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Old 06-28-2017, 06:51 PM   #21
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Our procedure for Walmarts is look up the town in our road atlas, that Walmart sells and has all their stores listed. Then I just google "overnight parking at....." I usually get reviews and comments about whether it's permitted or not etc. If we pull up and there's several RV's there already we don't ask.

You must be and Escape magnet Mike. All we've seen are a few old classic eggs in varying conditions. We're taking the US route home so maybe we'll see at least a couple of Escapes. It seems strange that we've gone so far and not seem a single one except Mike's.

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Old 06-28-2017, 06:57 PM   #22
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It was 3 years before saw another Escape in New England. I've driven to the SW twice, and Yellowstone once without seeing any till I got to my destination. Even seeing a Casita or Scamp is a rare event in the east.
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Old 06-28-2017, 09:25 PM   #23
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When we are on the road I make a prediction every morning regarding how many fiberglass trailers we will see that day and what brands they will be. If in Minnesota or Wisconsin I always predict a Scamp or two. It never fails that the fiberglass spotted that day will be two Casitas or a boler and an Escape or Bigfoot. In about a hundred days of prediction I have never been right. I did meet a guy with a 2013 13 foot Scamp last Friday. He was from Wisconsin and had bought the trailer from the original owner after it
had been camped in three nights. Original owner had an aortic aneurism and decided not to chance having a problem while out camping. Said he gave $8,500 cash for it and figured he got a very good deal. Told me there were 5 other potential buyers on their way if he did not come through with the cash. He told me he considered Escapes the best value on the market. Kool aid all around.
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Old 06-30-2017, 09:37 AM   #24
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Another Walmart with trees, this one RV-friendly

Yesterday I visited the Walmart Supercenter on the corner of Franklin Road and N. Idaho Center Blvd. in Nampa, Idaho. There are concrete planters, each holding two trees, interspersed throughout the lot. The planters are like islands-- they don't connect and the parking spaces are parallel, leaving more room for RVs to maneuver.

This makes me think that the design in Moscow has to do with more than tree-hugging. It really looks like they want to keep RVs out.
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Old 06-30-2017, 10:10 AM   #25
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RE: tree hugging...
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Old 06-30-2017, 10:20 AM   #26
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Quote:
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This makes me think that the design in Moscow has to do with more than tree-hugging. It really looks like they want to keep RVs out.
I don't think you can ascribe any ill motive to the design, or a hostility toward RV parking. Their thinking probably didn't go that far. I suspect it was just aesthetics.



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Old 06-30-2017, 10:24 AM   #27
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I don't think you can ascribe any ill motive to the design, or a hostility toward RV parking. Their thinking probably didn't go that far. I suspect it was just aesthetics.
Or, maybe they have an attached auto-body shop?
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Old 06-30-2017, 12:16 PM   #28
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Big retailers like Walmart plan every little detail of their stores, including the parking lots. The trees in both Nampa and Moscow are almost certainly there because of local ordinances; otherwise why incur the expense of maintaining them? The different parking lot designs might be due to an experiment to see what works better.

But I don't think so. RV'ers are such well-known customers to Walmart I'm betting they are taken into consideration when Walmart parking lots are designed, one way or the other. Maybe there's an ordinance against overnight RV parking in Moscow and I just didn't see the notice.
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Old 06-30-2017, 02:19 PM   #29
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In addition to aesthetics, the Moscow design is clearly directional - the arrows are actually visible in the Google Maps image. The spaces are angled for traffic pulling in nose-first while moving along the aisles in the intended direction, with most of the aisles one-way. The dividers keep drivers from pulling through end-to-end spaces and then exiting against traffic flow, and at the end of each row they establish the angle of the spaces.

The lot of one Costco in Edmonton had a directional layout with angled spaces, but no dividers. They gave up on it after a while, and re-painted all of the spaces in a conventional layout with no one-way aisles. I don't think people are willing to work with the highly controlled directional layout, especially without concrete guiding them... and in the winter it's unreasonable to expect them to do so, without clearly visible markings.
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Old 06-30-2017, 05:46 PM   #30
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and in the winter it's unreasonable to expect them to do so, without clearly visible markings.
Winter... I didn't think about having to clear snow (surprise, surprise). The long concrete planters in Moscow must make that more difficult.

Many years ago I read a book called "The Naked Consumer" that talked about how store design affects customer behavior. The book was really good, and a PBS show was made of it. I have no background in marketing so I thought it was very interesting, but to a business major I guess it would be old hat. It talked about parking lot design but I don't remember what it said. Some examples of other things:

- People enter stores then generally go to the right, then gradually make a counterclockwise or leftward path through the aisles. Items are placed on aisles and at the ends of aisles accordingly. The book went on and on about grocery stores in this regard. A lot of thought goes into product placement in grocery stores.

- There are no clocks in stores and shopping malls, and no windows except for in the front.

- Women in particular dislike stores with narrow aisles; the book called this the "ass brush" factor (its term, not mine).

It was a fun read. But I wish I could remember what it said about parking lots. Maybe it will come to me later.
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Old 06-30-2017, 06:32 PM   #31
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Now I remember what "The Naked Consumer" said about parking lots, but unfortunately it wasn't much: researchers found that people park clustered in front of the store doors, even if the walking distance is greater than what it would be if they parked in locations farther down the store's front walk, at an angle to the doors. I've noticed this myself. But it has no relevance to the Moscow Walmart's parking lot.

I'm also reminded that the Moscow Walmart has one other unique feature: It has only one entrance, not two as in every other Walmart I've seen. And this is a big Walmart; a Supercenter with a grocery section. I wonder why they did that?
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Old 06-30-2017, 06:42 PM   #32
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Maybe to funnel the customers to one spot, or maybe for loss prevention reasons? As you say, alot goes into store design, so who knows.

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Old 06-30-2017, 07:24 PM   #33
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Sounds the same as the one in New Jersey one way in and out.
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Old 07-01-2017, 12:10 AM   #34
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Winter... I didn't think about having to clear snow (surprise, surprise). The long concrete planters in Moscow must make that more difficult.
It's manageable, but doing it properly and efficiently means using loaders rather than truck-mounted plows. Not many lots have as many dividers as that Moscow Walmart, but newer lots routinely have some division into sections with curbs, and even some rows with the full-length median.

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I'm also reminded that the Moscow Walmart has one other unique feature: It has only one entrance, not two as in every other Walmart I've seen. And this is a big Walmart; a Supercenter with a grocery section. I wonder why they did that?
Many Walmarts have only one entrance, but usually they are ones which were not originally built as a Supercenter (even if they now have groceries).

I can only guess that if a new and large Walmart has only one entrance, either they ran into a local approval issue, or someone found that customers were going in one entrance and out the same one and so skipping the rest of the store.
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