Police encounter

There I was minding my own business driving through the White Mountains. It was a beautiful sunny day and I didn't have a care in the world.

Well, I didn't have a care in the world until the blue flashing lights came on behind me and a policeman pulled me over. Apparently I was doing something like 70 in a 50 mph zone. My bad. Like I told the cop, I wasn't paying attention and picked up a lot of speed going downhill. My fault.

Then it gets better.

“License and registration.”

Right. Recently I got my missing driver's license replaced so that was fine. I asked my lovely wife to get the registration for me. When we bought the car it had been put it in the nice holder with the owner's manual. It wasn't there. Rummaged all through the dash but could not find it.

Yep, speeding and no registration. All I had on my side was manners, honesty, and a non threatening attitude. The cop gave me a written warning for both offenses. Darn decent of him as he had me dead to rights.

Okay, I know I was speeding because I'd spent 6 months driving in dead flat Florida. Kinda forgot how hills work. The missing registration was a real puzzlement.

After searching the car and the house the for a few hours my lovely wife remembered what she did with it. When we'd parked the car to go sailing for a couple months she removed some paperwork from the car. She'd forgotten that one piece of that paperwork was the registration. To make it even more interesting it was stuffed inside an empty cough drop bag. No wonder I could not find it.

It's a good thing I wasn't stopped on the drive up from Florida as my driver's license was missing and my lovely wife had hidden the registration from everyone, including herself.

Well . . . no harm, no foul.

-Sixbears

Spot the stealth camper

Let's play: spot the stealth camper. Stealth camping is free camping, sometimes in places where sleeping in your vehicle is not technically allowed.

First we'll do the beginner round. Spot the campers at a Walmart. Not every big box store allows overnight camping. There are even apps that keep track of the ones that do. This is not really stealth camping as it's allowed. Even so there are rules. Keep your vehicle self contained. If you have slide outs keep them in. Do not set up folding chairs and grills out in the parking lot. An overnight camper shouldn't look any different than if someone was parking their RV while they do some shopping.

Spotting big RVs is easy. Let's move onto vans. Vans make pretty good mobile living spaces. They have enough room for basic comfort, yet they fit into a normal parking space. Look for either blackout curtains or panel vans with no side windows at all. Solar panels are a dead giveaway. So are generators hanging off the back on a cargo buddy. These smaller vehicles are more likely to try to stealth camp where not technically allowed.

People living in regular passenger cars often use sun shields in the windows to keep people from looking in. A give away is that often the only people using them are those who are sleeping in their cars. The expert level of car camping belongs to those who can blend in and don't use sun shields or curtains. This level of stealth is not for everyone. The car may just look like it needs a good cleaning, but under those Burger King wrappers is a person in a sleeping bag. Ta Da!

The real pros are those who can stealth camp in a place like Key West. It's a small island and the cops know everyone who belongs on it. If a strange vehicle is parked on a residential street for a few days they will assume someone is urban camping. Cops in small towns play “spot the stealth camper,” at a professional level.

Sometimes they can be fooled by really clever stealth vehicles. I had the pleasure once of looking over a homemade stealth vehicle based on a cube truck. It looked like a regular unmarked delivery truck. Only when camped in the country did the folding stairs, skylights, and side windows pop out. The vehicle was put together like a Swiss watch. All closed up, it looked like any other small delivery truck one would see parked on a city street.

Then there was the guy who had a pickup truck with a cap on the back. It had really good graphics for a phony business. The truck looked like a contractor's pickup, but had a nice camping arrangement inside. The driver went around wearing a yellow hardhat and carried a clipboard.

When playing this game, remember that if you can spot the stealth camper, cops probably can too. That's why I tend to “camp” on private land where it's allowed, or at least ignored.

-Sixbears