can an old geezer live in a pop-up slide in truck camper? Or is that the very definition of insanity?

When I was a young'un we didn't have no pics to click, we just had to hold the picture closer to our face.

The sun peeking out from behind a cloud spotlighting the mountain.

It got cloudy yesterday afternoon, and sprinkled a little bit but not enough to wet the ground. But I did manage to get some  cloudy weather pictures before sunset.  This morning everything was back to normal with clear blue cloudless skies.

I spent a little more time thinking in depth about my offhand remark the other day about storing the Arctic Fox and spending the winter traveling in my little Bronco slide-in truck camper.

The more I thought about it the more fun it sounded. I think that would be a great way to get a better idea of my ability to live full-time in a considerably smaller space than I'm doing now. And even though it wouldn't be the same as actually living full-time in the Bronco, camping in it for six months would be a pretty good approximation of what it would be like to live in a small space like that permanently.

For six months I would have to keep it stocked with groceries, do laundry, deal with a little bit of snow, and some 90° weather, none of which the little Bronco is designed to do.

And I'm not used to roughing it in the Arctic Fox so it might be a real challenge for me to live that way in the Bronco. After all, the little Bronco doesn't have an air conditioner to fall back on if the temperatures get too hot, and its insulation is marginal at best. There would be no other option than to move to someplace cooler if the weather became unbearable. On the plus side, it's a lot easier to pack up and move the little Bronco to random places than it is to move the Arctic Fox where there's more logistics involved, and I have to be a bit more  certain of my destination.


I would have to make some changes to the little Bronco. Since it only has 400 amps of solar panels and two 100 amp AGM batteries, I would probably either put a couple more solar panels on the roof, if there's room,  or make the four panels that are on it now tilt to catch more of the sun in the winter. The four panels work okay in the summer but would be less than optimal long-term boondocking.  I would also take the four lithium iron batteries out of the Arctic Fox and stuff them into the little Bronco. The two AGM's it has now are okay for  mostly sunny weather boondocking, but they won't tote the load if it's cloudy for a few days.

The refrigerator in it is very small, I would call it a weekender at best. I've been carrying an ice chest with me for my summertime mini-vacations just to make up for the tiny fridge.

Yes, some improvements would have to be made for me to remain remotely comfortable while long-term boondocking. But I'm thinking some good things might come of it. And the most interesting thing would be all the new boondocking places I could find just having the ability to turn off on any dirt road I see. And think of all  the places I could safely and easily explore for future use in the Arctic Fox if my downsizing plans don't work out. So it might not be the most comfortable winter traveling I do, but it just may be the most educational.

                                       theboondork

Thanks to Nancy George's comment this morning about New Zealand, it made me think more about my dad and my early life in South Carolina. And since I've digitized some of the family photographs, although most are still in shoe-boxes somewhere, I had this picture of my dad on my computer.

My dad is kneeling, the second one on the left. And like I was telling Nancy George this morning, you can see the Globemaster's squadron logo of a Wallaby on the side. You can also see the name of the C-124 is the "State of South Carolina." This picture was taken sometime in the late 1950s.

These guys were like a second family to me. They came to our house for dinner, and we would play baseball in the backyard. And sometimes we would all go to Paris Mountain Park just outside of Greenville for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon.