The easy way to find boondocking campsites

When you start looking for a boondocking campsite in the national forests–especially if you haven’t camped there before–it can seem a daunting task. When you turn your rig down an unknown dirt road, it is impossible to tell not only if there are boondocking campsites but also how far they might be.

Change is coming that will affect how and where we boondock

By Bob Difley

If you haven’t yet heard about the Forest Service’s Travel Management Rule (TMR) you soon will. And it could change some critical “dispersed camping” (boondocking) rules for a long time to come.

The writing of this rule has been in the works for years. Each individual forest supervisor has been instructed to define and map every legally constructed road within his district and any not so defined will be declared illegal roads on which motor vehicles will be prohibited. It will also define trails for use by OHVs.

So far so good. We probably wouldn’t want to drive our rigs on bootlegged roads created by 4-wheelers and hunters or those designated for OHVs anyway, choosing those that were built by forest service engineers and substantial enough to handle fire fighting equipment and heavy cattle and logging trucks.

But then it gets a little murky. The rule says you cannot camp any further off the road than one vehicle length, except for those sites that have been designated as “dispersed camping” areas, and which will be included on the forest map. The supervisor designates those areas that will be defined as dispersed camping areas and boondocking will be limited to those areas–no more camping anywhere.

This is where there could be potential conflict. The supervisor, for example, could just designate those areas that can accommodate many RVs, but not authorize single campsites (which are usually the most private and nesty) and might be one of your favorites.

So far the official response to questions has been that all those spots that have been used in the past for boondocking (dispersed camping) will be included as official and legal campsites, but hacking new campsites out of the forest will not be allowed. This is good and if that is the case most of us boondockers will not be affected. But . . . it is still up to the supervisor, and if he/she is more interested in ease of patrolling the forest, he/she could restrict boondockers to group dispersed camping areas and not authorize individual sites.

The plan is still coming together. Some forests have already completed the maps for their forests and they are available at ranger offices or online–you can find the completed Motor Vehicle Use Maps here. I suggest that when you enter any national forest that you stop at the regional ranger office and ask about the TMR, whether it is in effect, and pick up the appropriate map for where you intend to camp–and make sure that dispersed camping areas are defined and located on the map. There is a very good reason to do this–failure to camp in an authorized area can result in a fine of up to $5,000, though this much fine would apply to flagrant violators. But who determines that. Ask questions. And if you find out some valuable and pertinent information, please let me know.

For those who like to wade through government publications, here is the link to the Travel Management Rule when it was authorized. But each individual forest is different, and will have slightly different interpretations of the rule, so again. ask questions.

Check out my website for more RVing tips and destinations and for my ebooks, BOONDOCKING: Finding the Perfect Campsite on America’s Public Lands , Snowbird Guide to Boondocking in the Southwestern Deserts, and 111 Ways to Get the Biggest Bang out of your RV Lifestyle Dollar.

How the little things can determine your boondocking lifestyle

I asked in one of my boondocking classes what was the biggest reason that kept them from not boondocking more. A woman responded that she could just not give up her electric blanket. How perceptions can differ from one person to another on what is necessary–her deterrent was something I didn’t even own.

In reality, it is most likely not a technical item that is required to enjoy boondocking, but a perceived convenience item–the electric blanket–designed to keep one warm but required continuous 120-volt electrical current over an eight-hour period, something that a non-energy-requiring extra blanket or quilt would accomplish just as well.

So when you begin setting up your rig for boondocking, it may be just as important to consider exactly what will make you comfortable and enhance your boondocking experience rather than just filling up your cart with boondocking “must have” items at Camping World. Spend just as much time on how to achieve personal warmth, comfort, cleanliness, healthy meals, and enjoyment of the great outdoors as you do on whether the inverters, solar panels, generators, tank capacities, battery capacities, and amps + volts + watts will accomplish those desires, and whether all that stuff is really worth the expense compared to, well, just throwing on another blanket.

Why is RV boondocking, camping without convenient hookups, growing in popularity?

Though you’ve heard about boondocking from other RVers and on blogs but never tried it you might wonder why anyone would want to camp where there were no water, sewage, or electrical hookups.

After all, camping in an RV in an RV resort or upscale campground is pretty comfortable, and living without those hookups would seem to make it less enjoyable.

But in reality, all modern RVs have been manufactured to be not only mobile, but also to be independent of appendages that hook them up to land-based resources. All RVs have a holding tank for fresh water, and most of the time two holding tanks for waste, one from the toilet and one from the shower and sinks.

Don’t be put off because of campground maximum size limitation

I’m sure you’ve seen entries in campground guidebooks and on entry kiosks at the entrances to National Park, Monument, or forest service campgrounds that designate maximum length limitations. “Maximum size 27 feet,” for instance. So, if you were driving a 28-foot Class C, or towing a 28-foot fiver, did you cross it off your list of potential camping locations? If so, you may have missed an opportunity to visit what might be a wonderful national treasure or a nesty, forest campsite beside a tumbling stream.

The maximum RV length referred to means that all–or most–of the campsites in the campground will accommodate that length. But . . . some will also accommodate longer lengths, sometimes much longer. Those who write the rules do not want to officially include longer lengths when maybe only three or four campsites will fit longer lengths, and if those are taken but smaller ones remain open, they may get in a tangle with RVers with a longer rig urging them to move someone with a shorter rig out of the larger site and into a smaller site. Or, when those with larger rigs show up and find there are only a few that fit the maximum size stated and they are taken.

How to keep your on-the-road RV expenses under control

If you don’t want the current lousy economy to keep you from following the blue highways this summer, try some of the following cost-cutting measures to reduce your overhead while not constricting your lifestyle.

Most are just changing your old habits for new, more efficient ones.

Drive 55. Lower speeds means more miles-per-gallon, and you will enjoy the scenery more and have less stress at lower speeds.

• Avoid jack-rabbit starts and quick stops. It’s all about torque and kinetic energy.

Is a solar powered system worth the upfront cost?

You can hardly mention boondocking without also mentioning electricity in the same sentence.

Before I started boondocking, I took electrical power for granted. When I wanted to run something that required electricity, I merely pushed a button or flipped a switch.

I never ran out–I could leave the lights on 24/7 and never receive an error message that my power was at 20% and the system would shut down in a few minutes.

Power was cheap. Supply was infinite. But when my wife and I became boondockers, that all changed. Now our power supply became limited by the number and state of our batteries. When our batteries became depleted, our electricity supply stopped–dead. No water–the pump wouldn’t run. No Radio. No TV. The electrical step wouldn’t retract. No lights to finish the last chapter of my book.

How to keep creepy crawlies out of your water supply

When was the last time you thought about water? We Americans and Canadians are so used to hooking up the hose to any available tap and filling our water tanks with pure, clean water that we don’t let bugs like typhoid, diarrhea, pathogenic microorganisms, and intestinal parasites to even enter our consciousness. And that sometimes causes us to become careless.

You may not drink plain, un-enhanced water, preferring wine, beer, coffee, sodas, or tea for your liquid intake. As explorer Owen Lattimore noted while traveling the ancient Asian Silk Road in camel caravans, “Water alone, unboiled, is never drunk. There is a superstition that it causes blisters on the feet.” But if water for any use–ice cubes, washing vegetables, brushing teeth–comes in contact with your insides, you might want to consider these extra firewall protections between you and the microscopic creepy crawlies.

What’s in your tool kit?

By Bob Difley

From many years of RVing I have discovered that if you don’t follow the rule “if you bring something aboard, something has to leave” then soonor later you will either be way overloaded or will be looking for a new –and larger–rig.

Your RV, if you hadn’t noticed lately, is limited in carrying and storage capacity. You have to make decisions of what you will carry and what you will eliminate when something new comes aboard. And when you will get rid of something if you haven’t used it in a while–like a year or more.

Which brings me to my “things that I have had for more than a year but which will NOT go” list. I know that someday I will need these “things” when boondocking, which will justify the time I have carried them, mostly unused, hidden deep in a locker somewhere.

• Folding shovel. Folds into a compact shape. Can also be used as a hammer, pick, scoop, scraper, and along with a bucket often required by the forest service (FS) during dry seasons if you are boondocking and plan to build a campfire. Available at my Amazon aStore and at outdoor and Army surplus stores.

How to keep your RV food stores safe from pathogens

As recent events show, even though our food sources are likely among the most inspected and safest to eat on earth, pathogens do make it into foods available to us. While most of us are familiar with and have confidence in our local food suppliers, how and from whom do we pick our foods when on the road?

Unfortunately, we can’t always tell when foods contain something that will make us sick. Whether purchasing food from a major supermarket supplied by super-sized agribusiness producers or from the back of a farmer’s truck at a local farmers’ market doesn’t protect us from the pathogens that sneak through.

Boondockers must be especially careful in the handling and storing of fresh foods when stocking up before a trip, storing food in every available space—often hidden from view until discovered as the storage area empties out, often having been subjected to a wide fluctuation between heat and cold.