Safe to sleep in your car?

>>1027313
It is. Just look out for skinwalkers.

>>1027313
idk about national parks but all parks i can think of prohibit sleeping in your car, camping in general in your car but i think it might be different for the nps

>>1027400
>prohibit sleeping your car

lmao no way

>>1027313
So you have two options.

Sleep in something worth about $120, or sleep in something worth $5,000-$12,000.

That being said my car is like my second home. I just park in churches

>>1027313
>>1027400
>>1027405
I "camped" in my car in San Isabel and Gunnison National Forests: if you pay the campsite fee, they won't care. And you CAN find places to just stop and sleep in national forests (obviously, the less conspicuous the better), but a campsite will usually be the better bet.

>>1027405
yeah i've camped in some parks hell i think i was in Yosemite and a cop knocked on my window at like 1am and told me to leave

>>1027405
>>1029061
At National Parks you're fine as long as you're in a campground, but try to sleep in a car somewhere else and they'll try to clear you out.

In Yosemite especially they have issues with people trying to dodge the entrance fee by coming through the gates after the staff has left and then coyote car camping through the park before leaving during another stretch where the gates are unstaffed.

>>1029120
This. My friends and I used to do this all the time. I grew up in the SF Bay Area, and we used to go to Yosemite for the weekend after work or whatever. It's a few hours drive, so we'd cruise right past the entrance gate around 10 or 11 PM. Sometimes we just pulled into a crowded parking lot and slept next to the car on the ground. This stopped working (rangers rousted us early one morning) so we found the best thing was to park at the Camp Four lot (don't know what it's called now), grab sleeping bags etc and hike up the trail a ways. We found this perfect flat grassy spot slightly above the valley, slept laike babies, woke up to a beautiful sunrise, then packed up and hiked down to the vehicle, and went on whatever hike we had planned, usually up Half Dome (you need a permit for that hike now). The hike took so long that often we'd drive out of the park late, after the entrance station closed, so we didn't have to pay on the way out, either. Ah, the good old days... Late 1970s - early 80s. (I'm 60 now)

Every park or monument in the Southwest has BLM or USFS land just outside the park where you can do whatever you want. Done this many, many times and only once was visited by a BLM ranger on Notom Road just east of Capitol Reef NP who told me not to start any campfire.

I did it a few nights on a recent road trip through Utah. It's fine, as long as you wake up and move on at like 6am before anyone else is up no one will even notice. The hard part is finding a secluded place that's relatively light free. I usually find a spot in a hotel parking lot or residential neighborhood.

It beats paying for a motel room.

>>1027313
I slept in my car at Sequoia last year but it was in a visitor center parking lot. A park employee said it was fine and we didn't have to worry about bears since it was only one night. Kind of risky but it was one night and the only option