theboondork's RV blog

Little bronco on my mind

6/14/2021

There's something extremely important about clicking the pics that you must never forget.

A Snapdragon. I never cared much for the Snapdragon, mostly because it doesn't look like a flower. To me it looks like something on the menu at a vegan restaurant.

It was hot today! My outside thermometer hit 100 by early afternoon, so being able to plug into my daughter's garage so that my air conditioner worked saved my bacon.... And speaking of bacon, that's precisely what I felt like while standing outside. There's supposed to be about three more days of this, and then it's forecast to drop back to the mid-80s again.

This hot weather sure makes me want to get higher in altitude again. Maybe in another week or so, I'll take a few days and go up to my property, it's a skosh over 9000 feet, so it will be a lot cooler.

I'm really looking forward to my first trip, brief though it may be, in the little Bronco truck camper. This will be the first time that I get to boondock in it while considering the possibility of taking it on my winter travels. All the other times I've traveled in the little Bronco, I have always looked at it as a mini-vacation or a camper for one week or so.

This time I'll be evaluating its suitability as a full-timer RV which is an entirely different way of looking at things. But remember, I'm not thinking of actually using the little Bronco as a full-time camper; the little Bronco is just going to represent the possibility of living in a much smaller space such as a van or a regular hard side slide-in truck camper.

I know I'm going to have to get rid of a whole lot of stuff that I schlep around in the Arctic Fox, but there's no way around that. Some things will be easy, like clothes and extra blankets, but other things, such as a lot of my tools, will be painful.

When loading up the Arctic Fox, I didn't have to worry much about my possessions being overweight or to have a place to put all the stuff because the Arctic Fox had an almost 4000-pound carry capacity and plenty of space to store most anything. But downsizing to the size that I'm considering now will require nearly as much effort and agonizing decisions as my first downsizing from a 4000 square-foot, three-story house to the Arctic Fox.

But all things considered, I think my happiness level will increase, and my stress, such that it is, will decrease so that this rather drastic change will be worth it. It's hard to simplify your life, but I think in the end, it will be worth it.

Here's some information folks that stay in RV parks might find useful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCsvN6fZfE

Theboondork

A tiny little purple wildflower.

Rosebud on a background of purple flowers.

6 Comments

OFM

6/14/2021 08:23:04 pm

There have been a few times in the 14 years I have been traveling that having a fairly small rig has gotten me into an RV park that was "full". I quickly learned to be at the new location, if it is an RV park, by earlier than 3 pm. Additionally the boondocking ability has opened a door at some places that let me just stay "over there near the old fence". I am a bit apprehensive about when I pull out of Decatur this summer.

Tom

6/14/2021 09:25:55 pm

Like you, I have found that RV parks want to make money, and if you're talking to someone at an RV Park with the authority, they can almost always find a place to put you even if it's just out of the way, "over there." And yes it helps to have a small rig because there's more empty spots "over there" the small rig will fit in better than a 40 foot class A.

Yes summer is a tough time to be traveling in an RV. You not only have to compete with the full-timers looking for a place to stay, like we all do in the winter, but now you have to deal with a bunch of tourists, and vacationers looking for a place to stay that have a lot more money to spend on a place to camp than the average full-timer.

And on top of that you need a place that's cool and not 100° every day, which for the most part is either up in altitude or as far North as you can go. I think the closest place to you at the moment that is comfortable in the summer is the Smoky Mountains, their not too tall, and the weather's good. But unfortunately the tourist towns in the Smokies such as Gatlinburg, Cherokee, Maggie Valley, and places like that are packed and overflowing with tourists during the summer, as is Smoky Mountain National Park. But my guess from past experience is that RV parks were booked up long ago and finding a place to stay might be based more on luck than knowledge.

So I understand your apprehension. As crowded as Colorado is during the summer I to would hate to be running around here trying to find a place to stay, and with all these new RVs on the road its going to be even more difficult, and I can't imagine what it's going to be like when the factories get all those new RVs built that people are waiting for.

My daughter and her husband bought there house here in Denver the first year I started full timing, so I had a place to stay when I got back to Denver the very first summer. But if they were still living in an apartment my original plan was to boondock in the Colorado mountains where it's cool and there's plenty of National Forest to Move around in. I know the mountains aren't your favorite place to be, but they do have free boondocking and the summer weather is almost perfect.

Tom

Larry Steve Worsham

6/15/2021 06:52:37 am

Its going to be interesting how vacation and RV activities develop over the next few years. We are changing our travel plans to spring and fall when school is in session. Its interesting to note similar problems are occurring in other segments of the recreation industry. I have a friend who has a time share in Hawaii. Hawaii has very strict covid restrictions. They were finally relaxed to allow travel there. After going through the entry requirements (test and vaccine requirements) The found that the number of tourist has overloaded a system that is only operating at about 50%. It is impossible to get a dinner reservation and to any of the tourist related activity. He said if your coming to Hawaii plan on eating in McDonalds and just driving around. (Something I would likely do anyway if I had a desire to go to Hawaii). The recreation industry will take a while to shake out I think. More commercial RV parks will develop where they can and on demand pricing will increase. Idaho has doubled State Park Fees in popular parks for out of state visitors. Thor industries manufacturing capacity is sold out for over a year. Somewhere between 14-18 billion in pending sales. We were spoiled for boondock camping in Oregon as I knew of several boondocking spots due to the amount of public land. Texas is a different story. I am not a full timer but as a part timer (2-4 months on the road ) I think we will lay low until fall and go from there. I think your on the right track to down side and increase versatility. We are talking about it but it will be tough to reduce the comfort of our 30 ft. trailer with its 300 watts of solar and improvements I've made over the years. I think the problems with the RV parks, waiting for your RV to be made and the high fuel prices will impact the casual RV traveler in the next year hopefully. Sorry for the rambling thoughts....I figure I'm in good company! LOL!!

6/15/2021 08:28:04 am

Yes you are, and you're always welcome to ramble. It's good to hear other people's stories and how they're going to handle this new world after Covid.

There is going to be a lot of changes and the question will be, what are they? And how long will they last? And the problem is, nobody knows because we've never faced something like this before. I think the closest we can come to quick and world changing events in recent memory would be World War II and post-World War II, with millions of GIs getting out of the service and coming back home to America.

That was something that completely changed America and the way we lived forever. Women had jobs, millions of people were getting married, millions of babies were born in a very short period of time.... That would be me. Suburbs were being built to house all those new families, shopping centers were built close to those suburbs, and people stopped shopping in the cities. And the new war technology gave us the atomic bomb which is baby boomers grew up with and affected us even today. And you could name hundreds of other ways, life in America was changed forever.

So I think the Bat flu, and people's concern for the possibility of similar events will affect America for quite some time. It probably won't make the dramatic changes that post-World War II did, but some of the changes will be profound, and will affect Americans, especially us older folks for the rest of our lives.

Tom

Linda

6/15/2021 03:38:29 pm

You link took me to a video where she said RV sales are up 20% and RV parks are up 1%--um, problem! Add to that newbies who think boondocking doesn't have guidelines so they can just go park anywhere and do anything they want there and we're in a world of hurt. Maybe I'm not so sorry to be off the road this year.

6/15/2021 04:37:51 pm

Maybe the lady was trying to say that the RV parks are up 1% already and their's still $14 billion in RV orders waiting to be built.

Yeah I've read on the Internet that there are some boondocking areas that are already being closed because the crowds aren't taking care of the land. That's always gone on to one degree or another, but the more people you have in an area the more that's going to happen. And their are government agencies that look for any reason to close off public land to any use whatsoever.

Try not to get down on boondocking just yet, I haven't seen anything that would make me stop boondocking, in fact it's just the opposite. My complaint about commercial campgrounds were always that they cost more than they're worth, and there too crowded with people. And everybody agrees that's going to get considerably worse. And I feel State Parks and National Parks are heading in the same direction

But there's a lot of boondocking out here in the West. The last time I was in Quartzsite and boondocked out on Plumosa road, there were a lot of people around but not all that many. So I drove down Plumosa road to the little town of Bouse, and even though almost all that land is BLM between Quartzsite and Bouse there wasn't enough people boondocked between those two towns to have a baseball game.

So I think you will always be able to find a place in southern Arizona where your van will fit right in with just the right amount of neighbors.

Tom

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Little bronco on my mind

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