THE WORST RV CAMPING ETIQUETTE EVER [RV BOONDOCKING]

unfortunately we are noticing a disturbing trend [Music] we've been here at the lamplighter rv park in star valley now for actually just a month today's the end of that 30 days and as we were hanging out for our grandson to be born and the time has come now where we're ready to pack it up and start heading out and our plan is to go back up to the muggy on rim and find a really cool boondocking spot somewhere up in that area you guys ready to go live in a new house have a new backyard are you all ready for that this is our spot here we got a really cool spot right under this huge tree huge huge here we are here we go let's go come on let's go let's go she's the one who doesn't listen very well if you're looking for a great resource to find awesome camping spots or even trip planning then take a look at the free trial being offered by the dirt if you like it then be sure to use promo code life l-y-f to receive a 10 discount off the pro subscription [Music] price we ended up finding a spot where we've actually camped before here is our own little slice of heaven in the forest very nice this is our front porch this is what we get to look out at here is a wonderful fire pit all ready to go be just a minute okay you guys are going to have so much fun yay [Music] home sweet home you know how much we love boondocking that's kind of a staple of how we live um versus staying in rv parks in fact this weekend actually i think it was just friday night um our grandson had his first camping trip with us stayed in the motor home with us and he's only two weeks old he's going on three weeks but still young very young and it worked out well stayed in the coach with us and it was fine yeah maybe not so comfortable for them but it was fine for us it worked out great and that's so exciting to actually be part of his first camping trip so of course we took lots of pictures and here's one right here now with that being said boondocking as i mentioned earlier is one of our staples and we feel blessed and really appreciate the fact that arizona and so many southwestern states have boondocking and free camping available on either blm lands or u.s forest service lands we actually go out of our way most times to find that that kind of camping or rving because generally it's just more quiet you have more open space and it's more relaxing at least for us it is it's just get this wide open feeling versus when you're in an rv park it's not for everybody you have to be set up for it which if you've watched any of our videos if you haven't check out some of those that show how we've outfitted our rig for living off grid yeah if you haven't had an opportunity to boondock and you're considering it do it by all means you know even if it's just for one night if you're not set up just to get that wide open free feeling that you get when you're boondocking plus you can work and live in some of the most beautiful places why is this like flying through my face we're sitting right above a canyon that's behind us and this is just feet from the front of our rig this is what we get to wake up to every day so we are so blessed so happy to be able to boondock and so pleased and appreciative of arizona and other southwestern states as i said having this available we would hate to lose it yeah it's definitely not um something that's available across the us only a few states have public lands that allow you to camp on it and we would hate to lose this opportunity for ourselves for you and with this huge influx right now of our viewers that are some of them are our newbies some of them are doing it just for the weekend there might it may even be more full-time rvers on the road unfortunately we are noticing a disturbing trend yes and i just read an article the other day shauna mentioned about the explosion of rvers and in july alone the number the sales of rvs was greater than in the last 40 years that makes sense in july alone there were more sales than they've had in the last 40 years that's incredible that means tens or hundreds of thousands of units out on the road and boy i tell you there's a fly that is uh not going to leave me alone he's a fan he can't help it we did shower so it's not that glad you pointed that out yeah so some disturbing trends and if anybody has been following the national news the national forest service u.s forest service they have begun to close public lands to people simply because of the abuse and because of kovid and the reduction of or even cuts in park rangers and others that go out and help kind of monitor these lands there are a few fewer people to do that which means the abuses start to increase yeah a great example of that in this area of the u.s or the national forest that we're in is pretty much controlled and governed by the u.s forest service they have volunteer u.s service u.s forest service volunteers that come in and you know act as camp hosts and kind of help police the areas clean up after people leave those kinds of things and i spoke to one the other day and he's noticing again that disturbing trend and some of those trends are we have actually witnessed it some of those trends are we'll show you a little bit here as well yeah so some of the trends are people um dumping their waste in the forest we've witnessed that you know there's an easy way to deal with that if you're not familiar with what's called a cat hole a cat hole is simply a hole you dig six or eight inches do your business in it and cover it up for some reason people aren't doing that they're just uh defecating on the ground leaving their toilet paper behind those kinds of things garbage well one of the other things going back to that too you know some people use those um what are those called those little porta porta pie porta potties like a home depot bucket five gallon bucket they put a liner in it right they're either one dumping that out on the ground and leaving at the entire bucket or they're leaving the bucket or if there's a bag that gets inserted they're just leaving the bag and we've seen that around here as well so don't be one of those people pack it in pack it out and that means everything like i said a minute ago it's perfectly fine to dig a cattle do your business and that and cover it up that's that that is a traditional way of using uh the outdoors as you really train an acceptable way to take care of that uh something else we've been noticing again is this the amount of garbage that's being left we have started carrying a 30 gallon black garbage bag in our and our jeep so whenever we go out and you know tool around and check things out we will pick up people's garbage see that quite a lot beer cans see a lot of beer cans a lot of pop cans baby diapers i witnessed that the other day when i went to the lake to go fishing i don't know what it is about baby diapers people just decided to chuck their bag full of baby diapers out in the parking lot for someone else to take care of right so don't want this to sound like we're whining what we're oh but what's happened because of those things that brian has just mentioned they shut down the prescott area national forest and i don't know if that's kaibab or you know anyway you know it's in northern arizona yeah but they shut it down one because they didn't have enough rangers to police it and two it just got completely out of control and that's a big area that's now no longer available for people to boondock right so what happens that sends people into other areas and it gets even more crowded overcrowded so if you're one of those people who have decided you want to take on the full-time rv lifestyle and you think that coming out into these national forests is going to be a pleasure it can be oh yeah it can also be a pain yeah you may find some of this bad behavior going on and again we're not whining our goal is to educate and in talking with u.s forest service volunteers that's their goal too to educate people to teach them how to take care of public lands because they're our lands and they're your lands that's right right and when you belong to you and me that's right and when you leave that kind or when someone leaves let's say not you but when someone leaves that kind of garbage behind there's no one else to come by and pick it up they don't have a group of of people that come by with a big truck and go out and pick up garbage no it ends up being people like us maybe even you who are trying to go out and really enjoy the forest and you got to pick it up or you have to look at it and no one wants to look at that really what can make it worse too is if you leave a bag of garbage with food scraps or whatever yeah that draws in the kind of animals that you really don't want bears specifically and coyote they will come in you know tear the bags apart and then just stuff will be strewn all over the place exactly yes now another disturbing trend we're finding and that this is probably part of the whole forest areas are getting closed down so people are having to cram together in a smaller space and that is the illegal practice and this is illegal folk so if you do it you know it's illegal and that is the practice of cordoning off uh part of a national forest for your own use we have spoken with u.s forest service volunteers as we're as well as the u.s forest service law enforcement that is an illegal activity you will get fined for that again we're not whining we're not trying to you know be over dramatic here but again you have people have no right to cordon off the national forest for themselves no they don't and we're not talking small spaces where there's like one one vehicle can fit into and maybe you have to go dump and you wanted to come back to that same spot we're talking large areas that people are actually cordoning off uh maybe they have a group of people coming up well unfortunately you have people that are trying to come up for the weekend and you've got these large areas that are blocked and it makes it very hard for them to come up and enjoy the forest as well so here are some examples of that and i think you'll see what we mean yeah and this was prevalent we heard of this you know maybe once in a while someone would do that for a large group this was prevalent in the area where we are right now um and unfortunately the camp post that's out here said that there's not a lot that he can do about it he's pretty powerless in fact he he tried to to police some of that only to be shot down by the forest service forest service uh they pretty much said you know just leave people alone yeah they didn't want him enforcing it is what they meant what they asked him to actually do is call the sheriff which he has the right to do this is true and uh you know we'll uh we'll see it very often you know u.s forest service in fact i think we've seen law enforcement truck go up and down once or twice too something else that happened us the other day and this is again a little disturbing we were driving down this forest road and we were going pretty slow but you know 25 maybe 20 maybe 25 probably closer to 15. and our campsite is probably 40 yards off of the main road and for the most part people slow down when they go by your campsite because it's a dusty road there are a few people that just just blow by and they could care less about you but most people slow down which is the the nice and proper thing to do it's it's camping etiquette whenever you're in a crowded area that's dusty you slow down for people's campsites so we were driving we took a drive back on this road and we were coming back to our camp and there was a campsite off to the left and we saw these kids uh on atv's young kids certainly under 10. they decided to shoot out onto the forest road on their atvs i had to slam on my brakes lay on the horn right in front of us the kid didn't pay any attention to us i look over the parents start walking over and they're like what you know like what's what's the problem i rolled down the window i said you might want to watch your kids and you know be careful where they're going yeah this road is notorious for people as brian said flying down at 50 miles per hour so they screamed something at us i just rolled the window up and kept going so it was apparently our fault that their children they allowed their children to uh to you know dart out into the road on their little atvs again another problem it's just camping etiquette right right and that i think the moral to that one is moral to the story is these these areas now are crowded you're going to have to also be very vigilant in what's going on around you very true so again we don't want to sound like we're whining we feel that we have a responsibility to educate people because this is our life and we want to not only make it accessible for us but make it accessible for you too yeah not only for now but for the future as well so and your children and your children's children right and we're concerned that if this type of behavior continues they'll just shut down blm lands because they're already starting to do that so let's all do our part be respectful follow the rules and have common courtesy for your other fellow campers in the area yes and they'll leave the blm lands open the national forests open for us all to enjoy we're looking forward to enjoying at least another week here boondocking in this area and then we're very excited to start heading out on the road something we haven't really done yet this entire year since december we've been in the desert southwest area either in arizona nevada northern nevada since december right and boondocking is in our plans as well so hopefully as we make our plan to get to these places there aren't any problems and those areas will be open right we're heading towards the east so you know there are there are fewer options for boondocking and dry camping the further you go east but we're going to look for those opportunities and share those with you and and you know let you know what we find if we find more of what we've been talking about we'll certainly let you know and we want you to let us know what you find when you're out uh you're driving are you finding it are you experiencing it are you finding that there's so much overcrowding that it it's kind of putting a damper on your desire to get out and go rving let us know that in the comments we'd appreciate it all right we're going to wrap it up so if you haven't already subscribed go ahead and do that a little down there somewhere ring that bell down there that way you're notified when we put out our next video which is weekly so until next time we'll see ya [Music] um you

Channel: Lyf Uninterrupted

Views: 317,325

Rating: 4.8439937 out of 5

Keywords: the worst rv camping etiquette ever, rv living, full time rv living, lyf uninterrupted, rv lifestyle, full time rv lifestyle, rving full time, rv etiquette, camping etiquette, camping etiquette rules, campsite etiquette, rv living full time, rv life full time, national forest camping, coconino national forest, prescott national forest, prescott national forest camping, rv camping etiquette, coconino national forest camping, national forest rv camping, boondocking

Id: AXO2d_c1fMU

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I think we are just going to have to pick up after the litterbugs. Otherwise these places will get shut down.

​

Because of covid and the existential threat of...well..everything right now in america. RV sales have surged.

​

(good old capitalist ingenuity, take a crisis, and capitalize from it)

​

In places like colorado, its many locals and out-of-staters who leave behind bags of garbage, half buried TP, and waste. I called out one guy who claimed he "forgot" the large bag of trash, and human waste, as he was driving away from his site.

Another guy left a mattress......yeah... a mattress.

​

Sorry, I dont mean to pick on colorado. But its the last place I have been too, and seems to have suffered the worst.

​

Politically, the trump admin and the senate republicans have gutted out public resources (which was already stripped pretty bare to begin with).

THAT ISNT APOLITICAL STATEMENT BTW, ITS A MATTER OF FACT

​

So here is what we probably need:

More oversight- IE more rangers

More federal jobs.

This can be done by voting for a party that supports public land, not who wants to defund and drill/log.

Responsible people (such as you and I) to adhere to leave no trace principals (unfortunately, if you love public land, and our open spaces, and our free camping) we have to take care of it. That means picking up after the trash.

Also, it means volunteering for pickup. giving back what we put in.

​

I know this is a minimized solution. But unfortunately, for the 99% of americans (who doesnt have a family member with ties to a local senator) we have to be the stewards.

​

Also if you see something, say something.

If that guy is letting out black water, say something.

If people are having fires during a ban, say something.

If someone is four wheeling through a sensitive mountain meadow habitat. report them.

​

Take pictures, report to the USFS, BLM. Most people dont want to be called out (something that has to do with the psychology of shame) and will self correct quickly.

​

Otherwise. These places will cease to exist.

Our environment needs to become a priority