January 2019 – On the Road with Dan & Amy

Boomerville, Week 2

Quartzsite, AZ

Dry wash that was full of water last week

The desert has pretty much recovered from the rain we had on our first full day in the desert and so has our power generation. By mid-afternoon of day 9, our batteries reached 100% state of charge and easily returned to fully charged each day after that. As the days become longer and the sun gets higher in the sky, we will be having power to spare during the day. When we hooked up to leave on day 14, our fresh water tank was at 18% and both the grey and black tanks were around 60%. We exercised extreme water conservation and this experience shows us that we can boon dock 2 weeks but if we are only going a week or so, we can relax some of our restrictions with water usage.

Boomerville, Week 1

Quartzsite, AZ

We have completed our first week of a two week stay on BLM land north of the small town of Quartzsite, AZ. This is dry camping with no hookups of any kind; no water, no electricity and no sewage hookup. You need come in with your fresh water tank full (ours holds 100 gallons) and a strategy for generating whatever electricity you need. That is where the solar panels and lithium ion batteries we installed in December come in. We aren’t here alone by any stretch of the imagination. We are with a subgroup of the Escapees RV club known as Boomers. I have no idea where the name came from. We are also here with long time friends, Jim and Corinne and new friends, Paul and Kay. Jim and Corinne met Paul and Kay on the road a few years ago and continue to meet up as often as possible. In addition to our group of Boomers, currently over 180 rigs and counting, there are an estimated 100,000 or more (some say upwards of 500,000) RVs boondocking in the desert surrounding Quartzsite these two weeks of January. Needless to say, we are not alone.

Picacho Peak State Park

Picacho, AZ

We spent 3 nights in Picacho Peak State Park as we prepared for our two weeks of boondocking in Quartzsite, AZ. The park is located just off of I-10 about 40 miles west of Tucson and the closest town with groceries is Eloy, located 13 miles further west. We made a few trips there because, as we all know, one trip to the store is never enough. On one of those trips, we had our first experience with a Blue Beacon truck wash. These facilities are geared to big rig trucks but will wash anything and our truck really needed a wash. We will have to return with the 5th wheel in tow at some point in the near future to get it washed as well.

Rusty’s RV Ranch

Rodeo, NM

Rusty’s RV Ranch is located just north of Rodeo, NM on route 80 and only a mile or two east of the Arizona state line. There are mountains surrounding the park as it is located at the foothills of the Chiricahua range. It is also supposed to be one of the premier places in the country for birding. The park is in a dark sky area and caters to astronomers. This means we were not to have any outdoor lighting at night and to have our shades drawn after dark.

Las Cruces KOA

Las Cruces, NM

View from the Picacho Mountain trail – Amy

Las Cruces, NM was our first stop after leaving western Texas. We planned a short stay but wished we could have stayed much longer. After setting up, we took care of some basic chores like laundry and grocery shopping. When we had stopped at a rest area, we found that the bikes on the bike rack had tipped over. The root cause was a flat tire on Amy’s bike which made the restraining bar less effective, allowing the bike to fall to one side. So, we had to patch the bike tube. We speculate that the tube failed while bike riding in San Angelo State Park a couple of weeks ago but we haven’t touched the bikes since then. After completing our chores, we treated ourselves to a nice meal at the local Picacho Peak Brewery.