theboondork's RV blog

Am I about to wimp out ?

5/9/2021

Clicking the pics just might make your day....... into your worst day ever.

Nearby mountains. The silver poles sticking up on the right is the Elephant Butte State Park sailboat storage yard, and those are the masts.

There weren't as many people at Elephant Butte State Park this weekend as there was last weekend. But there is still more than I used to see on a typical weekend the last time I was here in May 2019. So it seems to me there are more people than usual at the Park, but I have no idea why it was so packed with people last weekend that it looked like a holiday.

I've only got a few more days until I leave here, so I've been doing a few things to get the Arctic Fox ready to travel again. I haven't been in a cleaning mood lately, so the Arctic Fox is looking pretty ratty inside, but I figure I'll wait till I get to Storrie Lake State Park and give the Arctic Fox a thorough cleaning before I leave for Denver.

I've also been waiting till I get to Denver before I get my Bat flu shot; I'll be the only adult there that hasn't been jabbed yet. I figured I'd wait until I get there so I'll have some family with me if I have some adverse reaction to the shot that makes me spaz out.

I've been giving more thought to traveling in the little Bronco pop-up camper when I leave Denver next fall, and I'm having several concerns about it.

The first thing I'm thinking is I'm not sure I want to try living in the little Bronco for the entire six or seven months; that sounds like a long time to live in a pop-up slide-in truck camper, considering all my other trips in it have only been a week or so.

One of the things that concern me is my winter travels; I have faced some pretty cold weather and some pretty hot weather on occasions. I think I can deal with the cold weather, but the hot weather has me worried because the little Bronco doesn't have an air conditioner. So I can't fall back on a hookup site if the weather gets too hot for too long; my only option will be to move to cooler weather.

Leaving the Arctic Fox alone for that long also worries me. I know it will be safe at my daughter's house but leaving it sitting that long is not good for the tires. And I'll have to make sure it's thoroughly winterized for well below zero temperatures.

I'm considering the possibility of not doing this experiment for the entire winter. Maybe it would be better to only try living in the little Bronco for a couple of months, and then come back to Denver and get the Arctic Fox to finish out the year. Reason being is I've never actually thought I would live in the little Bronco full time because it's a pretty Spartan way to live, and I'm not too fond of the idea of having to put the top up and down every time I go to the store, that gets real annoying, real quick.

Spending the winter traveling in the little Bronco was meant more to be a test of living in a small space than making the little Bronco my "forever home." I feel If I can full-time in the limited space that the little Bronco offers, then I should be able to live in a van, a truck camper, or a culvert under the highway.

Theboondork

Sunset truth or consequences New Mexico Picture

My sunset the other day. This tree jumped into the picture just as I was taking the shot spoiling my sunset photo.

I suddenly moved yet again yesterday afternoon when the best boondocking spot on Ridge Road opened up. One of the many advantages of boondocking is you don't have to go whining to someone in charge begging for a camping spot with fewer alligators living in it than the site you're in now; you simply pack up and go to whatever sites empty.

But in this case, this particular boondocking site is on a hill with the best view of the marina and reservoir of any spot in this area. Unfortunately I'm not the only one that knows that.

If you look right below the rising sun, you might see my brand-new folding lawn chair and water jug that I put in this site to hold it while I went back and packed up the Arctic Fox. I guess it worked keeping other boondocker's away because here I am.

A cloudless sunrise this morning wakes up a batch of beachy boondocker's.

Even in silhouette a bird expert like myself can spot a herd of Chihuahua Desert flightless pelicans.

These birds actually learned to fly 2.7 million years ago but nobody ever got around to changing their name. This became very advantageous for this flightless, flying pelican because it makes these birds very hard to spot by most hunters and amateur birders who are looking for them on the ground, but are only finding chickens.

One of the rarest of birds, they inhabit the riparian wetlands of southern New Mexico but are commonly found in restaurants disguising themselves as fried chicken.

PRAISE THE LORD ! She yells as she raises her arms to the Heavens, I NEVER HAVE TO SPEND ANOTHER NIGHT IN AN RV PARK AGAIN !!!

14 Comments

OFM

5/9/2021 04:21:57 pm

Is there a chance that learning to back trailers is the best option?

Tom

5/9/2021 04:57:24 pm

I wish. But unfortunately my trailer backing problems have plagued me my entire life. When I lived in Miami I almost always had boats and I backed up those boat trailers on a regular basis not only at the boat dock but I backed them under my carport when I got home. Throw in backing up some motorcycle trailers and I had plenty of practice, But it was never easy for me, and sometimes pretty ugly, but I loved fishing, skin diving, and spearfishing on the reefs down in the Keys so much that I was willing to put up with the embarrassment.

So I can back the Arctic Fox up into a relatively small area, if I absolutely have to, and the last time I did it was a couple weeks ago before a Ranger ran me out of what turned out to be an off-limits boondocking spot at the other end of Elephant Butte state Park, so I can do it but it's never easy, and always stressful.

I think my explanation is the wires in my brain are crossed, knowing left and right is not natural to me, I have to think about it. But when I'm looking in a mirror and everything is backwards telling left and right is almost impossible for me. Thank God the Air Force never marched anywhere after basic training and tech school.

So I figure if I'm still having these left and right problems after 74 years chances are its not going to go away, and I stand a much better chance of finding campsites whether boondocking or in RV parks if I'm in an RV that's no more difficult to back up than my pickup truck, which by the way for some reason I have no problems with.

Tom

Judith

5/9/2021 09:15:05 pm

Glad you've got a good spot, and you've got some good photos in amongst them. Very nice. As I have zero knowledge about RVing, I cannot contribute. However, as a life-long member of the brain-wiring malfunction group (lefty-loosey, righty-tighty) I can sympathize on that score. Oddly enough, I can back things up...trailers with boats on them, trailers with cows in them, trailers with wood on them, and trailers with my wordly belongings in them. But that was all long ago. Lefty-loosey righty-tighty is the clue to my continued existence.

5/9/2021 10:08:26 pm

Thank you Judith, I don't know about good photos, but I do have a good boondocking spot.

Since you allegedly have "zero knowledge about RVing" one wonders how you would end up reading blogs about full–timing in an RV? It seems like if you didn't know anything about RVs, reading blogs about people in RVs would be pretty boring, I can barely proofread my own blog without being bored.

I would have that same problem with lefty- Loosey righty- tighty but I've done so much mechanical work in my life I just automatically know which way things screw on and off, it just feels natural, in other words I can do it right, but I probably couldn't tell you if I was turning it left or right.

I've always wondered if my backing up problems with a trailer, and my problem telling left from right has anything to do with the fact that I do different things with different hands. I shoot a rifle right-handed, I write left-handed, I eat left-handed, I throw a ball right-handed, I bat left-handed, I golf left-handed, I shoot a bow right-handed, and I fish right-handed.

I'm not even sure what that's called, I know it's not ambidextrous, so I don't know what to call myself, that's why I just settled on "Tom." But I've always wondered if whatever made me that way also gave me these difficulties backing up a trailer.

But I reckon if a person has to be burdened with a lifelong problem, backing up a trailer is the least of my worries.

Tom

5/10/2021 08:22:54 pm

To answer your question: because I'm curious. (AKA nosy) and RV bloggers are often interesting, good writers, and can take good photos!

5/10/2021 08:43:40 pm

Well.... That was an excellent answer, concise, to the point, and unarguably true.... What can I say but, BRAVO!

Tom

Larry Worsham

5/10/2021 06:11:04 am

I guess I am blessed with the ability to back a trailer well. Never had a problem in 45 years of trailer pulling. My tow behind is 32 ft long. After my first trailer backing mishap last year. (Back in spot on the passenger side, hidden by bushes, kids showing up at the back of the trailer) I pushed against a pole as I turned to sharp. I since purchased a back up camera with a view of the rear and another view down the passenger side of the trailer. This has worked well along having my wife along as a spotter. She wasn't with me when I crunched last year.

The trick that I learned years ago was putting my hand at the bottom of the steering wheel. Turn the wheel to the left and the rear of the trailer will go to the left and right to the right. Go slow and ease it in. If you put your hand on the top of the wheel it is opposite. My simple brain doesn't process it well.

I have a Ram mega cab and a 32 ft tow behind and it makes for a long rig. The wife is kind of intimidated by driving it and so I too have looking at downsizing. We are used to the space we have and have to decide what compromises we have to make. Fortunately we don't have to make a decision in the near future. The prices and availability of alternatives force us to put off any changes for at least a couple of years. We would have trouble making a drastic drop in size such as you are considering but that is because their are two of us along with a couple of large canine childrren.

I had a cab over camper for a few years and it was convenient due to the fact we horse camped and hunted. It was a pain to take off and put back on and packing up every time we wanted to go to town we had to pack up. I would definitely look at one if by myself but would consider towing a jeep behind me. You don't back up a toad. Disconnect it before pulling into the site and repark it.

Good luck with you decision. It is a complicated one. Perhaps a one month trip in the Bronco would help you decide.

5/10/2021 08:56:07 am

Thank you for that information Larry. Hearing how other people do things helps me figure out how to do the same things, or maybe introduces me to some new ideas.

I also put my hands at the bottom of the steering wheel and that does help a lot. And I have two backup cameras on the Arctic Fox, one looking behind me like a rearview mirror, and another one looking down at my motorcycle, to make sure it's still there. Those things do help me to get backed up when I absolutely have to, especially since I have to do it by myself. The cameras are great I don't know how I lived without them. I even put a wireless one on the back of the little Bronco last year.

And I don't think having a spotter would help, they would be laughing so hard I would probably run over them and the picnic table.

Yes it is hard to give up the space that you get in a larger RV. Because living in an RV is just like living in a regular house, your stuff will expand to fill up all the available space. Even though I've got way more space right now than I need to live in, I'll bet I couldn't even get one room of what I had in my house into the Arctic Fox.

And even though I threw away 80% of the clothes I had before I went full-time, and I've thrown away even more in the six years I've been living in the Arctic Fox, I could still get rid of half what I have left and never miss them. But it sure was nice having all the room in the Arctic Fox when I was self isolating in Tucson Arizona last winter. But how often I'm I going to have to do that? Never I hope.

I had hunting buddies that always wanted to go on a horseback Elk hunt off in some wilderness somewhere, but where we lived in Teller County Colorado we had more Elk running around than we knew what to do with, so spending that much time on a horse never appealed to me. I've always said, and it was pretty much true, I saw more Elk in my backyard than I ever saw while hunting.

This certainly is a bad time to go looking for another RV to buy, but at least you should get more for your old one which will help amortize the increased price of the new one. But your wise to wait until things have calmed down a bit.

Yes that packing up and unpacking again every time I wanted to run to the store was my biggest complaint of having my home and my transportation in one unit. I guess if you're the kind of person that's good at stocking up on groceries, and are happy to sit in one place for a week without moving, a slide in truck campers okay. But if you want to drive around every day, taking your home with you may not a good idea.

And since I'm a solo fulltimer, to me that automatically meant that any RV that was going to require a toad was out of the question, because I can't imagine the difficulty of having to deal with a toad all by myself.

Great to hear from you again Larry.

Tom

Glen

5/10/2021 02:08:56 pm

It sounds like your decision comes down to the amount of stress of a trailer and backing or the amount of stress the expense of another RV causes.

I had trouble backing my 27-5L but I manage ok. A 5th wheel is definitely harder than a pull behind due to the pivot point of the hitch.

In high school I worked at a trucking company shop moving things around. 40' flat beds were easy, vans were another story.

Good Luck!

5/10/2021 03:45:15 pm

Yeah Glenn, stress does have a lot to do with it. And anything I can do to cut down on my stress makes me a happy camper.

Right now I'm dealing with two separate vehicles, a truck for transportation, and a trailer to live in. So it seems to me I could automatically get rid of half my stress by having only one vehicle that I could use as transportation and a home.

And absolutely, having to back up the trailer puts a lot of stress on me. But in this case its not so much the stress, because I can back it into a campsite.... eventually. It's the fact that having an RV that can be parked ANYWHERE is going to make boondocking a little easier for me and make finding a spot at an RV Park a whole lot easier than it is now since small back- in sites are out of the question for me right now.

One thing I have going for me is 20 years ago, give or take, all I had for traveling was a Hallmark pop-up slide – in truck camper. And even though I didn't live in it for more than a month at a time I traveled extensively in it for about 10 years before it mostly fell apart, so I have a lot of experience dealing with a small truck camper.

For me the worst thing I ever had to back up was a motorcycle trailer. They're very short, the trailers wheels are very close to your tow vehicles rear wheels, and I was doing it in a van so I couldn't even see the trailer until it jackknifed.

Tom

5/11/2021 06:08:32 am

All this discussion of trailer backing reminds me of a time I was camping at a State Park on the Oregon coast. The spaces were tight. I couple pulled up to the spot next to us with a brand new trailer. Hubby got very frustrated trying to back the rig in and was yelling at his wife who was trying to spot him. She was doing fine. He wasn't. He told her to back it in if she thought she could do a better job. I sort of snuck around to the drivers side out of his sight and asked if she would like help and she said sure. I told her to do exactly what I say and then told her to put her hand at the bottom of the wheel and pull forward passed the spot and then I had her back up easing into the spot. The guy was so pissed he didn't provide any directions. He didn't realize I helped until she told him later. He was a cold shoulder all weekend.

5/11/2021 02:05:55 pm

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you Larry, but I've been traveling all morning.

Cool story, and it does fit right in with what's going on with me.

If there's anything more frustrating for a man that can't back up a trailer... It's a woman who can.

Tom

Linda

5/10/2021 12:20:39 pm

One of the things I liked about living in a van was having so little to do to move it that I could move every day with no regret. I had a lot of storage space for such a small vehicle, though, so I rarely left out much more than my laptop,

5/10/2021 03:17:39 pm

I can relate to that Linda. Depending on how long I've been someplace, I may or may not, have a lot to do to get the Arctic Fox ready to move. Unless I'm staying someplace for a long period of time, say a week or more, I don't really unpack much. I have a place for everything and most of the time everything stays in its place.

But the good news is I don't have to move the Arctic Fox when I want to go to the store. And that is the advantage of having a detachable RV.

But.... I have determined that the advantages of having a detachable RV, no longer outweigh the benefits of a smaller, lighter, easier to maneuver RV. Like a van or a slide – in truck camper.

I'm the same way when I'm taking a minivacation in the little Bronco pop-up slide – in camper. I can have the inside ready to go in a minute or two, it's putting down the top that takes the longest, and is the most annoying. Having a hard sided slide – in truck camper would fix that problem.

I've always felt like there's no such thing as not enough storage space, the problem is too much stuff.

Tom

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