| don't forget to click the pic |
sunset at Ben Avery gun range.
| The rains finally stopped late yesterday afternoon and by this morning all of the puddles were gone, except the ones in the road because some of them are pretty deep, but they have gotten smaller. The desert is a weird place, not enough rain and then way too much rain, too hot in the daytime and too cold at night. But the extremely low humidity makes it all pretty tolerable even at its worst. Walking around the campground today I can see that its nowhere near full especially the boondocking section where I'm at. I guess that makes sense because most of these folks are gonna be here for a week and I would imagine most RV's aren't set up to boondock for that long. Most folks I talk to have only boondocked for a few days at a time and found it so limiting and uncomfortable that a few days is all they could stand, which of course is very true if you're not properly set up for it. And therein lies the problem, if you don't know if you're going to like boondocking for extended periods of time it doesn't make much sense to spend thousands of dollars on a bunch of solar panels and a proper battery bank, or a large and costly, not to mention noisy, generator just to try it out. But if you don't have the proper equipment for boondocking it probably won't be a very pleasant experience after a few days. Yes you can do it but its not very comfortable and you have to live being very frugal with your electric usage, and most folks don't want to live that way for very long, it's more a test of your survival skills than an enjoyable way to live. The most common thing I see happening is folks dipping their toe in the boondocking waters and not getting enough solar panels or batteries to live without being plugged in for long periods of time. This concept is fine if your a part-time boondocker and a week or two is as long as you want to stay away from hookup sites, but even then you're probably going to have limitations on your electric use other than the normal one of not being able to run your air conditioner. Since I enjoy boondocking, and prefer it to living in RV parks, and yet want to be just as comfortable as if I was living in an RV Park. I have found that being able to boondock with the convenience and comfort that I want takes six 140 watt solar panels, and four 100 amp lithium iron batteries. And I make the distinction of lithium iron batteries because they can be discharged down to 90% of their capacity without harm or shortening their life-cycle, which gives me way more usable amps than the same size lead acid batteries, and they can be recharged quicker which is an added bonus on partially cloudy days. And speaking of plugged in, the last time I was hooked up to electricity was my first week at the Pima County Fairgrounds in Tucson Arizona, after my first week I moved over to the Fairgrounds boondocking area and I think that was sometime around Christmas, so I've been living on sunshine since then and I'm just as comfortable, contented, and happy as if I was plugged into that prominent, ever popular, power post.... maybe even more so. theboondork |
| As I walked around the campground today I noticed a distinct difference between the amount of folks camped in the full hookup section and those of us that are boondocking. This is part of the full hookup section, and as you can see there's a lot of RVs over there. |
| Meanwhile this is part of the boondocking area. Within this picture there are probably a dozen empty campsites, but they're hard to see because the weeds are so tall. That white spot right in the middle of the picture is the Arctic Fox, and as you can see its not exactly awning to awning over there. I realized from the start that being a serious boondocker made me the odd one, but seeing two pictures like this makes it obvious to me just how odd. But that's the beauty of full-time RVing you get to live the way you want even if you're odd. |
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