Thank you, Wal-Mart

We are at a Wal-Mart (again) in Fayetteville, North Carolina (map), one of three in this town. This one happened to be right on our planned route.

As comfortable as we both are with spending the night in such a place, it is a bit tiresome to find ourselves in one nearly every morning. That being said, there really are very, very few options in this part of the country at this time of year, and even fewer that fit in with our chosen travel style of point-and-go.

One of our traditions is to count our blessings each evening over our first glass of wine at dinner, and usually one or the other of us counts as a blessing that we have found a safe, comfortable place to stay. Last night, we got to talking about the Wal-Mart policy, and how our travels might be different if that policy did not exist. I suspect we'd spend a lot more time at Elks lodges, although increased competition for a very limited resource would likely make that difficult. More likely, we would spend less time in the east, and limit our visits to times of the year when state and county parks are open for camping. It's hard to imagine how we could make a Thanksgiving visit with my family work.

So as we wrap up our stay at the fourth Wal-Mart this week, I want to take a moment to publicly acknowledge Wal-Mart's gracious stance on parking. And yes, we know it is also good business -- we rarely spend a night at a store without going inside to buy something, and last night was no exception. Incidentally, this is one of the busiest stores we've seen in quite a while -- we were lucky to find a spot between two trucks that shielded us, somewhat, from a very busy parking lot.

Today we will leave the I-95 corridor, continuing southwest on US-401 and then crossing over to US-1 via state route 79. That will ultimately lead us to Columbia, where we will visit some friends.