In May, I called a hotel in Chattanooga and asked a question I had never asked a hotel before: "Can I park a pop-up camper in your lot overnight?" The woman who answered put me on hold, came back and said, "The manager says yes. Back of the lot, along the fence." I thanked her about four times.
Then on Saturday, June 20, at 4:45 in the afternoon, I circled that same lot twice with about 33 feet of Pilot and camper behind me. Dana read the parking signs out loud. Nico, who had fallen asleep about 20 minutes after we left Tallulah Gorge, woke up and asked if we were lost. Technically, no.
Why a hotel in the middle of a camping trip
Our route ran from North Georgia to the Florida Panhandle, and Chattanooga isn't the straight line between them. It added about two hours of driving. But Maya, ten years old and set on becoming a marine biologist, had been asking about the Tennessee Aquarium since spring, and Dana and I wanted one night where nobody leveled, cranked or hooked up anything. One hotel night gave us both. It also split a long towing day into two shorter ones, which turned out to matter more than the aquarium.
The phone call
These are the questions I asked, and I'd ask all of them again:
- Can we park a camper overnight, and exactly where?
- Is it okay to unhitch, or do you want it attached to the car?
- Can you put a note on our reservation?
- Can the camper stay in the lot for a few hours after checkout?
I called the hotel's own number rather than the brand's central line, because the person at the front desk knows what the lot looks like on a Saturday night. Once I had a yes to all four, I booked direct at the Holiday Inn Express on a nonrefundable rate of $164 and wrote the manager's name in the trip log. Nonrefundable felt a little risky in June, but it was the one booking on the whole trip we were least likely to cancel.
Circling the lot twice
The note on our reservation existed. The empty spaces along the fence did not. By late afternoon the back row was full, and my plan of pulling straight into two end-to-end spaces had nowhere to go. First lap: nothing. Second lap: a pickup backed out of a corner spot next to a grass strip, and I took the corner plus the empty space beside it, nose pointed out, with nothing behind the camper.
Two things saved me. I'd looked at the lot from above on a map app before we left, so I knew it was a loop and not a dead end. And I never put the Pilot in reverse. A pop-up sits low enough that I lose it in the mirrors on a tight turn, and backing it anywhere is a two-person job with Dana outside giving hand signals. In a full hotel lot with people walking to their cars, I wanted no part of that.
Once we were parked, we unhitched (the manager had said that was fine), set the tongue jack on a scrap of board so it wouldn't sink into the hot asphalt, chocked both wheels and locked up. The RTIC stayed in the Pilot, topped off with free ice from the machine down the hall, which made me happier than it should have.
Aquarium morning and a late getaway
Sunday was Father's Day. We ate the hotel breakfast, which Nico rated higher than anything I've ever cooked at camp, and then drove downtown in the Pilot with nothing behind it. After a week of towing, it felt like driving a go-kart. The Tennessee Aquarium cost $142 for the four of us, and we spent about two and a half hours between the river building and the ocean building. Maya stood at the penguin glass long enough that a staff member asked if she had questions. She had several. Nico liked the river otters best, mostly because one of them seemed to be showing off for him.
We were back at the hotel by 12:30, hitched in ten minutes and gone by 1 with the front desk's blessing. That put us at Grayton Beach around 6:30, Central time, with daylight to spare.
What I'd do differently: arrive by 3 p.m., before the dinner crowd fills the back rows. Ask on the phone whether the lot gets busy on weekends, not just whether we can park. And bring the chocks and the scrap board to the front of the cargo area, so I'm not unloading half the Pilot in a parking lot to find them.
Everything else I'd repeat, $164 included. Dana says she'd pay it again just for the water pressure in that shower.
