DONE With WALMART - RV Overnight Spots - Cracker Barrel vs Walmart

We have been in wet and cold Seattle Washington for over a month, vacationing with my family here and we finally leave today. The snow that had us snowed in has melted, so it can finally go away and hopefully. I was telling you that we were going somewhere warm and dry, which is what we long for, like Southern California or Arizona, yes, but unfortunately that's not the case, or fortunately, because although it is a place where we really want to be, we have been asked let us do it. Be part of something very special. David's brother Thomas will eventually propose to Amanda.

He's given us permission to talk about it in this video, so don't worry, we won't ruin it. It will happen. Yes, we are very excited. Yes, he's proposing next weekend, so we're heading to Tahoe, California, where at least it's drier than here, but also a lot colder than here. Yes, they go skiing and snowboarding. There is some skiing there. Resort where they will go with a group of friends because they really like snow sports and my brother, I think he plans to propose to her at the top of the mountain, so it will be incredible and we feel very honored. that he asked us to be a part of it too, so where's the prize?

Yeah, don't tell me he doesn't know we're going there. Amanda doesn't know that we will be there when they come down the mountain waiting for her at a hostel, so it should be fun, yes, he will propose to her this Friday and then we will just party and celebrate the rest of the weekend. I'm very excited, yes, but today we have an 850 mile trip. no, yeah, well, I mean to get there we're not going to do it all in one day like our last big trip on the way here, we're going to break it up into two days, so it's just going to be two eight-hour days or two eight-hour days. nine hours, which is a lot easier to handle a bull, let me give myself a word manageable, here we go, it's easier, yes, it's easier than a 16 hour trip, so we have to keep going because it's taken us forever out of here. where it's so far back so come on this is the road coming out of my brother's driveway it's a little tricky because we're parked right next to his house and there's not a lot of room there's probably room for maybe six inches on each side of the trailer between your house, your garage gutters and your fence, so it is very narrow and what makes it even more difficult is that it is on the street at the end of your driveway. a utility pole or like a telephone pole, so when we get out we can't even cut the trailer, you know, get out into the street because right there is that pole, so we have to stay pretty straight and then what matters.

Even worse, since he lives on a pretty busy street, so if there's a problem like today, when I started cutting the feed too early and Jenny, you know, we're all on our phones and Jenny told me not to do it. stop, stop, you know you're going to hit the ditch, so I need to stop and the truck is like in the middle of the road. I have to go back, reposition it a little bit and then go back down so that every time we go back to that place. and almost every time we end up blocking traffic for I don't know five or ten seconds, but it's not a big deal because at least the speed limit on that road is very slow, only twenty-five miles per hour, so you know, cars. oncoming traffic there's plenty of time to see us you got my hands on and stuff they know they just stop and that's fine we reposition ourselves and then we pull out today we're driving about nine hours and four hundred miles about 450 miles from Seattle We are going to stop in Medford Oregon, there is a Cracker Barrel there that allows

overnight

parking and we already called them to verify that we can park there and they said yes, no problem at all, they told us exactly where to park at all, so we already have our chosen

overnight

spot, which is cool because with all these blog rooms we've been doing, we've been left with, you know, Walmart parking lots and kegs of cookies and freaking out because I want to stop in a half hour and there's no place where I know I should stop so we discovered a moment today and that makes me very happy and we have discovered that, you know, last year we spent two nights at random Walmart or at Cracker Barrel and that our favorite is Cracker Barrel, without doubt.

In fact, I've only spent the night at two Cracker Barrels and they have been much better than the ones at Walmart. Walmarts are horrible. Walmarts are so bad, yes they are almost always open 24 hours so there are constantly people coming and going and sometimes they have street sweepers or just running around grating she is like loud exhausts about their worries they are speeding them up in the parking lot because God knows why there was a place where someone was doing donuts next to us, but at Cracker Barrel it's quiet, it's never closed, so no one comes in and we just play loud music. your storage room, right, it's small so there's no reason for anyone else to be there, plus it's just our beers or two to get us through the night and if you wake up and you're hungry, yeah, it's great, it's so nice, like that I'm very excited. to be able to say in a Cracker Barrel really sleep well tonight because we have another long trip tomorrow and I'm glad we also decided to cut this into the two days of driving instead of one long day that we normally like if we have a twelve or fourteen or such maybe even a 15 hour trip like this last time we went, she would go to Seattle the reason we like to do it well, okay, we don't like doing that, we actually hate doing that, which we hate less. spending the night at Walmart or Cracker Barrel because even though the

cracker

barrel

s are quieter than the ones at Walmart we still have trash sweeping, yeah it's like the worst dream of our lives if we can just get this over with and one day we prefer that, but today's trip is just too long, we have to do it in two days, yes, and some of you were curious to know why, you really know why we decided not to just take our time to get somewhere and, for the most part, the reason is that we have to work. but if we're driving, those are days we can't work, so it's a wasted day, a wasted day, yeah, we're late in posting our videos on time and updating the website properly, all these things, including planning what we were going to or will do there, so there are kinds of benefits for us if we start over or just end it with the direct trip.

It may not be something you guys ever have to do, so it could have been confusing. as to why we just let ourselves do that, but that's why this is our first stop of the day we almost made it to Oregon, I think or not, yeah, we made it to nine miles. I'm higher in Oregon, nine miles from Oregon, we stopped for lunch. some lunch and let the cats in to use the bathroom and let honey have to go to the bathroom and on this trip we have decided that we are going to be upset sheep, we are going to make our own food instead of eating out like a hamburger .

King or McDonald's or something like that and we're eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they're really good, they're good, they're really good, they're delicious and they're filling, so I'm really excited, I'm really hungry right now and I also wanted to mention that I don't We can dwell on Walmart too much because an advantage of spending the night at a Walmart would be if you haven't stocked up yet or if you forgot something or you already went shopping or you forgot something. when you went shopping earlier or earlier in the day or earlier in the week or whatever, it's really nice to have a grocery store right there where you can go pick up what you're missing and then just come back and go to bed, but for us we're probably not going to do that anymore.

You know, we'll still stop at Walmart for whatever we need, but we won't stay overnight if we can help it. I tried to find a Cracker Barrel just past Medford because we wanted to go a little further tonight, but there weren't any, so we'll probably stop just an hour earlier than we really wanted to today, but it's okay to stay at a Cracker Barrel instead of a Walmart, that's a good point, although there will be more Walmarts and there are kegs of pretzels so it will probably be easier to find a Walmart. You know what you want to keep, yes, so there are pros and cons that the pros and cons don't want.

We are making our second stop now and the last stop before reaching our overnight destination. It's been a pretty easy trip, as eight or nine hours may seem like a long time to many of you, but to us it really isn't. problem, especially with our live broadcasts, we were live for two hours and that helps the time go by so quickly that we have traveled, wow, we have traveled just over 300 miles waiting for my ride, three hundred forty-eight point seven miles, It's 723. Now, it's probably been three hours since our last stop. I'm hungry. Jenni isn't hungry somehow.

I have no idea how that peanut butter and jelly sandwich filled her up. It was a big sandwich. I guess honey, they're hungry. And yeah, so let's take care of everyone and then, yeah, get back on the road, honey, are you hungry?, yeah, are you hungry. Okay, there's always a crazy frenzy inside whenever we have to feed all the animals. He doesn't even follow his commands, he just wants to bounce and spin in circles, yeah, but now I'm going to go ahead and make David another peanut butter and jelly sandwich because he's hungry and I'm not and he's fine with another one. cold sandwich glad this is the last stop this is totally manageable only two stops last time you're like four aren't you?

Yes, eight hours is fantastic. A fantastic amount of driving time for us probably feels that way because we need to drive very far and I'm sure it's a lot better for them too. Alice still hasn't freaked out like she did on our last trip, yes, and every time we stop, we stop for at least 20 minutes so they can eat, drink water, or use the bathroom. Yes, we don't rush every break either because I don't want them to have problems on the truck. Yes, that's a good point. We take our time so that everyone has time to be served.

Let me get back to work. road yeah and as soon as it's on the sandwich we'll be ready to go where we're going and have a hot dinner oh yeah we've arrived at our overnight parking spot for the night at the Cracker Barrel in Medford Oregon it was quite a trip easy today compared to some of the longer rides we've

done

. We were only on the road for about eight and a half hours and covered about 450 miles, so we're more than halfway there. our destination in Tahoe and this place is perfect, it is much better than we expected as far as a place to spend the night in a parking lot and this is why we chose Cracker Barrel over Walmart, there is just no Nothing better than this.

It's reasonably quiet, I mean, the highway is right there, but it's not very loud at all. The most important thing is that this is like a corner lot, so there won't be any traffic, you know, there won't be any cars driving around in the middle of the night. to wake us up like you would at a Walmart, especially if it's a 24-hour Walmart. Another great thing is that this entire parking lot is extremely well lit, which gives us peace of mind, so as you know, we highly doubt anyone is going to wake us up. playing with any of our stuff in the middle of the night while in the parking lot of a Walmart a lot of times you know they make you park in the back of the Walmart and sometimes the lighting can be pretty bad and there are some dark

spots

that you have to park which can be a little sketchy and another great thing that

cracker

barrel

s sometimes have especially that Walmart doesn't have is specific parking

spots

for RVs and buses they even have signs that say vehicle parking recreational vehicles and buses right here and We have three spots that are nice and long enough for our rig to park and you know, so we don't have to take up a bunch of regular parking spots, like go horizontally on them, you know, so that let's not feel Like we're intruding there, like this place here is for you guys, you're digressing, come in, you know you can park here, it's great and then of course when you wake up in the morning if you're hungry.

You have breakfast right there tonight. I'll make us a couple of delicious burgers and buy some burgers. I refer to Boca burgers because they are vegetable burgers. This is a plant-based meat burger. I guess not, it's not actually beef and this is a veggie burger. chicken burger, they are actually amazing, they are really very good and they are very quick, very easy to make. It's ten o'clock when we finally know that God will settle here so we can spend the night and so on. it's a really quick and easy thing that we can make and we're hungry so we can't, you know, make a full meal that's going to take a long time.time and yes, we will get up tomorrow morning, we don't have to get up. very early tomorrow morning, but we'll probably get up around 8:30 because tomorrow we only have a six hour drive before we get to where we're going and we're hoping to get there around three o'clock so we have plenty of daylight left, so if a reservation site that we want is full, then we'll have plenty of daylight to go see others and yeah, but we're going to go ahead and have dinner, it's almost ready and we're.

I'm going to watch a movie and call it okay, so we'll see you tomorrow, what's that? It's a Bloody Mary. It's a great way to end the night. There's a great way to end the night. You know what else. It's a great way to end the night. What good is that beer for? Thank you. Greetings, We got up pretty early this morning so we can get off to a good start. Along the way we saw the route we needed to take, talked to Jenny's grandparents and got some advice on what route to take from here to the Tahoe California area because Jenny's grandfather used to be a truck driver so they used to have to drive. from where they lived near Reno to Redding California all the time so they know the roads, yes they know which roads are kept clear and passable in snowy conditions and they told us where to go to catch what we got off. the interstate to Red Bluff California and then take highway 36 to the Reno Tahoe area to 395 oh okay next to Lake Susanville or whatever and then 365 down okay I lost you Jenny knows al except yes, they said that.

The road is always paved. There is some kind of law that says the road must always be clear, so they said that would be our best option without having to go all the way to Sacramento. We crossed I-80 over Donner Pass. So yeah, but we're going to stop at a Walmart here in town and we just need to do some shopping and maybe see if they have tire chains because we don't have any and it would be nice to have that. because sometimes you have to have chains to get over the steps, but anyway spending the night here at Cracker Barrel was probably the best stay we've ever had.

I slept like I was dead, yes I slept like a baby. I wasn't worried at all. about someone playing with their stuff because it was very, very well lit here and yeah, but we were mostly and we were completely alone in this parking lot, it was super quiet, we slept really well at night, so yeah, I mean, and It's just a little. over six hours drive so yeah too bad yeah I'll be really good yeah we should we ran to the Walmart to do some shopping and unfortunately they didn't have tire chains so we came with Schwab tires and they had what We needed a pair of quick-connect tire chains, so we're ready to hit the mountain passes if there's snow.

We don't really know what the conditions are like, but one thing we noticed when we were at Walmart is that they had signs saying no overnight parking for RVs or buses or, you know, parking for large trucks, and this is something that We are noticing more and more often at Walmarts across the country that they are no longer allowing RV parking. is becoming a lot more common than it used to be, or while you know cracker barrels still allow overnight RV parking and you know I'm okay with that anyway because at that Walmart they were like all the Walmart, of course they are. very busy, there are cars everywhere, the fire truck drove by while we were there, there were people honking, you know, slamming doors, their car doors opening and closing constantly, so we probably would have slept rubbish, while at Cracker Barrel we slept well.

We are very glad we bought snow chains when we did. We don't really go to places where it snows a lot and we're going to be in snowy conditions where we're going to go so you know and we see signs in everyone. the moment where he says you know when the lights flash and you use chains and you know luckily I'm pretty sure that nut on the roads on this route required chains right now which is great but it might be snowing later today , so I mean, no I don't know, maybe we can use them, but we bought them when we were in Medford Oregon and we didn't think about this at the time, but we were able to avoid the sales tax, but even though we avoided the sales tax sales. when buying them in Oregon, they were still pretty expensive for just two chains, they were a hundred and twenty dollars, but I'm sure if we had waited until we had in California it would have been Much more expensive plus sales tax so I'm glad we bought them when we did and I wish I had bought them a little earlier this year because when we got back to Seattle it would have been very nice to have them.

We went skiing one day and it was snowing and very icy when we got there. We didn't have chains. It was a lot easier to go up the mountain and you know, drive through the parking lot. It was very cold, but I'm glad we have them now. You know, I'm sure we'll need them again in the future, although we probably won't travel to cold places like this very often, but always. It's good to have peace of mind. Map, watch out, Paul, this snow is here. She's as tall as me. There is so much snow up here right now.

I'm so glad we have chains for our truck in case this wasn't clear. You don't know clearly enough, it's currently snowing too, it's very cold here, the road is wet, so obviously ice is something you'd have to worry about here, but look how high this snow is, it's higher than you. and there is the In comparison, the trailer is about halfway to the trailer, even there is a lot of snow. It's good that they keep this road clean. Yes, my grandparents said that there is some kind of law for the area where this road must remain clean all year round. they always keep it up, but it can get slippery if it's actively snowing so it's actively snowing so we'll take our time while we're up here for the rest of the snow area, but David will be driving now that I've been.

I drive for two hours or so and I don't really like driving, especially when it's snowing, so David will take care of me. Look how cute it is, it's really pretty. Yes, this is beautiful. It is the driest side. They have a lot of snow in winter. but that's how I love it, it's too cold, we arrive at our final destination for this trip and it's not what we expected, it's not the open space where we thought we were going to end up in Reno Nevada, we are actually at the house of the Jenny's father. house in Susanville California and it's funny how we got into this situation because like we said we were going to stay at a boondocking site in Reno Nevada but we were researching road conditions and Jenny found a live view camera from one of the road We were driving in Reno and we saw it and we thought, there's a lot of snow on the ground, the roads were fine, but there's a lot of snow, so we thought, wow, yeah I'll stay on BLM land, the snow on the ground probably it will not work.

I seriously doubt they have snowplows that go to BLM land, so yeah, we didn't do it and we don't want to get stuck, you know, on a dirt road that's now muddy and I can't see or anything, so the plan was okay well we'll get to Reno after dark because it's taking longer than we thought to get there since we had to stop at Walmart and also got some snow chains so we thought well let's spend the night at another Cracker Barrel , that's a great idea and then we'll go to BLM or see a vlm place tomorrow yeah and it turns out there aren't any cookie barrels in Reno so we thought yeah so we thought okay let's spend the night at a Walmart then and yeah, there were like five or six Walmarts in Reno and we were like, well, this is kind of karma because we've been, you know, badmouthing Walmart this whole time, so now we have to say exactly, so it's kind of funny and then it hit me because I thought, well, we'll drive through Susanville, we're already where my dad lives.

It's going to be, you know, getting to Reno after dark, it doesn't matter if it's an hour even later, it's still going to be dark no matter what, so we might as well stop and say hello to my dad and then all of a sudden he went to the Same thing, why don't we think about this before my dad only lives an hour from Reno, two hours from Tahoe? Why don't we stay these four days until we have to be in Tahoe with my dad? Why the hell do we plan? staying at a boondocking joint or whatever or even spending the night at a Cracker Barrel or Walmart because Cracker brows are cool.

Walmart is fine in a pinch, but they don't compare to staying with family, not at all, so we're all set up here. we're going to go okay, I'm going to make a late lunch real quick and then we're going to go in and hang out with my dad, yeah, and today is going to be Monday, we're going to be here for four days until Friday, which is when our friends, my brother and Amanda are flying to Tahoe to go to the ski resort there and we are so excited that my brother is finally proposing to Amanda.

Amanda is an amazing person and I'm so excited to have her as part of my family you know she's always felt like a sister to me and now it's going to be official and I'm so excited so excited to celebrate yeah yeah so let's go Let's end the night here and we'll see you later. I'll let you know how the proposal goes.