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Boondocking. What it is, how to do it. By Russ De Maris Want to camp "far from the madding crowd?" How about spending the your nights by the campfire, listening for the distant yaps of coyotes or gazing toward the heavens and counting shooting stars? You won't find many of these occasions at "Joe's RV Park. Highway noise, street lights, and the next-door-neighbors' evening entertainment are often the spoiler. Where to go? Boondocking, that's where! Let your RV do what it was designed to do, be truly self-contained. Pull your trailer or drive your motorhome to America's outback, far away from interstate highways and metropolitan bustle." But how can I do it?," you may ask, "I want to watch a little TV, take my daily shower. . .and all that!" Granted, very few "modern" recreational vehicles leave the showroom floor ready to spend weeks, or even a few days away from the "convenience" of full utility hookups. But boondockers are a hardy and ingenious lot who know how to take their rigs and many of
Take my wife Tiña and me for example: We stay away from shore power for months at a time. Yet when 5:30 rolls around and it's time to watch the nightly news on TV, we're as ready as our RV-park counterparts to flip the "on" switch and tune in. Showers? My significant other likes to "drain the tank" when she lathers up. Yet we don't move the fifth wheel for weeks at a time even though our gray water tank has only a 40 gallon capacity. How do we do it? It's a matter of taking advantage of both old and new technology. Up topside on our rig, two solar panels take advantage of that as-yet untaxed free power of the sun. When the clouds appear, the winds often blow and that sends our wind turbines into action, generating power to fill our batteries. Down in our storage pod resides a clever device, a power inverter, that transforms battery power into "juice" we can use to power the vacuum cleaner, microwave oven and computer. Being our own "power company," isn't as difficult as it might appear. The technology we use is low maintenance and once installed requires little money to keep it happy. It's largely a matter of knowing what to buy and how much power you need. Even that's not a big problem, it's a matter of observation and the use of a pocket calculator. Once we're "dug in to" our favorite spot for the winter, the idea of hitching up the rig to head down to the dump station simply has no appeal. Yet, when "when your RV's gotta go, it's gotta go." A low-tech device known as a "Blue Boy" does the dirty work for us. "Old Blue" accepts the contents of our waste water tanks, which we then transport to the dump station with our truck while the RV stays put. Often, on the same trip, another "low tech" item in our tow vehicle brings back a batch of fresh water for use, to be hauled away later by "Blue Boy." Yes, we love boondocking. We save money, literally hundreds of dollars each year camping on public lands. We get vistas that are untainted by barb-wire fences and junked out cars. And we don't sacrifice modern conveniences to do it. Russ and Tiña Demaris are the authors of RV Boondocking Basics, available through RV Bookstore. Article copyright 2004 by Russ and Tiña Demaris. |
