Community Forums

cb5300 · 06-11-2009, 01:20 PM

Does anyone know if there is a time limit on parking at rest areas in SD? I will be passing thru SD in a couple of weeks and was wondering if they had time limits like some states do?

Dwain · 06-11-2009, 03:05 PM

I seem to recall seeing that South Dakota is "as posted", with a 3 hour limit on overnight parking.

Washington (and Oregon I think) have an 8 hour maximum parking rule in effect in rest areas.

I would think the lesser used rest area's wouldn't be as strictly checked,

doc · 06-11-2009, 03:15 PM

Three hours woiuld sort of go against the 8 hour off rule for truckers would it not?

Dwain · 06-11-2009, 03:22 PM

I agree, that a 3 hour limit defeats the intent of the law that truckers must abide by. Bearing in mind that rest areas weren't constructed to allow overnight parking / camping, but were constructed to allow convenience stops with toilets for the traveling public.

As I stated earlier, I am only responding with something I recalled regarding this question CB posted.

read & learn · 06-12-2009, 09:51 AM

I agree with Dwain rest stops are for a short break in driving.
Let's look back in time and try to understand how us RVers started to use any space that our RVs would fit into.
Years ago when I first started "Camping" we had a small little 5X7 ultillty trailer that we put all our camping equipment into and went to the camp ground that was within a days drive of home, very few of us made really big trips where we had to drive more than one day and if we did do a couple of days we found a motel for the night.
Back in the 60's and 70's campers {what we now call RVs} started to be come more and more popular making for longer trips.
This is when we started to look for a place to stay close to the Interstate and rest stops became popular and most States added some security to these rest areas. Now the problem became RVs completing with the truckers and thats when the RVers started looking for other places that were safe.
As I said in the begining we now look for any place that our RV will fit into. Now I don't say this is wrong, except some of us have to learn how to use these overnight areas. They are not Campgrounds, but in most cases public parking lots and we must learn to treat them as such or we will start seeing 3hr limits for RVs everywhere.