theboondork's RV blog

I think I'm going to move

4/21/2021

Roses are red, violets are blue, click all the pics, just like I do.

Sunrise elephant Butte state Park Picture

Elephant Butte, New Mexico sunrise.

Since I'm supposed to vacate my hookup site here at Elephant Butte State Park on Friday, I got to thinking that at various times on Friday is when a lot of folks come to the Park to camp for the weekend, and if I want to be assured of getting the best boondocking spot, maybe I should go where I want to boondock tomorrow instead of waiting till Friday.

Now that will mean losing one night that I've paid to stay at my hookup site. Still, these nights didn't cost very much because when I re-upped, I had my free month and a half annual camping pass extension. so technically it was only four dollars a night to stay at a campground with hookups, plus the $12 Reserve America reservation fee, which I would have to pay whether I stayed for one night or 14.

Ordinarily, I would have a pretty good idea that I could get an excellent boondocking location without having to worry about getting here early. But these are different times, and I appear to be dealing with a lot of brand-new campers that makes it more difficult for me to anticipate what they're going to do.

Many brand-new shiny vans are running around. And a lot of those folks like to boondock. I can tell the vans are brand-new because as soon as they set up camp, their outside dusting off the van. From what I've seen some vans are kinda advertised as hard-core boondocking machines that will keep you comfortable in the wilderness, and some people are buying them for that reason.

I also see many brand-new trailers that you might think are too small for older retired people to camp in, but they're camping in them nonetheless. These people want full hookups, so their not affecting us long-term boondocker's directly. What their doing is filling up the RV parks with new customers, and pushing more regular RVing people towards the boondocking lifestyle, and THERE helping fill up the boondocking areas.

So with all of these changes going on, I no longer feel like I can predict what might be happening from day to day. So losing a few dollars in camping fees is not as important to me as being happy and having a nice place to boondock for the weekend.

Theboondork

It looks like it's been a while since this boat ramp has been of any use to anyone except maybe canoes or kayaks. But from what I can tell while standing up on the bluff, is the water might be too shallow even for them.

The Rio Grande before it gets into Elephant Butte reservoir

13 Comments

ofm

4/21/2021 05:07:18 pm

If I recall correctly, that boat ramp has not been usable for at least 8-9 years.

Tom

4/21/2021 05:54:03 pm

Your probably right, I don't think I've seen Elephant Butte reservoir, what I would call full, for 20 years or more. I remember when I first drove past it on I-10, long time ago, and it was miles and miles of visible Lake I couldn't believe there was that much water in New Mexico.

I guess the weather will change, and it will fill up again, I just hope I'm around to see it.

Tom

Tim

4/22/2021 02:04:56 pm

Hi Tom,

That's good information, and a little scary to someone like me looking at possible full-time RVing in the near future. It's got me thinking more and more about having some kind of "base camp" that I can go if I just can't find a place to camp. When I do start traveling, one think I might start looking for are areas that would make a good location for a base camp (either a house, piece of land, pole barn, etc., etc.).

In your travels, have you come across areas that you felt would recommend as a good place to start a search for a "base camp"?

4/22/2021 03:09:49 pm

I guess you could say I already have a base camp near Denver, my daughter's house. I don't look at it as a base camp; I look at it as visiting my family. But I guess you could call it either one.

I have my property up in the Colorado mountains, where I can go and stay as long as I want until it gets too cold. So I guess you could call that a Summer base camp.

But like I've said before, I think you really need to spend enough time on the road to find out what you really want, because what you want now and what you may wish to then will probably change dramatically, as it did for me.

Here's an example of that change. When I started full-timing, my daughter and her husband lived in an apartment, literally in downtown Denver. And my original plans were to stop and visit them for a few weeks while staying in an RV park somewhere and keep on traveling all summer.

But after they had my grandson, they decided they wanted a house, can't blame them for that, and it just so happens when they were closing on the house I was just getting into Denver for my few weeks of planned Summer visit and hadn't found a place to stay yet. And they said their new house had a place to park the RV, so I actually slept in my Arctic Fox in their yard before they ever moved in.

Totally unexpected, no way to know it was going to work out that way, but now I get to live with my family all summer. And that's one of the reasons I always recommend living your full-timing life for a while before you start making expensive plans that may or may not fit your new way of living.

I like to move around a lot during the winter; it gives me more things to do and places to see. So it would be hard to have a base camp if you don't even know what state you're going to be in.

Now, if you're serious about boondocking, I sort of call Quartzsite Arizona my base camp because it's always been there; it's there all year, even though you really don't want to be there in the summer. And there's always plenty of room to boondock.

If I'm in Arizona and there no place else I could possibly stay, I go to Quartzsite. I don't have to own it; I don't have to pay property tax, there's no upkeep, there's no paperwork, there are no neighbors nearby, all I have to do is pull into a nice empty spot and pretty much stay there as long as I want. Now, if it makes you feel better to own it, once a year, you can go out in the yard, make a little fire, and throw a thousand dollars in the fire and call it property tax.

Tom

OFM

4/22/2021 03:15:56 pm

I agree with Mr. Boondork, travel first. I do not have a "basecamp" place and have not seen a need for one during 13 years of full time RV life.

4/22/2021 04:16:16 pm

After I responded to Tim's comment I got to thinking that since it's hard for most folks to cut all their ties with the world that there used to, sell their home, and move into an RV, maybe what Tim was talking about was having a place to call home. A plot of land, a piece of dirt, anything to look at and say "that's home." I think a lot of people feel that way, it's really the land and not necessarily the house built on it, that makes it home.

So maybe the reason some folks are able to make the transition to full-timing easier, and more successfully than others is their not as attached to the land as most people are and it's really the RV that quickly becomes "home."

So maybe that old trope about "home is where you park it" has a deeper meaning than we realized.

Tom

4/22/2021 10:12:53 pm

Thanks for the info, Tom. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention right now of buying anything else other than what I currently own. My thought is that I'll travel around and look at potential locations to have some kind of a "base camp", which might just be an acre lot somewhere, just in case we get into another situation like the last year.

I'm at a little of a disadvantage compared to you. I have no relatives to park at and absolutely no where to go if I were to have trouble finding a place to camp. I really don't think it's that bad of a situation right now, from everything I've seen, but if I could find a place to park the RV for a month or so on a small piece of land, I would be willing to make that purchase sometime in the future (I'm thinking 2 or 3 years from now).

I really don't have a desire for "a piece of dirt to call my own" - been there, done that and don't want a ton of maintenance. However, I would like an escape plan, so to speak, if the pressure of trying to find a place to camp would be too much. When I first start out, I'll probably keep the condo for a little while and where I storage place for the RV (thinking 6 months to a year). After that time period, I'll decide what will be next.

I agree about what you say about Quartzsite and I'm really not that worried about finding a place in the winter. I'm more concerned about the summer months when it's just too hot in southern Arizona. I don't have any specific places in mind, but somewhere that would be cool enough to go in the summer months, but possibly mild in the early fall.

Anyway, I don't want to give anyone the idea that reads these comments that I'm buying anything in the near future. On the contrary, I've been super conservative with spending any money (now that the big RV purchases are hopefully over for a little while). I'm saving up to make the jump, which I'll be able to discuss with you pretty soon.

Thanks again!

4/23/2021 07:56:06 am

Sorry it took me so long to respond but I had some problems this morning that needed to be taken care of, which I will write about in my blog this afternoon.

I'm extremely fortunate to have a family that has a place I can stay during the summer and wish everyone was so lucky, and actually it does give me a place that I call him "home."

During the height of the Bat flu problems last year when I was kind of stuck in Tucson I thought a lot about how I would be okay if I could just get back to Denver. Even though I knew in Tucson I wasn't around anyone except to buy groceries every once in a great while, and in Denver I was going to be around people. So my feelings had nothing to do with reality, it was just the feeling that "home" is where I needed to be. So I can understand your feelings of wanting to have a place that you can retreat to.

I agree completely with owning more property is simply owning more responsibilities and it will be a happy day when I never get another property tax bill. One of the problems of owning a "fallback" location is a lot of towns and counties have lots of covenants and restrictions on having RVs sitting on the property. And since those are all local laws, some of which are pretty esoteric and arcane, so anyplace you're interested in will have to be discussed with a local realtor familiar with the county you're interested in to determine if what you want to do is legally possible.

In general I would say if you don't mind the humidity, or the bugs, most places in the South are fairly temperate for most of the year. I prefer the mountains in the summer because of the cool temperatures and low humidity, but they've got their own problems with very touristy during the summer and expensive shopping.

But if you're only interested in a summer place there's a whole lot of places that are nice during the summer, but out West has cheaper land prices. But with people moving out of the big cities, which seems to be all the rage now, I'm not sure how long that will last, or how long any information I have will be relevant.

Can't wait to hear what your plans are, but whatever they are I'm sure they will be well thought out.

Tom

4/23/2021 01:54:09 pm

Hi Tom,

Your response didn't take long at all - you're always quick on responding.

Yeah, those restrictions on RV's are especially tough in a lot of places here in the northeast. If I did decide to buy something, I would have to do a lot of research on that particular area, along with the rules and restrictions. Also, I would want to find a place that I felt relatively secure in. I wouldn't want to get property that was in a sketchy area that I didn't feel safe in or had a lot of crime or vandalism. That could be hard to determine unless I spend some time in a specific area to get a feel for it.

I lived in the south for half my life and there are some places that I would consider, like western North Carolina. However, I wouldn't want to be in the town were my Dad lives in the summer - it's miserable there and it's almost unbearable just going to the grocery store.

Going back to my original question, I was wondering if you found yourself driving through an area and thought "Gee, this would be a great place to have a little property". If so, I would pin it on my Google Map and add it to the list of places to check out in my future travels.

Thanks again, Tom. Hope things are going well.

4/23/2021 03:21:26 pm

If you had asked me that question about interesting property 10 or more years ago I could've come up with something, or maybe even sold you some. But now days the last, and I mean the very last thing I think of when driving by any property is whether I want to buy it or not.

The property that I'm still remotely familiar with is all out West where I did the most of my wheeling and dealing. And I still believe the West is the best place to live. And if you're talking about summer only, Wyoming and Montana are underdeveloped, growing, and reasonably priced, but definitely not a place a retiree should spend the winter.

I love Colorado but it's growing fast, and I can only see property getting more expensive and very likely a worse place to live, although at the moment, it's still head and shoulders above most other places back East for least crime, lower taxes, and quality of life.

Arizona, as desolate and uninhabitable as it looks, is 90% something percent owned by the federal government. Indian reservations, bombing ranges, military bases, BLM, Arizona school lands, national forests, there's just not much privately held land left, so what there is of it is usually pretty pricey.

New Mexico has a lot to offer, and even though it's not as warm in the winter as southern Arizona it's still not too bad especially if you're used to cooler weather. Property values there are still reasonable, and there's a lot of pretty touristy areas that aren't overloaded with visitors like Colorado is. The average income in New Mexico is fairly modest which tends to keep property values low, and I don't see any signs yet that rich folks are flocking to Albuquerque... Every time I hear the name Albuquerque I always think of Bugs Bunny butchering the name.

If you stay away from the entire West Coast that's totally controlled by a political party that shall remain nameless, crime isn't a big deal. And hardly ever figures into my decisions on where I choose to stay.

The big thing about the West is the lack of humidity, I can't emphasize enough how much more comfortable life is in the winter and the summer when the humidity is low. I've lived in some of the highest humidity in the United States, that would be Miami Florida, and some of the lowest which is the desert Southwest and I much prefer the Southwest.

I wish I could put a pin in your map for you but I no longer have that much firsthand knowledge. But just in general I would say a strip of land that goes from northern New Mexico up to northern Montana would be a good place to spend the summer.

Tom

Linda Sand

4/23/2021 02:57:11 pm

One solution for Tim is to buy into an RV park somewhere up north. Someplace like https://mrarvpark.com where you can go anytime between April 15th and October 15th but when you aren't going to be there they can rent it to traveling RVers. We rented in that particular park one summer because it was close to our previous home so we could host gatherings of friends and family there. Our site backed up to the Mississippi River which was lovely. There are places like that down south as well if you want a base camp for the winter then travel for the summer. You will have neighbors, though, so Tom would not like it much. :)

4/23/2021 03:48:51 pm

You're right about Tom not liking it too much, but for Tim that's actually a brilliant idea.... I'm glad I thought of it.

Buying into, or leasing a place like that is really a great idea. Escapees sells lots like that and rent them out to people like me for a few nights for a piece of the action. That would be a good way to get a taste of different places to stay and if it doesn't work out, I know some places like that have a waiting list of people wanting to buy so selling it and trying some other place might work really well.

See us old geezers can still come up with good ideas were not as old and useless as we appear. I think I'll call the President and recommend an escalator to get in and out of Air Force One, he will probably listen to me now.

Tom

4/26/2021 09:04:41 am

Linda - Thanks for the link to Mississippi Riverwood Park. I bought my Arctic Fox Fifth Wheel right down the road from there in Minnesota and loved it there (of course, that was in the summer). Minnesota is a location I have considered, so I'll keep this as a possibility.

I've been looking at Escapees for awhile, but I haved really found anything I'm that interested in, considering that I don't feel the need for a place in the winter, but just the summer. But, I haven't given up on them.

In general, finding RV lots for sale is tough. They are far and few between in the places I'm interested in (somewhere at higher elevations or further north) and a lot of them are only for Class A's. There seems to be quite a few of them in Arizona and Florida, but as you've mentioned, there is tons of boondocking possibilities in the winter in Arizona.

I have found a few that have piqued my interest in the Arizona to Idaho/Montana/Washington State corridor that you've mentioned and am going to keep my eye on them.

Thanks again for all the input.

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

I think I'm going to move

Leave a Reply.

Archives

CONTACT THEBOONDORK