Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Departing the coast

We are at a small truck stop, part of a Shell station, north of Burlington, Washington (map). Aside from the truck stop, there is nothing here but a lone motel, some fast food, and a Bob's Burgers and Brew causal restaurant, where we had dinner.

We arrived yesterday at the brand new Wal-Mart in Mount Vernon close to 3pm, and were disappointed to find the lot posted No Overnight Camping. Our Wal-Mart no-no list showed this new store but not as No Overnight, so I will be sending a note in to the web site there. We needed supplies anyway, and that was also a good place to meet Carol from Yacht Products with our replacement pump box for our YachTub system. We ended up spending nearly two hours in the lot there before moving on, and that meant we needed to stay somewhere in the Mount Vernon/Burlington/Sedro-Woolley area for the night.

We trundled over to the defunct old Wal-Mart location across the freeway, to see if we could maybe park there as we have done in other cities, but the lot was clearly posted both No Overnight Parking and No Trespassing. There is an Elks Lodge immediately across the street from there with what would constitute an actual RV park, but at $23 for the night we deemed it too expensive for this place in this weather. We knew it was there, though, as a back-up option.

Our truck stop directory listed two RV-friendly truck stops in the area, one three miles south of our route, and this one three miles north. Getting back on route from here, though, is a couple miles shorter, so we opted to continue north. It turned out to be a fine place to stay, and Bob's, a small local chain, was tasty to boot. There is even a dump station here, of which we will avail ourselves before continuing east in a few minutes. That will save us the trouble of diverting in Sedro-Wooley to the city sewer plant, where my directory says there is another free dump station. By this afternoon, we should be crossing the mountains.

3 comments:

  1. On occasion we have asked anyway at the WalMarts that are posted "No overnight parking" and have been told to go ahead. This is specially true at the 24 hour places. Sometimes they say they are just obeying a city ordinance but one night is no problem or they say they don't know if we are shopping or sleeping and they are not going to knock on the door to ask.

    WalMarts are starting to have problems with people setting up in their lots for weeks or months at a time. One store in Centralia, WA had an old rig with outside furniture, a barbecue and even a dog run set up. Obviously no one from the store had the guts to move them on their way so maybe posting the signs is to discourage folks like these.

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  2. Isn't that a shame about what Croft posts. Outside furniture and a dog run? Oh my! We stayed at Wal Mart in North Bellingham. They cater to the Canadians that swoop down and shop at W Mart for a day or so. The place was loaded with RV's, it was almost embarrassing! Dog run????? What nerve....

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  3. We are from Blaine, WA (Whatcom County) and have eaten at Bob's throughout the two local counties. They definitely have good food and huge servings...I usually take home enough for lunch the next day.

    Being from Whatcom County we have gone to Walmart in Bellingham many times and Rod & Loyce are right - there are always lots of RV's in the Bellingham lot.

    Loved your pictures of Highway 20...we go over that route at least once a year though I don't know if we will make it this year due to our work with the carnival.

    Have a safe journey and we look forward to traveling along.

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