For Beginners: RV BOONDOCKING Basics!

hey guys we are shawn and christy this is long long honeymoon and in this video we're going to talk about rv boondocking for noobs the newbies of the noobs we know there are many new rv owners out there and we want to tell you about probably the best most enjoyable way to use your rv boondocking is living the rv dream it's picking a spot in nature with no hookups setting up camp and enjoying the great outdoors in other words you're using the power and water and shelter and so forth that you bring with you for example we are here in the alabama hills in california it's an incredibly beautiful boondocking spot typically if you're in a location like this which is bureau of land management land there's no charge to the camping it's free you just find a spot that you like you park you set up camp and you enjoy and actually you're free to enjoy a lot more in these parts of the country than you are in national parks you want to bring your pet out on a trail you can do so you want to fly your drone you can do so you want to take a dirt bike out and enjoy the countryside you can do so baboon docking does not come easily for noobs it's a learned discipline i would say right made better with practice first of all the most logical question is where can you go how do you find the boondocking locations these days you have more resources than ever before we typically start looking at campendium they have a website they also have an app for apple phone users if you have an android phone they don't have an app but you can just use the website it works just as well you can also go to the bureau of land management website there are other apps that you can use and sometimes you can even just go to different forums like if you have an airstream go to airstream forum if you're an overlander go to those forums online and you can just ask people what their favorite boondocking sites are in certain parts of the country and you might learn about something that's not even listed on some of these well-known websites yeah i know a lot of people like to recommend boondocker's welcome we haven't really used that one extensively we typically start with campendium one of the first issues you've got to consider when you're going to one of these sites has to do with the road quality because some of these locations are very remote and the roads are not only unpaved they're very unlevel and can have a lot of rocks in them that can be pretty tough on bigger rigs and lower clearance rigs if you're unsure about a road when you get somewhere if you can possibly unhitch your rig and leave it and drive in solo just to take account of what the conditions are like yeah it's really smart to scout out a location beforehand if you have any concerns about the size and clearance of your rig getting in there secondly i want to just want to point out that a lot of these sites are not going to be level so you want to make sure that you have everything that you would need to level your rv rig i know that's obvious and these days a lot of rvs are push button level but a lot of these places are not really designated camp sites they're just areas where you go in and park yeah so you might actually need more leveling blocks than you normally use if you're a travel trailer but you might even need some leveling blocks in a motor home because your stabilizer levelers that are built into motorhomes only go so far so you might be somewhere where you need a little help in that regard as well but the big issue you're going to encounter when you're boondocking concerns water the availability of fresh water and how miserly you can be when you're using it tip number one is to arrive with an empty gray tank and an empty black tank and a full freshwater tank you also want to arrive with some extra water in containers like this yeah we call these jerry cans now this is obviously a plastic jerry can that we typically use to refill our fresh water tank this holds about six gallons of water so we come in with this full i also want to show you this water bag now this is a pretty clever bag there are different versions of this bag we'll put some links to some beneath the video these fold flat so they don't take up much storage space and they also hold several gallons of water so here in alabama hills we've been using the bag for our drinking water and we replenish our fresh water tank with a jerry can and that is used for sinks and for flushing and so forth the really big consumer of water i would say first and foremost is showering so quite frankly it's easier to boondock in the western united states where the air is cool and dry and lower humidity it's a tougher proposition to boondock in the southern and eastern portions of the united states where there's a lot more humidity and you're going to want to shower more often that also brings up the point that it's easier to boondock in colder weather than in hotter weather because obviously in hotter weather you're going to get hot and sweaty and need to shower more often versus being in a colder climate you're not going to be getting as grimy during the day and needing as many showers so a lot of you ask why do you guys tend to wander out west every year and that is a reason because the air is more conducive to boondocking and sort of staying long periods of time off the grid another big consumer of fresh water would be washing dishes so if you're washing dishes on bureau of land management land there's something that you can do that will help prolong the life of your gray tank because on bureau of land management land you can actually dump your wash water on the ground which is usually not allowed in national parks and that sort of setting you have to dispose of it in like a bath house facility that has like a flush just for dishwater so i have this collapsible tub that i'll wash dishes in and you can just take your tub that has your dirty water in it and take it outside and pour it out now you don't want to do it right next to your rig or right next to your camping neighbor if you happen to be somewhere where you have a neighbor but you know walk it out 100 200 feet from your camper and just dispose of it on the ground it's just going to be your warm soapy water so if you're concerned about the environment make sure you're using a biodegradable you know earth friendly wash but for the most part you're not going to have enough soap in there to really harm anything it's just a nice way to extend your gray tank by using these collapsible tubs to wash your dishes and opinions on this topic may vary but there are some places where you could probably empty off a little bit of gray water without having the full weight of the federal government crack down on you you have to be discreet about it and definitely check and make sure that it's allowed i wouldn't just go dumping gray water anywhere but we're talking about small portions if you need to bleed off a little bit out of your tank some people will carry water totes in which you can empty your dirty gray water we do not carry one mainly because of the storage space that it consumes we only have so much storage space those water totes get really heavy and so most of them have wheels but if you're really getting into the hardcore boondocking scene you may decide you want to get a water tote it's definitely a good product to own you could bleed off 10 15 20 gallons of water now 20 gallons of water will translate to more than 150 pounds of weight so you think about that moving that around and emptying it but you can definitely stretch more life out of your gray tanks if you have one of those water totes yeah and with regards to what he said about emptying your gray water on the ground that's something that you need to check with the local bureau of land management office about because it can vary from state to state even though most bureau of land management land allows you to dump wash water state law is more dominant than the bureau of land management law so they have to abide by whatever the state law says so do your research on that you know when your black water tank is full it's kind of game over and you're going to have to find a place to go dump your tanks and that's an issue in places like this the alabama hills right now we're here in december and most of the local campgrounds that have dump stations are closed so we really have no place to empty our black water tank so when it's full we're gonna ramble on to find the dump station and something you can do to help prolong the life of your black tank is to not flush toilet paper down it usually we have no problem using toilet paper in our black tank because we treat it with the proper chemicals and it breaks that paper down but paper does take up more space so if you're trying to prolong that black tank just put your dirty toilet paper in a plastic bag and dispose of it with your trash and that'll give you a little more room in that black tank so we found that we can go for sometimes more than a week stretching out our water tanks we're on day eight right now yeah so we've gone basically eight straight days just using the contents of our tanks now we've replenished the fresh water a couple of times using our jerry cans so a lot of times people ask how long can you go with your rv when you're bone docking it depends on you your water consumption and your rv some rvs have larger capacity tanks than others we for example have a 54 gallon freshwater tank a 39 gallon gray tank and a 28 gallon black tank but we found that we can pretty comfortably go a week if we're in this type of climate where we don't have to frequently shower and we can just be miserly with our water usage one other thing i use that helps stretch out my need for a long shower because ladies you know washing your long hair will take more water is i use dry shampoo on days between my showers when i'm washing my hair so that lets me go longer between times when i need to wash my hair so if you don't use dry shampoo look into it it can be very helpful the king of all sandwiches what a sandwich this is probably the most impressive sandwich i've ever seen in my life i'm not sure how i'm going to eat it exactly but it's going to be fun trying one other thing you can do to conserve your water usage is to avoid using dishes altogether because that does take a lot of water so use paper plates you can actually burn those paper plates in your fire at night to dispose of those plates if you wish also using a grill or something of that nature to do your cooking on will save you water as well because you won't be using pots and pans and that sort of thing so just be mindful of that when you're planning your menu for your camping outing the more cooking you can do outside on a grill and and not use pots and pans it'll just save your water in the long run so let's talk about power power is the other big issue you're going to encounter when you're boondocking of course because you're going to want electricity to run your water pump to run your heat furnace fan and to recharge all of those gadgets you lug around maybe to power your lights at night and you're going to find if you're just using lead acid batteries in your rv and have no other supplemental source of power your batteries are going to die rather quickly i can guarantee you that especially if you're having to use your furnace at night because even though your furnace uses propane for the heat source you still have to use electricity to power the fans that blow that warm air out into your rv so that can really chew through your batteries fast so a lot of us carry generators to provide a supplemental source of power that's probably the cheapest easiest turnkey solution for providing power off the grid there are a few issues with generators first of all they require fuel most of them are gasoline powered some are diesel and secondly they produce some noise and the whole point of enjoying nature off the grid is to enjoy peace and quiet you hear the noise around here wow this is probably one of the most quiet campsites we've ever had so you know generators can't be run 24 7. you pick certain hours of the day where you can top off your batteries now we have the luxury this year of a fantastic solar system that has been installed on our airstream ours was installed by ronnie dennis so you can find on instagram and airstream nuts and bolts does a great job with these airstream solar installations we now have 600 watts of solar panels on the roof we have 400 amp hours of lithium battery in terms of the battleborn batteries and we also have a 3000 watt inverter we're going to do a video in the near future discussing the the good and the bad of having a solar system like this overall it's an incredible luxury and i would say it's meeting the vast majority of our power needs by itself we're here for example on a sunny day we're getting almost 300 watts of free power so to speak electricity from the sun but with that being said i still think most people are going to want to carry some sort of generator even if it's just a 2000 watt model because there are times you're going to have cloudy days you're going to have a shady campsite when solar is just not going to completely get it done and that's especially true if you're in humid areas and you need to run air conditioning then you're going to need a whole lot of solar to cover an air conditioner it's just a lot easier to have a generator now let's say you don't have a spare sixteen thousand dollars in your pocket to do a huge solar install there are some pretty cool little gadgets you can get these days that can sort of give you the basics of a solar setup in a very portable package i'm talking for example this is a portable solar panel this one's by max oak bluet i think luigi designed this at bluet but this is a 120 watt portable solar panel that you can just carry with you and you can use this to recharge for example a lithium power station and this lithium power station i believe has a 500 watt inverter inside of it it's basically a lithium battery with a bunch of outlets and an inverter so it's it's sort of the guts of a very simple solar system if you're a tent camper if you're a van camper if you want to travel nimble and light or if you just want to supplement the capabilities of your rv in a more inexpensive way this is a good way to go now it's not nearly as nice as having a loaded solar package on your rv but it really does give you the sort of same basic capabilities you use your solar panel to recharge your lithium battery and then you can juice up or run certain appliances using that power station something else you need to think of when you arrive in these sorts of destinations is the weather you know is it going to be sunny is it going to be raining is it going to be cloudy is it going to be windy is it going to be cold so right now where we're camping it has been very windy and at night it's getting really cold so even sitting by the campfire you're usually still cold you're bundled up make sure that you're prepared with the proper gear before you get there because the weather in some of these places can be very different than the nearby towns for instance this location is at a higher elevation and more exposed than the town so if we were camping in town we would probably have a very different setup than camping out here in the alabama hills make sure you have something that's like a windproof jacket if you're in those conditions it will make you so much more comfortable having some small little fleece blankets that you can bring out to the campfire with you will make it a lot more comfortable these are also great if you're camping in cold weather at night we typically don't run our furnace overnight unless the temperature is going to drop below freezing so it can get pretty cold in our airstream overnight so having these little fleece blankets that you can stuff under the sheets next to your skin will help keep you a lot warmer the other thing we use are heat holders what are heat holders you might ask these are pretty much the best cold weather socks that we have found these are almost like fleece blankets for your feet now they're sort of expensive socks i think they're they're like 15 or 15 bucks a pair which is kind of an expensive sock but once you put them on you'll know why they cost 15 bucks they're so thick you really can't wear them with shoes they have some thinner versions you can wear with shoes but these super thick ones that we will get into bed with at night you're probably not going to fit in a shoe they're definitely thick and cushy i mean excuse my dry legs but they're super warm these do fit inside these boots they don't fit inside my regular hiking boots these are just a little too thick they have a heat rating they call it the tog rating which stands for thermal overall grade of 2.34 whereas your ordinary cotton sock would be a 0.33 so they're like six or seven times as warm as a normal sock yeah i on a cold night i've been known to just wear these through the night and if you don't wear them through the night they're the first thing that get on my feet in the morning when i get up to go make my coffee the other thing that we use when we're out here to help warm things up is a heated blanket we have a small throw size heated blanket and it does require electricity so that's something you need to be you know mindful of so we can actually plug it into that max oak blue eddy and run it overnight on the low heat setting and it won't even run down that uh maxo blue eddy to zero yeah even though we travel with a generator and a nice solar setup we still use these lithium power stations all the time recently we were camping in grand teton national park and we loaned our little lithium power station to our friends who were just sort of camping in the back of a minivan and it was getting down into the 20s at night they had the heated blanket and the lithium power station and it really got them through the night and they were able to be comfortable and get a good night's sleep i'm gonna peek into the master suite oh so nice now i'm kind of curious uh so it ran all night long it ran all night long i still got 60 charge um i think for the real estate they take up they are um have a huge amount of payback yeah a lot of functionality in a small package right brief consideration about internet a lot of these places that are the really great boondocking sites are not very internet friendly if you really need the internet to work you're going to have some issues like if you're a digital nomad and you're coming into these areas for example we were here with our friends nader and wendy they had i believe all the different cellular carriers when they were here and they still could not really get a reliable cellular connection in this location so it's something to consider when you're picking your site because in this area that we're in alabama hills we are about three miles in off the main road and so it gives us this amazing view but it also means we don't have that cell coverage if we had chosen a site within the first half mile of the road we actually would have cell service we were getting four bars of 4g lte service in that area so it may be that you can still choose a site in a remote location but maybe just not as remote as some of the other sites yeah for us we've had zero internet in our site but we can take a short ride to town and we'll have internet service there and we're able to get some work done [Music] finally i want to wrap up with a little wag of the finger and make a point about trash you know we've been traveling on the road for several months this year and we've seen a problem possibly developing of trash being left in campgrounds at camp sites inside fire pits or even inside bare food locker boxes i mean we were in a city park in oklahoma beautiful park and there was a remarkable amount of trash i'm sorry to report in the campsite and in the fire pit i mean people had just left everywhere all sorts of trash there unbelievable in uh grand teton national park and some of the bear lockers you know the park provides bare food lockers where you can basically lock any kind of items that bears might be attracted to in a safe location yeah like your grill or you know any kind of food that you might be carrying with you people were leaving trash inside those food lockers and i know there are a lot of people rv traveling this year who just bought their rv for the first time maybe some people didn't know any better but now you do i don't think the people leaving trash in their sights are lolojo nation members but it's something that we've noticed and you know we were talking to our friends in california and they said they've seen an increase in just trash and rubbish being dumped in public areas on the sidewalk but if you happen to be in a campsite and you notice some trash just pick it up and put it in your bag and you know throw it out with your trash because if everybody can pick up a little bit here and there it'll make the whole problem better and hopefully when other people see you doing that they'll be more mindful of their own disposal of trash and not want to be the litter bug because it's a beautiful country that we have and if we take care of it we'll be able to enjoy it and this blm land will continue to be usable but if people keep dumping trash then i could foresee it being taken away from us and so we don't want that to happen yeah i do think maybe there are a few people who kind of don't know any better and leave trash inside of fire pits but it's very important to know the fire pits are not trash receptacles and we've spoken to for example campground hosts and they said one of their number one problems with campers is people leaving trash on the campsite specifically in those fire pits so don't leave your rubbish in fire pits clear that stuff out of there yeah because otherwise somebody's got to do the work of going in to clean it up or our campgrounds turn into dumps yeah nobody wants to camp in a trash pit so that's it guys a look at rv boondocking for newbies we hope you found some of these tips helpful all of you experienced rv boondockers out there who have watched this video we invite you to comment beneath the video maybe share some of your tips with our community so we can all get out there and enjoy our rvs even more in the great outdoors look at these locations and the places where you can go camp we're actually standing in the very spot where tony stark of iron man released some sort of ridiculous weapon it was the jericho the jericho where he blew up the jericho so uh you might recognize this site if you're an iron man fan yeah i think he was he was standing what like this i think he was like this presenting boom presenting the explosion that happened behind him and no they didn't really blow up those mountains that was all cgi thank goodness so that's kind of a really fun aspect of boondocking you can take your rv out to really interesting locations and set up and just enjoy we found this particular place in alabama hills so pleasant and enjoyable that we lingered for several days most people cleared out of here after the weekend so we've been staying here on weekdays and there's probably not been but half a dozen people here period nobody really within sight of us currently we had a neighbor last night and this is something else that you need to remember make sure your fire is really put out before you leave because this fire is still going yeah and they left about four hours ago so we're gonna pour some water over it to make sure it's totally you know out but i'm sure they thought it was out they've got ash all over it yeah that's another great uh sort of safety tip and also a tip about boondocking if you do light a fire really make sure it's out because this was not our fire pit behind us several couples were out here camping last night and obviously they didn't put their fire out and you know i've heard there were a few fires in california this year just a few all right guys if you guys enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up share it with your friends and family leave a comment down below with your tips for boondocking and if you haven't yet please click that subscribe button down below it makes all the difference we'll link most of these products in the description box below this video and we also ask that if you enjoy our content if you want to support long long honeymoon the easiest way to do that is to shop through our amazon storefront you can do that by visiting amazon.com shop longlong honeymoon and you don't have to just buy things that are listed in our store you can actually use that search bar at the top and search for anything that amazon sells and as long as you start your shopping experience on our storefront we will earn a commission for your purchase and it doesn't cost you anything and if you really want to support long long honeymoon in this way it's a great idea to put a little bookmark to our store on your phone yes thank you so much for your support we greatly appreciate it the patreon link is fixed by the way i think we've had a broken patreon link for many years yeah so if you're interested in supporting us in that way you can click that link as well but until next time what do we say low lojo aloha click that subscribe button thanks guys it works just as well and you can nothing's so loud it's going to be all over the audio coming up on long long honeymoon we just got our airstream ceramic coated at vinnie's north bay airstream repair stay tuned for all the details on the biggest upgrade we've ever made to our airstream exterior

Channel: Long Long Honeymoon

Views: 259,561

Rating: 4.9717598 out of 5

Keywords: airstream, rv, camping, travel, loloho

Id: xjl-IWBbc8E

Length: 27min 12sec (1632 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020