and no camping, all right. And then obviously it has been an issue that they have been, you know, having rules about Mesa, arizona, camping ordinance, ordinance. Okay, so that's under public parking, public name, public park rules, and let's see now, let's see if it's under here.
Speaker 1:I'm looking under the rules for public park regulations and no person shall camp in a park unless they especially authorized. So that makes sense, that you're not camping in the park unless you are authorized. But of course that's how they tell most people that they can't sleep. I don't see if they define definitions. Definition of camping is the use of the park as a living accommodation includes burning a fire, cooking, storing personal belongings, laying down for sleep, etc. Etc. I mean, this is the thing that is kind of funny and terrible is that they say the use of a park as a temporary living accommodation which includes carrying on cooking activities. Well, obviously, people are going to parks and they're barbecuing. People are going to parks and laying down a blanket and taking a nap. What this is is. It gives the discretion to the police officer whether or not the person is doing camping. It makes it very, very squishy on whether or not they're going. They are going to enforce it because, technically, you are actually violating the rule. Are they actually enforced? They're highly doubted. If you're just laying down on a blanket and take a nap and you don't look homeless, right, all right.
Speaker 1:The other issue is going to be about parking, which might be under under the same section, which is about police stuff parking. Can we give me some parking, public ways and property, that every city organizes their laws in a different way? Okay, traffic parking meters, traffic speed limits, parking lots and garages, off-street parking areas, repealed Penalty of private parking areas, zoning Okay, this is not helping me with this. And parking RV ordinance. I'm gonna put in RVs to see if they will tell me something about. Let's see.
Speaker 1:The thing is that this is very difficult to look up and I, even as a lawyer, this is hard to find because there's not Like there are databases for laws, of course, that lawyers can use, but they typically are about federal law or about state law. Getting down into the nitty gritty of the local ordinances, you have to just look at the code section, parking violations. This is for getting a ticket. This is not even remotely helpful. So maybe it's under zoning, let's see. So if you have trouble finding out what the rule is, you should not feel bad because it is not easy to do.
Speaker 1:Recreational let's see if. Ah, okay, recreational vehicle storage and residential areas recreational storage lots this is for actually having an rv park. That is not. We are not worried about rv parks. We want to know can we park an rv? Let's see. I actually do not see that. So some of the other places in and around Phoenix do definitely have a specific parking rule that you're not allowed to park RVs, not just not on the street, but not even in your driveway.
Speaker 1:I haven't yet seen one about Mesa Arizona. It doesn't mean that there's not one in here. I'm only going to spend a certain amount of time on this, since I'm not going there right now. But I have not found it. And this is really what I do is I just kind of get into the nitty gritty of that place Mesa Arizona, camp, camp, camping, ordinance and now I'm just going to look and see if there's any news articles. So Phoenix City I'm just, since phoenix is right next door, phoenix, has a specific rule on. It's unlawful for any. It's actually um, amended, but I'm just going to read you the one that they have on right now. It's pending on to be effective as of september 1st 2024. Right now it's August. So it's unlawful to camp in any park, reserve or any building facility, parking lot or structure, any property. There too, that is on the C, which is according to a permit. Camping means sleeping, using sleeping stuff, making a fire, having a tent, all the circumstances, blah, blah, blah. Right, so it looks like Mesa has less of a rule on that versus Phoenix. All right.
Speaker 1:Now let's look at Grand Junction, colorado um, camping ordinance. Okay, so let's look at this Grand Jun Municipal Code. This is not the Grand Junction website. So let's actually look at Grand Junction, colorado. Let's see if we can find the city website and let's see. Sometimes we can go to the website for the city and we can get information from them about their laws. Is that easy? No, no, it is not easy. It should be easy. I should be able to open up something and then find all the rules, but it is not. Code, enforcement records, municipal code and charter. Maybe there sounds like maybe. Okay, let's search and can we search in here. Let's do camping. Camping, got it? That's fine. Camping on public property without authorization? You're not allowed to camp on public property without authorization. You're not allowed to camp on public property without authorization. Now let's look at, and this is sleeping on a public sidewalk Is unsafe as it may obstruct traffic, except as otherwise, especially outside of the city, no person may sleep on a public sidewalk, street parking strip, public right of way. Have a sleep in a publicly used ingress or egress in violation, reasonable, no, let's see divine.
Speaker 1:Camping means to set up or remain in or at an encampment. An encampment means any place that a bedding, blah, blah, blah is used for bedding purposes. Incorporates the use of a tent, lean to-to shack or any other covered elements of a structure. Ordinary use of a park and this is actually good Ordinary use of a park, such as resting or sleeping in a park during normal park hours, picnicking on a blanket or using parks for other lawful uses, does not constitute encampment. That's actually really important to define and I think they all should have that definition. Overnight use means using overnight, that's fine. Have that definition. Overnight use means using overnight, that's fine, okay. So let's see, do we have any. This is all parks and let's do camping again. What other results do we have? Camp camping?
Speaker 1:You don't notice findings, lodging, enforcement, enforcement and mitigation, law enforcement with vehicles. I'm gonna click on that because I think that might answer the question. So one of the things is I think the rule is that there's a rule on how long you can park on the street there. Let's see All night parking there we go. No person except physicians or other persons on emergency calls shall park a vehicle on any street signed to prohibit all night parking for any time longer than 30 minutes between the hour of 2 am and 5 am. Okay, so it sounds like there are signs that prohibit all night parking and between 2 and 5 am you can't park there for more than 30 minutes. So if there's like a store you're going to or whatever, otherwise you cannot park there. When there's a sign and I did not see an ordinance that actually says someone can't allow you to park on their lot, but that may be actually even under they can actually enforce that under zoning.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that's important to know is that some of this is a conflict between the stores and the property owners, which a lot of times aren't that the same Walmart doesn't own the property necessarily usually. And then also the city zoning. So let's say the city, someone wants to have a store, right, they have to get zoned to have a store. That is a different permit than getting zoned to have a campground, okay. So the city can come to them and say, look, if you let people camp in the parking lot you are violating your permit to have this store and we can pull it. So it may not be illegal to sleep in the Walmart parking lot there, but it would make Walmart violate their permit or the owner of the land that Walmart is on. It makes their insurance go up, like there's all kinds of things that could happen that aren't about it being legal. It is actually about it not being like illegal in a crime, like what you're doing is a crime, but it's about the property owner being like dude, I'm not allowing this because my insurance go up, because I will lose my permit, whatever. And then either they enforce that by having security guards or they enforce it by calling the cops.
Speaker 1:Now, a lot of places, if you call the cops to say someone's on your lot sleeping, they might not go, okay, but in smaller towns. They probably will. You know they'll eventually come swing by and tell someone to leave. Most places, like here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I mean, unless they're like shooting each other, I don't think they're coming. That's why you have to security guard and the security guard tells you to go.
Speaker 1:So it looks like Grand Junction does not let you park in a lot of different places, but I actually suspect that it may be more of a zoning thing and that's why this is really hard. Look, if you're having problems figuring this out, this is hard because there's no one place and I've had people be like why don't you make an app for it? To be honest, I think that is actually not realistic because they laws have changed all the time and they're actually incredibly difficult to do. You cannot have AI find this. You could not have a bot find this. You would have to have humans find it all and they have to update it constantly, like that's just. I don't think that's very realistic.
Speaker 1:All right, let's look for Bozeman, montana camp oops camping ordinance. All right, so it's an article that the city commission takes another look at urban camping ordinance. This is in August. This is after the grants pass. They banned people back in 2023 from people experiencing homelessness from camping in runaway, except for the situation where there's no open shelter space or other temporary housing. Now that we have grants passed, we can change the rules, and this is what I'm talking about. The rules are probably going to be different.
Speaker 1:They say that, from the police department, 7% of their calls have been urban camping related. And then they also like it's not just people calling for camping, it's about theft, trafficking fentanyl. You know all the things that people talk about trafficking fentanyl. You know all the things that people talk about will call for, not because the person is homeless or living in their RV or whatever, but because there's an overlap of that activity sometimes. So they're looking at if the fines will be enough to generate compliance and they are also want to split up people who are experiencing homelessness from people who are choosing a van life, lifestyle and a car but and are trying to save money by taking advantage of the city's comparatively lenient policies on the issue.
Speaker 1:And that's the thing is. I actually agree, even though I am one of those lifestyle people I do not like. I would be fine if they could figure out a way to make it legal for homeless people who are in that town and live there and have been living there, versus someone like me who's just passing through. You know what. I can figure out something else. It's a they're problem to fix. So 68% of respondents, according to a city survey, I think that it is not working. What they're doing now, all right. According to a city survey, I think that is not working. What they're doing now, all right. So it looks like you know, bozeman has a rule, but the problem is is that it didn't. Campers have 30 days to move out of an area instead of five days. The fines were $25. That's what the old one was. So they are. A lot of people are going to be changing these rules, which makes this even more difficult.
Speaker 1:So, fundamentally, I actually use Iowa Overlander more than anything else as my first cut, but then I get there and I see what's going on. So what do I actually do when I'm there? So what I actually do is I look at Iowa Overlander, I see what all the different places are and then, when I get there, I look for signs. I do not sleep in a parking lot in a city where I have never been before If there are signs all over the place that say no camping or whatever I I I'm not messing with that. Okay, I don't want to be woken up at two o'clock in the morning by security or the cops or whatever. So I'm going to avoid that, even if I see other campers. Now, if I get to a spot that either Iowa Overlander said was fine or Iowa Overlander was silent, like I've slept at Walmart's where there was nothing on Iowa Overlander about it. But I got to the Walmart just hoping it's going to be okay, and I saw that oh, there's no signs and and there's a couple people who are camping over there. You know what Not a lot, it's not like a crazy thing, but it's a couple and they're parked over on the side. Okay, I'm going to stay there, and those have always been fine so far.
Speaker 1:The only time I got a knock on my door from a cop, I was actually parked somewhere completely legally and they didn't tell me I had to leave. It was because the people behind me were sketchy and they wanted to see if I was with them. Now, when the cops left, those people were still there. So I sure as heck left because the cops think they're sketchy. I don't want to be around it either. So I left that time and actually I parked in a parking lot that actually did have a sign, but it's local to where I usually am and I actually knew that they never enforced it. And that's what I'm meaning is that there are so many places that have laws in the books that do not get enforced. There are so many places that don't have laws in the books but there are signs, but they don't get enforced. There's so many places that have laws in the books and there are signs, but they only enforce it sometimes if the manager cares. Sometimes they have a security guard and then they just don't have any because they don't want to spend the money on it. So these are decisions that have to be made on the fly.
Speaker 1:I have to get to a place and see, and that is why I don't show up to a new place super late, like needing to go to bed right then. Sometimes what I'll do is actually swing by at like depends on the time of year, but I'll swing by when it's still light. I'll swing by and see is this place sketchy, are there signs, et cetera. Then I'll leave, go do whatever else I was going to do in the evening and then come back to sleep. Where I just come back and go to sleep, you know, depends on how big it is.
Speaker 1:I don't worry about loitering in a Walmart parking lot when it really comes down to it because there's so much in and out before it closes, but I need to get there early enough so I don't have to go find another place. You know, if I need to leave and drive a half hour to get to a rest stop or whatever my backup is, I don't want to be doing that at 10 o'clock at night. You know what I'm saying. So I wish there was a faster, easier, better answer on finding out whether it's legal to sleep somewhere, but as of right now there isn't. I don't know if I'll ever create that, but as of right now I'm not, because I think it'd be too hard. I really do, and since the law has changed all the time, it's kind of just a gigantic project that I don't think is realistic for me to do Now.
Speaker 1:Next or the next, after the next, I'm going to do a podcast where I'm gonna look at dispersed camping Dispersed camping you can actually get an answer to okay, and then I'm gonna look at how do I find dispersed camping spots and, to be honest, I also do use Iowa Overlander sometimes. But most of the dispersed camping spots I've slept at were not Iowa overlander spots, because a lot of times the Iowa overlander spots are full, are full of garbage, are full of human waste, and I want to avoid that. But it is a place for me to get some ideas. That's usually what I use Iowa overlander for is ideas, all right, so stay in tune for that. That'll be in about a month. I will talk to you all next time, bye-bye. Thank you for listening to the Living in your Car podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening to it, and also you can also check out the Elizabeth Off Grid YouTube channel to get even more content about living in your car. Talk to you next time, bye-bye.