Changing gears....

When we go from being 'plugged in' to 'boondocking' we must completely change our behaviors regarding the usage of water, electricity, and the generation of waste water, whether it be gray, or black.  When are 'plugged in' we have unlimited electricity, water and sewer capacity.  Even if we only have partial hookups like we did the last three weeks in Wittmann there are no worries, because we can dispose of the waste water via our macerator pump as needed.  But when you decide to 'boondock' for an extended period of time (one week, or more) the whole ballgame changes.

For those who may be wondering what the difference between 'boondocking' and 'dry camping' is let me reiterate.  To me dry camping is something you do at Walmart, or Lowe's, or Cracker Barrel.  It is usually for one night, sometimes two, but mostly overnight.  Usually you are in travel mode (repositioning).....moving every day.  There is no urgency about conserving electrical usage as the batteries will be charged up again the next day while under way (the alternator will charge your batteries back up).  The same is true for water usage....since you are moving every day there will be opportunities to add water to your fresh water tank when you stop for fuel, or at a rest stop.  The only limiting factor is the waste water situation, but even that is not critical as you will most likely be staying overnight every periodically in an RV park, or find that a lot of rest stops have sewer dumping available, so you will have an opportunity to dump your tanks if needed. 

'Boondocking' on the other hand usually involves extended stays far from services in remote, or somewhat remote areas, so every resource (water, electricity, and waste water capacity) is finite and must be rationed appropriately to match the length of stay for which you are aiming.  It is during these times you begin to realize how much water you needlessly use on a daily basis when supply is no issue, and the same goes for electricity, and waste water.

Our previous record for 'boondocking' is quite modest.......6 days.  This time we are aiming for 10 days....our biggest limiting factor is our electrical.  Right now we only have 300 watts of solar panels on our roof, and ideally we should have twice that in order to be able to pour a sufficient enough charge into the batteries to bring them close to full every day.  As it is, right now, we lose a little more ground every day, which necessitates the use of our generator every few days, or more often if it is cloudy, to bring the batteries back into the 90 percentile range each day.  The other half of our electrical system is our house batteries, which at present is represented by 2 8D flooded cell batteries.  By their very nature they are less efficient than say AGM batteries, and way less efficient than a lithium setup would be.  Our goal is to transition over the next two years to a lithium setup, and to add another 300 watts of solar panels to the roof (the solar panel upgrade will happen this fall).

So, where are we at after two days in the boondocks?  We were able to get our batteries back to 93% Saturday using only the solar panels.....I would have preferred 95%, but beggars can't be too choosy, right?  What I have right now is what I have, so we will soldier on, and make the best of what we have.  We have only used about 10 gallons of water over two days (we started with 150 gallons).

Saturday morning I was up before 6 (5:47 am).....way, way too early, but when sleep will not return and it's almost 6 am, you might as well get up and get at it.  I was in the middle of writing my blog about Friday when I noticed a hot air balloon landing a few hundred yards away from our position.....

Full 'zoom' on the phone camera

Around 10 am we decided to drive into Cottonwood to do some junking......some of our favorite junk shops are in Cottonwood (Checkered Past, and Larry's Antiques and Things).  Larry's Antiques and Things has real tonnage!  They have one of the biggest collections of license plates I have ever seen, and they even had several Canadian license plates.  I wasn't really looking for Alberta, but there it was so I snapped it up.  They had every east coast state except for the ones I still need.....Maryland and Washington D.C.

Sweet!!!

From there we headed about half way towards Sedona to check out some NFS land for a possible future 'boondock' site, but were totally disappointed in what we found.  The three spots we looked at seemed more like 'homeless' encampments.  On the other hand, we did reconfirm to ourselves that where we are right now is perfect for us!

We stopped off at Fry's to fuel up the VW, and then headed over to Walmart to do a small shopping before arriving back 'home' around 3 pm.  I spent time cleaning up around our campsite......I am at a loss why people cannot just pack out what they bring in, instead of leaving their trash in the firepit.  I think I picked up no less than 50 cigarette butts lying all around our spot, plus broken glass, burned aluminum cans, tangerine peals.....you name it.  Well, now our site is way better than when we arrived.

While TLE read a little I drove over to the nearby Thousand Trails RV park (Verde Valley) to check out their storage and to see if they had a site for one night.   We will be driving the VW back to Pasadena, CA for TLE's reunion on the 24th, so we will be staying there one night (23rd) to recharge our batteries, fill up our water tank, and dump our waste tanks, before putting the coach into storage for a week while we are gone. I was able to use our Passport America discount card to get the site for $22, and the one week storage will cost us $25....perfect!

For the rest of the afternoon I read a book sitting outside.......the view is a little distracting, and I found myself putting the book down on a regular basis just to enjoy the long, long view towards Sedona.

 

Thanks for stopping by!