The Backseat Bed

We drive five hundred miles from Yellowstone until the heat of the day recedes and now the sky is dark.  We need a place to sleep, but we want to limit our spending on hotels.  I’ll be on the road for a month.  Even if I found a $50 room at a dumpy motel each night, I would spend over $1,500 on lodging, and that streak of luck would surely run out and so would my money.  Tonight begins our experiment in frugality.  Outside of Spokane, I drive around a Walmart parking lot and back up into a shadowy spot.

 

The selection process is important to guarantee a better sleep.  I seek a patch of darkness on the fringes of the lot far away from the store.  I park away from the cart returns because they have cameras installed on nearby lightpoles, but I usually choose a spot relatively close to employee cars so my car doesn’t look suspicious sitting for hours after midnight.  I point the nose toward the exit in case I need to flee.  Before shutting off the engine, I crack each window by an inch or two to ventilate the interior and prevent the windshield from fogging up.

Now it’s time to make the bed.  While the both of us are on the trip, the back seat is filled with luggage, snacks, and the cooler.  I scoot my seat forward and then transfer everything from the back into the front seats.  Because this isn’t usually what people do at grocery stores, we do this quickly to avert suspicion.  The worst that will likely happen is that someone will think we’re odd and wonder what we are doing, but I want to get into the habit of being sneaky because in some Walmarts overnight soliciting is illegal and security guards roam the parking lots in white pickup trucks.

Then we walk into the store to pretend like we’re actually shopping, but we’re just using the bathroom.  It is really annoying to wake up at three o’clock in the morning with a full bladder while you are stuck inside a car.  Faced with the option of walking a quarter mile into the store in a sleepy daze or sneaking a pee on a grass island in a desolate parking lot, laziness usually forces me to risk the latter.  We leave the store and casually walk back to the car and slip into the backseat.

I lie on my back on the padded bench.  My bended knees point toward the ceiling.  Erin crawls in next to me on layers of backpacks softened by pillows.  She closes the door and I hit the lock button and store the keys next to my headlamp inside the kangaroo pouch on the backside of the passenger seat.  I take out my contacts using a make-up mirror I balance on my chest and then stash my toiletry bag on the shelf under the rear windshield.  The piercing brightness of the parking lot lights are unavoidable, so I drape a hoody over my eyes and turn on my side, my face digging into the seat.  My head and upper body are relatively comfortable, although smooshed in the tight space.  I can’t fully extend my legs, so my knees are bent all night.  Sleep arrives regardless. 

We wake at dawn.  I kick open the door and stretch the stiffness out of my joints.  I don my glasses and a hat to hide my bedhead and then step into the moccasins I use as my driving shoes to mitigate the pain in my heel.  Despite the awkward sleeping arrangement, I feel refreshed and motivated to move.  We return to the store and buy a bundle of bananas and two packets of yogurt each for a total less than five dollars. 

A free night’s stay, twenty-four hour access to bathrooms, and a cheap, accessible, and portable breakfast are the biggest advantages of Walmart camping.  After adapting to this system, it seems silly to pay seventy to a hundred dollars to sleep in a bed for eight hours if I’m just going to get back in my car the next morning.  The less money I spend on hotels, the farther I can drive, and the more of this country I can see.  The most glaring flaw in this plan, however, is that I have no access to showers, but I soon find a solution heading west on I-90 through the scrublands of eastern Washington. 

With a name like the Evergreen State, I didn’t expect to find a desert here.  The temperatures rise higher than I anticipate.  My car doesn’t have air conditioning, so sweat begins to run down my back.  I have a higher threshold for personal grossness than Erin.  We are heading to Seattle, and I bet she’s thinking we should blend in with the rest of the pedestrians hygienically. 

I’m staring out the window while Erin is driving through the Columbia basin on a corridor mostly empty except for eighteen-wheelers.  The big rigs coax a memory out of me.  A few years ago my aunt drove my brother and I from Pennsylvania to Texas in a small RV.  When I was looking for the restrooms in a Love’s truck stop, I stumbled upon a shower block instead.  Now I wonder if these amenities are exclusive for truckers.  I don’t see why a gas station would discriminate drivers based on how many wheels spin under their vehicles, but these stops are created to benefit those lugging all of our junk around the country.  They should have priority over somebody who is driving just for fun.  After all, the highway is the trucker’s workspace.

I google truck stop showers and read a positive review from a roadie, and a few miles up ahead we’ll have an opportunity to see if he was telling the truth. At a Love’s gas station in Ellensburg, I pass the soft drink coolers and discover the shower block.  I hear the spray of water raining from a nozzle behind one of six doors.  I try the handle but find it locked.  At the counter, I see a sign that says showers are free if you buy fifty or more gallons of gas. My tank can’t hold that much, so I’ll have to pay eleven dollars.

I return to the car to retrieve my backpack, now filled with a towel and travel-sized soap bottles, and hand over the money to the cashier, who gives me a key and says my shower is available now.  I pass a man in a red uniform cleaning an open stall and discarding used towels into a bin.  I find the door number that corresponds with the number on my key and close it behind me.  The room is much cleaner than I had anticipated.  There is a sink, toilet, and a shower cordoned off with a thin curtain.  I turn on the water, and the pressure is strong.  The shower is not raised so the runoff forms a puddle in front of the toilet before escaping down a nearby drain.

 

I expect the water to shut off after five minutes.  At the least I imagine the hot water will disappear causing me to shriek from the sudden cold, but this never happens.  I dress and gather my belongings and return my key at the counter, where a fellow inquires about the quality of my experience.  I tell him the shower was refreshing, and he is very pleased to hear this.  I have never seen a man so enthusiastic about another man’s hygiene.  Aside from the awkwardness of announcing to gas station patrons that you are too cheap to pay for a hotel room and you so desperately need to clean yourself just off the highway in Ellensburg, Washington of all places, the experiment is highly successful.  For a grand total of sixteen dollars, I have slept, eaten breakfast, and properly groomed myself for a day in the city.  I eventually discover I can reduce this number even further, but to do that I’ll have to break a few rules.  Not the kind of rules that will get you into serious trouble, but rules nonetheless.