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Blogs > HetFlex_K > Heteroflexible K

HetFlex_K 51M
159 posts
7/20/2020 10:10 pm
boondocking

Dry camping. Going off-grid. Boondocking is just another word for being in a motorhome or RV without being hooked up to anything like water or electricity. You are completely self-sufficient, and as a result have to take things like water consumption seriously. If there is not a natural source available nearby, you have to haul it with you like everything else. I can purchase extra propane tanks, and gas for the generator, but carrying around extra water is not so easy to do. My main concern will be potable / drinking water, obviously, but thankfully they make bladders for the purpose of transporting large amounts of the stuff. The only other big concern and challenge will be food. I like to eat fresh vegetables on a daily basis, so my refrigerator and pantry are going to be full. If I can maintain my diet among all the other changes that are coming I think my health and well-being will only increase.

To boondock is not a simple thing, as you might imagine. There just aren’t many open spaces left that haven’t been developed, or otherwise occupied. By using Google Earth and visiting a few sites specific to my goal (Bureau of Land Management is a big one) I am trying to find public lands that I can hopefully set myself up in for a week at a time. I’ll call that my home base, and then the next challenge will be to find free places to park when I do a bit of traveling. There are people and places I want to visit, so if my motorhome tests well and I feel secure enough after my trip to the coast, I’ll begin venturing further from home, but always with an eye for those places and spaces that I can escape to, and just disappear.

Hopefully finding and maintaining some form of internet connection won’t be too difficult. I know of a few devices I can try, and I’m also supposed to be able to use my phone as a hot spot for my laptop, or something like that, so I’m going to remain optimistic. This whole endeavor won’t be affordable for very long if I still can’t get online and do all the things I normally do - and more. A great deal of this journey I’m about to take is going to be documented on video, and shown on YouTube, but more on that later.

If I had the money I would almost certainly fit my motorhome with solar panels, but they are expensive and as we all know, the sun is hardly predictable. So I’ll be cooking with propane and getting my electricity from<b> batteries </font></b>that are recharged by my generator, which runs on regular gas. My motorhome has heat and air conditioning, but I won’t use either unless I need to. Conservation will be the key. Showers will be brief and I’m going to do my best to cut way down on dirty dishes. This is going to be a fun challenge.

The reason I want to be off-grid is not because I am trying to drop out of society, or even separate myself from it. The city I live in is making me miserable, so this escape is my solution, but I don’t believe it will be permanent. It is not my stated goal or intention to make this my way of life, for the rest of my life. I would still like to find a home in a quiet city so I can tend a garden and all that, but for now I have to flee, if I want to keep my sanity. And if I do not want to watch my bank account quickly drain away I have to find free versions of things like camping, so I’m not paying for a place to park every single night. I cannot trespass, nor do I intend to, so I am searching for the above aforementioned public lands that I can dry camp on. Lots where RVs and motorhomes hook up to dump waste and whatnot are never free, so if I can avoid going to them, I will. Plus, they are generally just big parking lots full of other recreational vehicles, which means noise, and a lack of privacy. I’m looking for places that are quiet, and that I might even be able to roam around naked in. This may take some time to accomplish.

For now, until my motorhome has gone a few hundred miles with me behind the wheel, I am definitely going to remain in Oregon. I’d love to drive to California eventually, and my lives in Nevada, so I have reasons to roam. I’m just not confident enough yet that my new abode on wheels has what it takes.


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