26DEC07 - Crawfordville, FL

As we drove from Kings Bay, GA, to the beach area of Fort Walton, FL, we decided to try something a lot of RV’ers do, but we haven’t to date. That is “dry camping” in the parking lot of your friendly super Wal-Mart. We don’t know if you have noticed, but every now and then you might see RVs parked on the outer fringes of Wal-Mart; usually over night or for a few days at most. Wal-Mart doesn’t encourage this, but they don’t discourage it either. The RV’er gets the security of a 24hr facility with security cameras, and Wal-Mart gets a few extra bucks if you decide to do a little shopping.

Spending the night in a traditional RV park has its benefits, but sometimes the services provided are not the worth the money spent for an overnight stay. In reality with the generator running, we have everything we need except cable no matter where we are. And the fuel cost for running the generator all night is much less than the average fee at a RV park. So south of Tallahassee we pulled into the parking lot of the super Wally Mart in Crawfordville, FL, to spend the night and minimizes our expenses.

Bottom line, it wasn’t so bad; except for when the young punk was showing off his new car stereo he got for xmas to his buddies at max volume. Thankfully it was over in fifteen minutes, and we were not disturbed the rest of the night.