Cheap Van Life Living - My Ehrenberg Camp in BLM Land

[Music] hi everyone welcome to my next video well i've finally done it i've made it here to ehrenberg arizona you say where's ehrenberg arizona and why should i care well arizonanburg is where i spend most of my winter uh it's blm land so it's free but it falls in the cracks and the rangers themselves have told us they do not enforce here so we are welcome to come here and camp and and be here as long as we want i will be here except for the rubber trap rendezvous and quartzite uh courtside is just 17 miles east of here uh and so it's very close i will probably be here until uh that starts and then i'll be there for two weeks then i'll come back here you're welcome to join me that's why you should care if you're coming to the arizona desert you want to camp with friends you want to say hi to me and tell me how much you love me or hate me either one or welcome uh come visit with me uh you can see a couple of rigs a couple of vans in the background behind me uh i've seen as many as 20 30 people but it's such a huge area you see there a long ways away that you can be as alone or as close as you want to be you can come and visit with everyone or you can just be gone and be all alone so uh please feel free to come and join me in camp with me go with me the rtr hang around as long as you want yes this is a very good base to explore southern arizona uh slabs the infamous slabs is just a hundred miles west of here yuma and alcadonas mexico is a hundred miles south of here so from here you could go to slabs and visit you could go to yuma go to algodones get very cheap but high quality dental uh glasses and uh medical care so there's a lot here south of us is a kofa uh national wildlife refuge beautiful beautiful area bighorn sheep uh thrive up there and so you might see you go camp there nearby up palm canyon road and see bighorn sheep even and of course uh phoenix is 150 miles west of us east of us excuse me it's 150 miles east and uh everything you could want is over in phoenix uh in fact flagstaff is a couple hundred miles north of us but they have the best prices on solar anywhere and so you may want to come to go to flagstaff buy your solar come here get someone to install it for you so there's lots of reasons to come here most of all friendship and family and tribe so come and join us and make some connections and i think you'll be glad you did so everyone i'm going to give you directions how to get my ehrenberg camp and as you can hear there's just traffic noise all around me and i cannot get away from it this is a very very busy intersection i got trucks i've got just all kinds of things going on around me it's going to be noisy you just have to live with it so uh if you're coming to my ehrenberg camp why would you come to my amber camp instead of going to the rtr because it's getting to be mid to late december and at this time the rangers start enforcing they want to have the place cleared out by january when the huge crowds hit right now there's not big crowds in january big big crowds are going to get here so they want them cleared out mid-december they're going to go around and find out who's there at the end of december they're going to kick you out and then you're going to be against the 14 day limit because you've got to be gone 14 days before you can come back so my suggestion is that you come to ehrenberg camp here visit quartzite and i think aaron brings a better camp anyway so this is how to get to my erenberg camp we'll drive all the way in right now i'm standing at the exit one in arizona we're looking west actually that's california right over there you see that green field field it's in california it's on the other side of the uh colorado river so that's california these people are coming from california this is exit one that means we are literally one mile from the california border which is the colorado river we can't see the river from here but it's right there now how you're going to know that this is exit one and you want to get off here is because of this flying j see it there shooting right into the sun this isn't going to be good that's a flying j that's why there's all this traffic is here they're all going to the flying j gas is so expensive in california people buy at the last second before they get into california they're running on into arizona they're running on fumes they stop at the flying j here get gas so it's very busy so that's the flying j i'm at arizona uh exit one now if you get off let me swing around here that is phoenix right over there at the base of that hill over there is quartzite that's where you're coming from there's interstate 10. you're going to drive on it just 17 miles to exit one you'll see the flying j even from from phoenix and get off and camp here so there you see it there's there's the freeway that's quartzite courtside is at the base of that hill that's where you're coming from looking the other way way way way over there is los angeles if you're coming from the west that's where you're coming from los angeles slab city uh palm springs uh joshua tree on all these other interstate and then you get over to here that's where you'll be coming from and you will either way you're gonna see the uh flying j i hope you can see that if you're coming from phoenix you're going to see the roundabout this is what you're going to see you're going to drive into the roundabout and see the trucks are driving through it now and you're going to turn left go through it get off at the frontage road east got that frontage road east not west if you go west you'll just run down to the flying j you'll realize that you hit the flying j turn around go back get on frontage road east i'll actually drive over there and let you see it but for now that's what you got to do okay and if you're coming from uh from the from the west of here if you're coming from los angeles or slab city uh then you will uh get off at this other off-ramp see that purple car right there just pulled off the off ramp he'll be going into the circle he's in the circle he's going to the flying j you would have kept going and come around and gone to your left if you're in the circle you're going to your left which is uh east and you'll look at east and see the freeway going towards palm springs not palms and if you keep looking you'll see the freeway going to court site and on phoenix i hope all that makes sense okay one more thing i want to show you got a truck going by got a car pulling in it's going to be non-stop i just can't avoid it it's going to be a really poor video you're just going to have to live with this uh there's a little laundromat down here and that's one of the reasons we camp here this laundromat is set up to serve van dwellers and rvers you see this car just pulled off on the uh off the freeway and is driving right straight down there we're looking north if you get off the freeway from uh from phoenix you'll be turning right to go to the laundromat if you get off the freeway from los angeles palm springs uh you'll be turning left to go to the laundromat and it's down here and why do you care about a laundromat well they have a laundromat you're going to need to get your laundry done but they're set up for us extremely well he sells water for a dollar as much as you can get so he's got an outside spigot you give him a buck you can fill five 10 20 gallons 30 gallons jugs so you can get water for a dollar and he also has a dump station it's i think it's ten dollars including free water he has with the laundromat he has free wi-fi he has showers uh the showers went up this year they're eight dollars a shower and you can buy multiple tickets and get them down to about the cheapest is five dollars a shower if you buy in multiples of 20 30 or 50 it's uh seven six and five so you can get them for as little as five dollars go in with one other person two other person divide up the ticket see he just hands you 50 tickets so he will also let you use his dumpster for free so it's free water i mean it's a dollar water free dumpster free wi-fi good price on showers so that's the reason we care and of course it's a mini mall and he has a few supplies ice you can get ice a reasonably good price he has block ice which is very important and other things so it's not a bad deal going down there that's one of the primary reasons we're here is him and we're seven miles from the grocery stores in blythe life is a big enough city blind california just over the river that it has everything you can want there's one store that has quite good prices not quite as good as walmart but good enough there's a kmart there is no walmart uh so good shopping here good access to everything you need there's the the flying j you can go over there and and and get whatever you need as well at the flying j okay so now i'll drive you into the uh camp so you'll actually know how to get there so we're looking here at the down the off ramp due east court site is over at the bottom of those on the other side of those mountains uh that's interstate 10 we're at exit one uh i'll i'll do a map i'll i'll shoot a video of going back into camp to get information on this go to and the rtr the rubber rendezvous go to my website cheaprvliving.com slash gatherings scroll down to the bottom of the page cheaprvliving.com gatherings and you'll find my maps to the rtr i'll also include a map to the uh to the uh aaronberg camp so you can find us people are finding it no problem there's dozens of us here already more coming in all the time a big group it'll be a big group before the rtr i would be surprised if there weren't uh there's probably 20 people there now and we'll might be 50 or more by rtr we'll all move in mass to the rtr people come and go i'm planning on going to possibly go to slab city possibly go down to algodones we could caravan if you're interested in those things lots of reasons to come to ehrenberg [Music] actually kind of pretty here with the mountains but ehrenberg isn't all that pretty so uh so there you have it and i'll i'll show you the drive into town and uh to camp so you know where the camp is let's do that now so everyone we're gonna i'm gonna show you uh how to get into my camp in ehrenberg i have just crossed the colorado river and entered arizona this is now arizona uh i'm coming up on the flying j that's right here you can see all the trucks i know it's very loud so i'm going to enter the roundabout exit one interstate 10 that's where i just was we're going to come up on the roundabout you can see the instructions you want to go to frontage road east okay go through enter the roundabout hi everyone so what we're doing now is we're pulling into the circle from exit one coming from phoenix if you're coming from phoenix this is how you'd be going you can see the um the roundabout sign you're going to go through around the roundabout and get off at frontage road east that's the one you want if you go to the right frontage road west you'll end up at the flying j and you don't want that so i'm going through the running frontage road that says frontage road west you don't go there you go around to frontage road east until you see this dead end sign at the dead end sign stop and zero out your odometer so i've zeroed out my odometer now we'll go on here's this is what happens people go down the road uh missed the wrong one it's east west or back over the freeway and you want east if you go west you'll end up at the flying j and it'll be obvious if you go over the freeway it's obvious you went the wrong way uh come back here frontage road east zero out your odometer notice that we're now paralleling the freeway we're right beside the freeway it's paved it'll stay paved for maybe a mile something like that i'll tell you uh because i zeroed out my odometer when we get to the end of the pavement i'll tell you the road isn't too bad here it's not a good paved road it's actually kind of a poor paved road but anyone can drive down this so here the pavement ends at 0.7 miles you see we're now on dirt road it's not a great dirt road but it's not a bad dirt road either i'm going 20 miles an hour and i'm comfortable a lot of people will drive slower i have a chevy extended one-ton van and oddly it handles much better than most vans i don't know why the extended length i think must be the reason but it just handles really well on bad roads i'll fly down a road when my friends in one ton fords are crawling on the same road so i'm driving 20 miles an hour but you may have to drive slower i've also been driving on dirt roads all my life it's just the normal for me and i don't give a thought to a road like this in fact a road like this the faster you go the better uh it smooths out if your suspension is right going faster on this kind of a road smooths it out but it also creates dust lots of dust i got a big dust cloud behind me and this van uh does not have good wa ceiling around any of the doors so i get a lot of dust inside so i'm gonna hold it down just for the dust that's good enough reason okay we're coming up here to where you have to make a decision this is the first time you've had to face a choice you come to a y let me show you the why if you go straight there you go there's a sign over here that says primitive road uh do not enter when flooded see that so that's the straight and then to the left there's another y well that goes to a gravel pit you don't want to go there in fact over there i think you can see the um no you can't where is it there it is uh you can see the uh part of the gravel pit they have a water tank that they use to water the roads keep dust down so uh you don't want to go to the gravel pit if you go down and drive down there and you gravel pit you hit a gravel pit you think this isn't camp drive back to this y take the right side okay take the right side at this y there's the right side there's the signs take the signs not the left right not left the road deteriorates the road's actually quite a bit worse now i will not drive 20 miles an hour on it i'll be driving uh 10 15 at the most probably 10. now we're steadily climbing uh we're going to climb up on a plateau and that's where camp is so you're going to be steadily climbing up this hill you can see that it goes higher and higher it's not hard it's just a nice little hill if you look at my map i'm going to put up a link not a link but a uh a url to a page on my website and that will give you a map now we're up on the plateau it's basically flat level up here uh as i look around there are rigs just about everywhere so we've come to uh one of the main turns and we're at mile 2.7 mile 2.7 that's where camp is back over there this is actually a t and camp is back there and you'll see over here this sign this is the standard blm marker sign i'm going to get out and get a close-up of that and explain who owns this land um and i'll do that right now so straight ahead is the road to the left is the road to camp and over here is another road that goes off that way you don't go that way so this is a t and uh there's a sign marker here that's a standard blm sign that goes off on that road and also there's another sign over there there's that sign and you'll see there's rigs out there there's a couple three rigs out there and that's the road i'll show you one more thing here i'm standing at the end of the road you're going to turn down to quitas and i'm going to keep you camped down there my van's here right now but that's where i'll be camped and this is [Music] the sign [Music] here if you know anything about the blm this is the blm emblem so it's standard you can just department of the interior blm you can barely read it but below it is air another emblem that says arizona state parks off highway vehicle recreation fund so somehow the federal government blm shares ownership of this land with the state of arizona and i think that's why there's no enforcement because it falls in the cracks neither one in force they expect the other but the notable thing is this is an off highway vehicle area it's a designated as a place you come here and you you ride your off highway vehicles so there are a lot of them here it can be annoying just life there have every legal right to be here and running around uh you'd think they'd be rude you would not be rude and would be kind and treat people with respect but all too often they don't in fact it's kind of rare uh atv and respectable seem to be opposing ideas for the most part i'm very sad to say so just to let you know this is definitely an ohv area it falls in the cracks and you get a lot of them here that's why there's no enforcement one more thing i guess i should show you the opposite way the way you'll go out here at the top here's the road that goes off uh to the right to the west and here i'm parked just to stop to get out and shoot this down there is blythe and the uh and the uh laundromat and over here you can see all these people and over here is the road you'll be going down see so so here i am i'm about exactly ready to pull down the y uh that we just i just showed you there's the uh there's the sign i just showed you where is the sign oh there it is so there's the sign i just showed you and this is the y so my odometer is at 2.7 so from the uh roundabout where i reset it to this turn in is 2.7 and i am camped down there and a bunch of other people as you can see however there is another way to go and let me show you that if you keep going straight instead of turning in there and i expect most people to turn in there but you don't have to there's a spider web of roads out here and we will go and look at one other main road and now you'll see it's a lot greener here so one of the reasons we're here is all these greens and this wash it's nice to camp by something green uh you get a tiny little wind break and it's just nice to see something that's alive instead of sterile desert so that is one of the reasons we come here the further back you go the greenery gifts doesn't it so there's another turn in which a lot of our people use that i'm going to show you that and we'll drive down that turn and you'll see there's a whole bunch of campers there and they're almost all with us this is almost all our people so the first road where i am camped is at 2.7 miles this is the second road where a lot of people are camped and i'll get the mileage when we get there here's one that you don't go down this one is also a tee so this is our road as well and you can see it's a t it's shooting right into the sun so that's probably not very good so there's a t on that side and this road is us we have a bunch of people up here straight ahead is this sign it says road narrows so just before the road narrow signs i don't know if you can read that or not when it says road narrow that's where you turn okay and we go that way and i'll go that way and and my mile my odometer says 3.2 so 2.7 and 3.2 [Music] and uh this is one of us [Music] here where is he and uh and nearly everyone appears part of us there there are trees here that's one of the reasons we can't belong the washes this is one of us in this class c and he's tucked into pretty good some trees uh it's not just all barren waste quite a bit of trees and right up here is another one of our group he's kind of out in the open you can see a couple of others behind him it's a pretty long road these folks are with us you can see it's it's not a great road but hey any rig can get down here we've got class a's class b's fifth wheels uh every kind of rig has come down this road you just have to go slow you can't think you're gonna be a speed racer you just gotta go slow here you can see the road starting to deteriorate a bit uh but it's still entirely passable by any van in fact i've seen class cities get up here too you just have to be careful how do you know where you can park you can park anywhere you want is how you know uh so here's the road and here's folks and so uh they just found a little dip here and went in and there they are and that's just all there is to it just found a way to get in and turned in really that's simple a lot of you know my old trailer that's my old trailer so many of you have seen pictures of it you know that's mine it's no longer mine uh these are friends of mine they bought the trailer and they get a little tired of everybody coming up to their camp and saying hey hi bob how are you they say no bob isn't here he even happens to look a little bit like me so people can get pretty close and think it's me it's not me i don't live here that's not my trailer and they kind of like their privacy that's why they're kind of off here alone and so you might want to bear that in mind okay so i'm going to stop here i hope you've enjoyed this little tour hope it's not the quality is not too horrible i have to listen to it on the laptop before i'll know but i hope it's not too bad uh at any rate it's what it is it is what it is so come join us good times are here it's been warm become ready for cold it can be cold too it can be cold and windy and even rainy the desert just throws everything at you so come and join us and uh i'll talk to you later [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 148,293

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, BLM, Ehrenberg, ATV

Id: 7Q1-c9--C0A

Length: 31min 17sec (1877 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2017