Boondocking



Today I moved to a new neighborhood in which I expect to stay only a few days. I'm going to see how I do at boondocking for more than just an overnight stay at WalMart.   For those not familiar with boondocking, it's living in an RV without hookups - no electric, no water, nothing. It has been very nice here during the day, warm without being hot. Nights, however, are down into the high 40s, which is quite cool.

My traveling friend Robin also moved today, but went north to the Phoenix area. She is volunteering with a group of other RVers for the next three weeks to do some work on a woman's shelter up there.  This is typical of her - very caring and giving.  We had fun traveling together and I hope we meet up again. It was funny, when we would be discussing something and I'd tell her what I thought we should do, she would say that it was just what she was going to say. That happened many times between us, almost like mental telepathy. 

When we checked out this site last week, a Canadian couple told us the land is owned by the railroad and campers were allowed to stay two weeks. Arizona does not have the great deal on their state parks that New Mexico does, they seem to be the same price as a regular RV park. Since I'll be paying more for camping in Arizona, I figured I could offset some of the cost by boondocking once in a while. I do have a little Honda generator I can use to charge the battery, use the microwave or whatever else I need - except the air conditioner.

I got here before noon, unhooked my 5th wheel and had lunch. Then I went around collecting garbage and trash other campers had left. I now have 3 large bags of it in the back of my truck. I'm almost sure RVers didn't do that - if they did, I'm shocked.  RVers appreciate areas for boondocking and they appreciate nice clean campsites. I don't think they would trash it up and possibly lose privileges for themselves and others by having areas like this fenced off and closed to public use. For all campers, the message is clear - please clean up your campsite when leaving so that others can continue to benefit from the use of these camping areas.

By the time I was done with that little project and had my area nice and clean, I noticed that the sun had moved and was now beating down on the side of my RV where the refrigerator is. Since I was now running that on LP, I decided to find another campsite where the refrigerator would be in the shade in the afternoon. I found a nice little site and moved - it's much easier when you don't have water, electric and sewer hooked up. As a bonus, the new site I found was clean so I didn't have to collect more trash.

 

I spent a good part of the afternoon reading and relaxing in the shade. I was being lazy like that when a truck pulled up and a woman came around to talk to me. She said she saw me pull in here earlier in the afternoon and that she had a house with a fenced horse area that had electric and water.  If I wanted to, I could come stay at her house. I told her that it was very generous of her to make such an offer and explained that this was my first experiment in trying to live without hookups. She understood and told me she knew RV parks in this area were expensive and thought I was trying to avoid paying. She stayed for a while and we talked about RVing, her parents and others in her family have traveled like that. We had a nice visit and before she left, I thanked her again for offering her facilities to me.

When it got close to sunset, I climbed up the hill near the campsites to take sunset photos. When I finish with this experiment, I'll let you know how it went.