live. work. dream.

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m well aware of the damage that WalMart inflicts on local economies. Jim and I come from a town whose citizens actually kept WalMart from setting up shop along our waterfront. What a great moment it was, when Eurekans came together to stand up for their small businesses.

Because we didn’t have big box stores in Eureka, I shopped at my neighbors’ businesses. Sure, prices were a little higher than at big city chain stores, but knowing that more of my dollar stayed in the community was worth the extra pennies. At the time, Jim and I had a good income stream coming in, and although I made plenty of frugal choices, we could easily afford to shop local.

But once we hit the road, we came out of our Humboldt County cocoon. In most small towns around America, big box stores like WalMart are the only shopping choice. From Yuba City California to Fort Stockton Texas, most cities have allowed chains to come in and kill off many of their independent businesses.

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I have always loved the mountains. And I’ve always thought I would love to live in the mountains. After having gone directly from boondocking at Three Rivers Campground in the shadows of Sierra Blanca overlooking New Mexico’s Tularosa Valley to the smog-filled traffic jam that is Los Angeles, I can say without a doubt that mountains are a definite requirement for the next place I live.
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Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’ got us feuding
Like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry’s train songs
And blue eyes cryin’ in the rain, out in Luckenbach Texas
Ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain …

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For our visit to New Orleans, we boondocked on the BioLiberty compound down on Bayou Liberty in Slidell, Louisiana.

This is where our old Humboldt friend Gordon Soderberg now calls home.

Living full-time in his RV, he has established quite an impressive green enterprise with the help of a local dentist who owns the property.

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We’re always on the lookout for remote off-the-grid state and national parks where we can boondock, but have had a hard time finding any since we left Wisconsin’s tornado country.

It seems like there was never a problem finding cool places to boondock out West. We often went without hookups in California, Utah and Colorado. But even here in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp we have water, power, paved roads and a few neighbors.

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Seems that many folks aren’t aware that there are quite a few places where an RVer can park the rig overnight for free. No hookups of course, but when you’re pooped out after a long day of driving, anything can look like the Hilton. And you can’t beat the price.

WalMart is known for being nice to RVers and allowing them to park overnight. Good capitalists that they are, they figure that most overnighters will shop there too, so why not let ‘em. A word of caution, more and more locations are banning this practice due to long term campers checking in. Check for listings of WalMarts that don’t allow camping.

We had not tried boondocking in a parking lot until just recently, when we were halfway to Appalachia. The reason is because until now it had been too hot, and since we don’t have an internal generator, we aren’t able to run the air conditioner. Now it’s getting cold (really cold) here in the East, so we were willing to give it a shot. Here’s what we discovered: (more…)

I’ve been mulling over a draft for a post about our custom RV solar power system for months, ever since we left the prime solar energy country of the southwest. It has just been working so well for us that we haven’t really had to think about it much. Then our batteries crapped out on us.

For the past few months, we have spending about half of our nights in state and national park campgrounds, without hookups. And we have easily been able to go eight hours or more without using our Honda 2000i generator to charge the batteries. Or longer if we had good exposure to the sun.

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When we embarked on this trip, I often imagined kicking back in my hammock with my Powerbook and enjoying my new office. Well, the first couple times that I have actually strung up the thing I ended up not spending any time in it at all. If my hammock time wasn’t called on account of rain, there was either too much on my RV honey do list or simply too much of the outdoors to go enjoy.

I am now happy to say that my vision has finally come true. The view from my new office is well worth the wait. The only thing missing is our internet connection.

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There is definitely something to be said for taking a hot shower when camped out in the woods. But with a finite supply of fresh water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing and flushing the toilet, conservation is of utmost importance to make your water last as long as possible.

This is especially true if you have to hand pump the water to fill your tank! Many public campgrounds, if they have water at all, only have old school hand pumps. Some of which are very deep and/or difficult to pump. And rarely do they include a hose spigot. When this is the case we take turns filling a collapsible 5 gallon water jug to fill our tank. Ten turns to be specific. It’s a wet job, but that’s the price you pay for the biggest, quietest, most scenic, most secluded and least expensive campsites!

Anyway, here are a few quick tips for maximizing the use of your freshwater supply:

• We use a 1 gallon Thermos jug – any container would do – to capture the water from our tub faucet while waiting for it to warm up. We can then use this water as we like, or put it back into the fresh water tank.
• Whenever available, we use campground vault toilets instead of our own – if they are not too nasty.
• If your RV does not have a control valve on the shower head, install one and use it to turn the flow of water off while soaping up then turn it back on to rinse.
• Make up for these bird baths with nice long hot showers when hooked up at private campgrounds.

As a child, I was terribly frightened by the movie the Wizard of Oz. It wasn’t the witch, the trees, or even the monkeys. The idea of a tornado coming and tearing up my house and carrying me away from the comforts of my home and family was really quite traumatizing.

With age and a little therapy, I’ve been mostly able to overcome this fear. But the other night I couldn’t help but remember how my siblings and friends would taunt me about our neighbor’s car – an Oldsmobile Toronado. As I tried to drift off to sleep, the unmistakable sound of a distant tornado warning siren kept me wide awake. Hey, I saw Twister. (more…)