It’s always a challenge to find a good place to sleep in your car.

Not that sleeping in the car is a particularly good option, but sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.  Like, for example, when you are out of money and lending money to your broke friend to pay for his share of gas.  We don’t know anyone in Salt Lake City, so when it was time to get some shut eye, we started looking for someplace to park.

When you’re in the middle of nowhere, parking is pretty easy.  In fact, in most Western states there are parking pullofs at nearly every exit.  However, once you get to a semi-urban area, your options become a lot more limited.  Understandably, most business owners don’t really want you sleeping in their parking lot.

I’ve been told that a good option is to sleep in the parking lots of motels.  There’s usually a night attendant, so the lot is safe and well-lit, but they are unlikely to notice you because the lots are usually nearly full.  If there’s a backside to the place and you don’t have to drive by the lobby, this may work well.  However, in the Eastern suburbs of Salt Lake City where we stopped, there were no motels, so this wasn’t an option.

Another option is the rest area.  Although it’s theoretically illegal, and rest areas do get checked on occasion, you’re usually fine.  Unfortunately, rest areas aren’t always the safest places.  They get lots of traffic, so they’re a pretty high profile place to sleep.

So we were faced with a decision.  Where could we sleep where we wouldn’t bother anyone, and where no one would would bother us?  Luckily, we found an answer in the parking lot of a Seventh Day Adventist church.  Who’s going to kick you out of a church parking lot?  Even though it was freezing outside, we bundled up as much as we could and settled in for a little nap.  Six hours of attempted sleep later, and we were ready to head to Omaha as the sun rose over the Utah mountains.

It’s a good thing we only had to do this once.

Posted on March 22nd, 2006 by Lee
Tagged: Roadtrip