I just figured out something that makes me feel really dumb for not figuring it out before. Now I'm not even sure I'm 100% right in my figurings, because any figuring that requires math is usually not going to be figured right by me because in a whole host of things I'm not good at math is right at the top of the list, so I might be feeling dumb for no reason, simply because I figured a math problem incorrectly.

Last Wednesday I exchanged my empty little Bronco camper 5 gallon propane tank for a full one at Walmart. While I was waiting for the Walmart exchange person to come out and exchange my tank, I was reading the sign on the cage where all the tanks are kept, and saw that the exchange cost $15 and in the fine print it said for 15 pounds of propane. Now I've exchanged the little Bronco tank a couple of times already, and I knew the exchange cost more than having them refilled because you have to pay extra for the convenience, but I never paid close attention before because frankly it didn't mean that much to me.

I hooked up the 5 gallon tank to the Arctic Fox shortly before lunch on Wednesday, and turned it on. Friday at 9 o'clock in the morning the 5 gallon tank ran dry.

Now even with my limited math skills that sounds like the tank lasted about 48 hours which is not very long if you're a full-timer living on propane 24 / 7. I ran some numbers through my head which promptly ran out my ear and on to the floor, so I got out my calculator. After a little calculating several things became apparent.

1----I used up a lot of propane really quick.

2--- I don't know why, but I should find out.

3--- this is going to be hard to figure out because it requires math. And most importantly I'm running out of time to finish this post so I'll finish it tomorrow.

                             theboondork

Last night was cold, not god-awful cold like we get in the Winter, but it got down to 17° which is pretty cold for this time of year. Today dawned sunny and cold, it eventually crawled up to 50° but it only stayed there about 10 minutes before it started dropping again. It's supposed to get down into the low 20s tonight so it looks like I'll have to keep my furnace running again to keep the pipes and tanks warm. Tomorrow is supposed to be considerably better but what I've gone through already makes me want to hitch up and head South.

I look back at my 30 some odd years of living in the mountains of Colorado and wonder how in the world I survived those winters, which by the way were substantially colder, and with more snow, than down here in the flatlands where Denver is.

I guess being younger had a lot to do with it, the fact that I considered winter a challenge probably helped, and maybe even loving Colorado so much that I was willing to deal with those winters just to be able to live here was a part of it.

 I think of all those things being younger was the most influential because there's no way I could go out in the woods on a frozen day like today and cut a cord of firewood like I used to do on a Fall day back then.

But that's the way life goes, as we get older we simply can't do the things we used to do. I deal with that problem by telling myself I can still do what I used to do..... I just don't want to.

                           theboondork

It got down in the low 20s last night. I had my furnace set to 55° so the basement and the holding tanks wouldn't freeze. And I'm guessing that we got 3 or 4 inches of snow during the day, but it's been warm enough that it was melting before it piled up and hardly anything stuck to paved areas. So it wasn't much of a snow event but the temperatures were pretty hard to deal with since the highs for the day were below freezing, and I'm simply not used to that anymore, nor do I want to get used to it.

Sometimes it's good to get a reminder of why I'm living the way I'm living and not sitting in the same spot year after year, staring at the same view day after day, and having to deal with weather like this all the time. I know most people prefer to live that way, and I'm actually the odd one. There is no right and wrong way to live your life, traveling like I do works for me but for someone else it might be a miserable way to live.

If I had to name two things that I enjoy the most about my full-time life first would be the freedom, and second would be the challenges.

The freedom kind of speaks for itself with the obvious ability to come and go as I please. You see I'm not sitting here in Denver in the snow and the cold because I have to, I'm sitting here because I want to. I could've left Denver last month if I had wanted to, or I could sit here till Christmas if I want to, which I'm actually contemplating for next year, but I WANT to be here right now, despite the weather, and that's what makes me free.

The challenge of full-timing is a little harder to explain but I like to think of it as not being in a rut. When living in a rut I was able to go through the motions of living with hardly any thinking, just stay in the rut, follow it to the end of the day, and for the most part I'll have a day just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

That's the beauty of the rut, I can do it on autopilot, every day is just like the day before, and everything I do is the same thing I did yesterday, brain in neutral, put one foot in front of the other, and when I go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning my feet will hit the floor at the beginning of the rut that I will follow throughout the day.

Once I looked over the edge of my ever deepening rut I saw there was a better way to live, and to me boondocking was the way to get the most out of the full-time lifestyle I was learning to love.

RV Park full-timing has a lot of benefits which is why it attracts most RVers. But I find a lot of those benefits are not beneficial to me. They interfere with my ability to come and go as I please, the social aspects of an RV Park are of no use to me, I can't stick my camera out the door and take a picture, in less I want a picture of my neighbors RV, there expensive and getting more so, but most importantly it doesn't offer as many challenges as boondocking does, and the challenges are something that I enjoy.


To me being a full-timer and a boondocker is Is what makes my life so great. I don't know what I'm going to do from day to day, most of the time it's similar and mundane, but I never know. My life here in Denver is fairly predictable because I live in the same spot for the summer, but in the Winter living my life on the road is where I feel the most alive because I actually have to think, prepare, make decisions, and overcome challenges, and I believe it's overcoming those challenges that make me feel like I'm thriving instead of just existing.

                             theboondork