Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Boondocking at Hot Spring California

I took off from Yuma today about 11 and headed toward California.  Hot Spring is a Long Term Visitor Area as designated by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  There is a 14 day limit on stays in this area and the fee is $40 for those 14 days.  Of course there are no facilities at all except for trash pickup.  As I drove in I could see everyone with large arrays of solar panels, which made me jealous.

It's a massive area and everybody was parked every which way.  As I drove around looking for a spot, I tried to figure out where the sun would be during the day so that I could park with my refrigerator facing the opposite direction.  I found a pretty nice spot and stopped and walked around a little bit.  I didn't really see anything much better except for when I got back to my rig I saw a little back-in spot that would be perfect.  I've never been really been very good at backing up but I figured I could use the practice and I really liked the little area that I would be backing into.  I hadn't set myself up to back into the spot, but I decided I'd just give it a go instead of going around again.    So I backed right in -  just like I knew what I was doing!  I just love it when there's no audience!

So I'm going to be wandering around the desert exploring.  There's a little town nearby to explore and I plan to go to the Imperial Sand Dunes that are nearby.  

This was done on my phone and I have no idea why it won't let me have the picture at the top.  But, anyway this is my campsite.

2 comments:

  1. We have never paid to camp on BLM land that had no facilities. I don't understand why you had to pay the $40.00. We have stayed in many BLM areas at no cost.

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    1. Paula - I'm at a Long Term Visitor Area (LTVA) and at those areas, the fee is $40 per 14 day period, or $180 for 6 months. I think the reason is that these areas are the ones the snowbirds seem to flock to, in southern Arizona and California. Also, some of these have facilities - some have toilets, some have water available (but not at sites), some just have trash dumpsters. So, I guess we're subsidizing the facilities. I also have camped at BLM land that had no fee.

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