A Place to Sleep — Part I

Sleep is all about recovering. So if you’re not sleeping, you’re not recovering. And if you’re going to break your body down a lot, you better find ways to build it back up. And the only way to do that is get a lot of sleep.

— Tom Brady

During the first few weeks of my journey from Middletown to Colorado and Portland, Oregon, I followed major highways — especially I-80, which carried me through four U.S. time zones and nine states.

Parking overnight for sleep was easy. Large truck stops were my realm. I had access to clean showers, nutritious foods, and free accommodations. I would park my van with the RVs and sleep soundly until the sun was rising.

A highpoint of that life is an extraordinary place called Iowa-80 — the self-proclaimed largest truck stop in the world, off Exit 284 in Walcott, Iowa, which I experienced one night. 

It offers all the long-haul driver’s needs, including plentiful diesel and the controversial additive, DEF, said to reduce emissions but which truck drivers say is a costly sham intended to cut into their profits.

There are showers, of course. Lounges for professional drivers. Seats and tables for anyone who needs them.

Iowa-80 also has thousands of square feet of retail items, including truck equipment and truckers’ gear and even logo hoodies for pooches. (Iris’s fit — she’s tiny. Arrow’s was way too small, despite being labeled XXL.)

There is food, prepared and packaged, but also fresh — made to order from the large kitchen or from an extensive buffet, or if you’d rather, order from Wendy’s or Pizza Hut or Taco Bell or a Starbucks that opens at a maddeningly late 7:30 a.m., by which time I was usually an hour into my morning drive.

There is a shirt and hat customization service. Have an idea to share with the world? Fifteen minutes and it’s yours to wear.

There is a barber shop up one flight of stairs. A chiropractor up another. A movie theater. A workout room. A dental office. Laundry.

And of course, there are people — lots and lots of people shopping or milling around. Professional truck drivers. RVers. Van dwellers. Motorcyclists. Hot shots in tricked-out pickups and sports cars and ordinary sedans. Even an occasional hitchhiker with a sign that promises to share the gas. All looking to meet their travel needs, all gathered in the same spot and spending the same brand of energy on so many different things that at times it can be overwhelming.

A Piece to Sleep — Part II

Once my travels left the multilane interstates, I had to search for alternate overnight accommodations. No more truck stops, or if there might be a small one, no room for RVers or van-dwellers like me.

In fact, many U.S. communities have begun banning overnight parking anywhere within their borders, including at the old RVer go-to’s, like Walmart, many of which no longer let RVs park overnight.

I needed to change my strategy entirely. 

I turned to the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, as it’s known, a federal agency under the Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. That includes preserving open space and allowing what’s called “dispersed” camping in some areas. There are rules, but not many, although there are sometimes fees for occupying even the roughest campsites available far off the beaten path.

I found and stayed in such a free place near the Bonneville Salt Flats, which are famous for attracting all kinds of people and their all kinds of souped-up vehicles to try to set records for going very fast on the miles-long salt flats track. (I was there for the year’s final runs.)

The BLM land was elevated, a sort of amphitheater overlooking a wide level valley abutting the salt flats. Half a mile of rutted and uneven dirt road and I was in place to watch a magnificent harvest moon rise over the valley on a hazy night and then climb into bed. I stayed for three nights but could have spent fourteen, under BLM rules.

Before and after my time in the glorious Yosemite National Park, I stayed at BLM campgrounds perched precariously above the picturesque Merced River, for twenty-eight dollars a night, paid online. A bone-jarring rutted and stone-pocked dirt road, two-plus miles each way the first night and an eight-mile round-trip to a different campsite the second night provided the only access. Out and back, six or seven miles an hour was about all I could manage in the smooth stretches without shaking my van to pieces, even slower for the rougher spots. 

I did see a doe with her fawn run up the river bank and across the road on my second trip out, and an eagle flying across the river, and plenty of Yosemite’s various species of squirrel.

At those hard-reached camping sites, so-called bear boxes are provided, along with placards insisting you use them or face criminal charges. The heavy locking steel containers are where you store your food — including snacks and food-smelling garbage — to keep it safe from foraging bears. Or really, to keep the bears safe from the food, to discourage their destructive foraging.

The first night, when I took less seriously the bear threat, boxes notwithstanding, was peaceful — enforcedly so, since there is no cell signal and even my Starlink failed, because the cliffs at the sides of the picturesque river are too tall to allow the unit to “see” a satellite near the horizon.

The second night, I had read more online about the area and was more wary. Fearing that bears could be lurking led me to wake up throughout the night at every noise, real or imagined, and left me exhausted for the next day’s tortuous four-and-a-half-mile trek back to the paved road.

A Place to Sleep — Part III

BLM sites are not the only backups. In another, a slight, gray-haired Nevada man in his 60s turned out to have a soft spot for travelers.

I told him my story — on the road from six a.m., and it was now five p.m. I told him I needed a place to park for the night so I could get some sleep. Sharkey’s, which he has owned since 2014, has a good-size parking lot.

“I won’t make any noise, no mess, no camping gear,” and he said without discussion, “Sure.”

I asked if his place served food. It did, said his manager, “And it’s pretty good.” 

I trundled off to get some dinner, a way to thank the management for letting me stay at the famous Sharkey’s Casino. (It’s a common thing for RVers to do when a casino lets you stay the night.)

Milos Sharkey bought the Gardnerville, Nevada, location in 1971 and decorated the walls with a Western theme. It changed hands again in 2014, but kept its name and the Western decor, with paintings of cowboys and vintage slot machines in the dining room and facsimile maps of Pony Express routes. Sharkey’s was originally a saloon, established in 1881; that’s a long time ago in Nevada, which became the thirty-sixth state not until 1864, during the Civil War. 

The state legalized gambling in 1931 to fight off the tax effects of The Great Depression, and it has remained legal ever since.

Sharkey’s has been a casino since shortly thereafter — 1945. It is one of about 330 full-time casinos in present-day Nevada. (Some estimates put the number closer to 400, depending on the criteria used to judge what is a casino.) 

Dinner was good and filling, and pretty cheap. And the parking lot remained quiet overnight. I slept well.