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Best guide for nomadic RV life

Boondock RVing

With a little bit of gumption you can liberate your RV from the leash of the RV parks. Run it untethered, off the grid. Camp in a wild place, or in a parking lot. Takes some advance planning, maybe some more gear, certainly a change of spirit. This book will help. While its technical specs are out of date by a few years, the general drift of the book’s advice is right on. Like in anything else off the grid, there’s much talk about batteries, inverters and cables. There is not much here about mail forwarding, etc, which is best covered by hanging out on the forums at Escapees, the watering hole website for full-time RVers.

Escapees is a membership club for full time RVers which offers a popular mail forwarding service. You can get your postal mail and packages forwarded in a hundred different ways and schedules. Since it is based in Texas, your official residence can then be located in a state without income tax. Its 35,000 members are eager to share their knowledge of the RV life with newbies.

Also, Workamper is a good online bookstore full of RV-related titles. Guides to: Finding work on the road, cooking, repairs, shopping guides for new rigs, directories of camp grounds, Rving in Mexico and Alaska, dealing with insurance, etc.. Also a book that lists what stores lie at each exit of the interstates! Most of the published lore focuses on snowbirding, and RV parking, rather than boondocking.

Overall, Boondocking RVing is the best book about the logistics of long-term nomadic RVing. — KK

• Additionally, the cost of staying in private campgrounds is increasing, going up by a dollar or more per night each year. We recently read an article in RVBusiness magazine, written by a campground spokesman, that stated the industry envisions campground prices will eventually reach a level of 50% the cost of a midlevel hotel or more. Consequently, if you would normally pay $100 a night for a hotel room, you would pay $50 a night in an RV park.
• Retail Stores and Restaurants
  Retail and chain stores often have large, well-lit parking lots. We have camped at Fred Meyer, Kmart, and Wal-Mart stores (or Camp Wally as they are more commonly called). In fact, Wal-Mart carries an edition of the Rand McNally road atlas with an insert that lists all of the U.S. and Canadian Wal-Marts. other options might include discount warehouses, such as Sam’s Club, or restaurants, such as Cracker Barrel and McDonald’s.
• Casinos are excellent places for convenience camping. We don’t know of any casinos that prohibit overnight camping, unless they have a commercial campground. Of course, they expect you to patronize the facilities, so at least eat in their restaurants, which often have excellent buffets at reasonable prices. … With the profusion of casinos being built all over the country, they can make great overnight stops with good food and entertainment. Some casinos have regular RV parks, but still allow boondocking in certain areas of the parking lot.
• We have two catalytic heaters — a small one (1,600 to 2,800 Btu), which is mounted on the wall, and a medium-sized one (3,200 to 6,000 Btu) we can move around as needed. We’ve kept warm in some below-freezing temperatures with the catalytic heaters as our only heat source.

• There is a bit of controversy over whether 6-volt or 12-volt batteries are better in a battery bank. Two of the arguments for using 6-volt batteries are (1) there are fewer cables involved in series wiring, so there are fewer connection to corrode; and (2) in 12-volt parallel wiring, one of the batteries in a two-battery bank will receive most of the load and most of the charge, and therefore will fail faster than the other.
  The first argument has some validity as there are fewer cables in series wiring, so there is less corrosion. The second argument is not necessarily true, if you wire the bank as shown above. if a battery goes bad in a 12-volt bank, you can just disconnect it and use the remaining one. You’ll still be getting 12 volts. With a 6-volt bank, however, one bad battery means the loss of the whole two-battery bank.

• Should you tilt your panels and follow the sun? … We have seen rigs with their panels mounted on racks that allow them to swing around to track the sun. Frankly, this just seems like too much work to us, plus we don’t really think it’s necessary. Also, when panels are tilted up, they can be more easily damaged by the high winds that occur during the winter months, particularly in desert areas.

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Low rent nomads

Cheap RV Living

Roomier than a car, but cheaper than an RV, a retrofitted van makes a cool inexpensive house. Once popular during hippie days, the ancient American tradition of modifying a van is undergoing a resurgence as rents continue to rise. More folks each year commute from work and then park their home, instead of parking in front of it. On this lovely free website, you can find inspiring examples of cheap nomads, detailed instructions for conversions, gear recommendations, and lots of advice for living in a low rent or homemade RV from “them that’s doin’ it.” — KK

• And what about gas mileage? With a car you may get 50 mpg and with an RV you may get 5 mpg. Since we are living cheaply, this is a very important consideration. It’s hard to be too specific with mpg numbers. If you buy a 1975 1 ton pickup with a 454, you might get 6 mpg with a camper, but if you buy a 2005 diesel, you may get 20 mpg with the same camper. If you get a 1985 Ford van with a 460, you may get 6 mpg but if you get a 302 V8 you may get 22 mpg. Or, even better, get a Astro minivan, you could get 25 mpg.
• STEALTH PARKING: After I bought the van, I didn’t know where to go with it. I couldn’t afford to pay for an RV park (and they probably would not have accepted me anyway since my van was pretty beat-up looking) so I slept in the parking lot of the store where I worked. No one even noticed me! The great thing about the box van was that when I parked in front of any large store, it looked like it belonged there. I lived in that van for 6 years and never once paid for parking anywhere and was never bothered for where I did park.
• I have a cell phone, a loan payment, van insurance, and credit cards. One of the first things I did to handle this was go “paperless” – I now get all my statements by email and pay my bills online. I get wifi on my laptop, and many public libraries have computers & internet available.

• Kitchen:
  This changed several times as I was building it. I needed pantry space, drawers, and fresh/gray water for the faucet/sink. The kitchen is positioned along the passenger side so I can open the doors when cooking on my camp stove. The counter is actual Formica with a drop down leaf to give me more room when cooking. I have 2 six gallon containers, one is for gray water and one for fresh. I use a hand pump for water, or use gallons of water from the store for cooking and cleaning more often now. I may add a small pump in the future. The microwave sits underneath with enough space in the pantry for about a week’s worth of food. The spice rack is a must have for me, because while the portions are smaller and more challenging to make, I still don’t sacrifice on good food! Under the pantry I store my pans, lids, and plates in a magazine rack from Ikea. The fridge is a standard dorm minifridge I found on craigslist for $20 but I only turn it on when driving or when plugged into shore power, as it can drain my batteries in two days. Most of the time I use it as a glorified icebox, as I tend to buy fresh foods the day I use them.
• The Pee Bottle:First and foremost, the pee bottle must be leakproof and unbreakable for obvious reasons! For all my adventures, I’ve used a 1 liter, wide-mouth Lexan bottle made by Nalgene. They come in a variety of colors – I’ve settled on the dark yellow one for my pee bottle so I don’t mistake it for my drinking water bottle. Similar, less expensive brands can be found in the sporting goods department at WalMart or Target, or experiment with plastic food product containers with tight fitting lids and enough volume.
  Spill Proof – One fear I have in van or tent is fumbling and spilling the pee bottle before I have the lid screwed on all the way. To safeguard this, I made a wrist loop out of a piece of 1inch wide nylon webbing which I duct taped to the bottle (see photo). The wrist loop is loose enough to slip easily on and off and to hold the bottle with that hand, but tight enough that the bottle won’t fall if I loose my grip. Slip the loop over one hand, unscrew the lid, and away you go; just be sure to screw the lid on tightly before slipping out of the wrist loop. A piece of cord would work just as well as the nylon webbing – just get the loop the right size.I keep two pee bottles in the van just in case I forget to empty one during the day – and on long, cold nights sometimes one liter just isn’t enough!
  
• What vehicle to buy?If gas mileage and stealth are most important: Chevrolet Astro minivan–great mpg and super stealth.If room and stealth are most important: Full-size American van, especially the Dodge with a 318 V8.If headroom is most important: High-top American conversion van.For a couple, or if you need lots of room: Box van or Step-van, both with a diesel engine.If you want to go further into the back-country: Pickup with a camper with 4X4.

12/23/24