Boondocking with Brad: Boondocking

our first time boon docking. It's about different like safety measures you have to go through when boondocking and different things like that, just to help you understand what it's kind of like to boon dock. So many you might be asking what is boondocking? UM. Boon docking is when you're going to be off the grid, UM, not attached to electricity and water for the night. So you have to learn how your r V is self sustainable UM to do these like one night's two up to a

week in some places. UM of what's called boon docking. So you're not UM, you're not hooked up, you're just on the lamb basically, and you have to like fill your water reserves and you have to use your generator and how it all works and you have to understand your electricity flow so you can know to not like microwave and cook a pot of coffee at the same time. There's many places to boon dock across this country, um, from rest stop areas to Bureau of Land Management areas

to Wally World and beyond. We've done Wally World many times. What's Wally World Walmartin? Oh yeah, you've definitely heard me Wally World before. But that's a great question to ask. So with boon docking, there's a lot of different issues or fears that come about. Um when you're first doing this. Um, I know when we refers doing this, Matt was asking questions like are we gonna be uh like, uh, we're just gonna be parking here at this rest area for

the night. Um, we're gonna just be on Wally World for the night. Oh, we're gonna be you know, just parking on the side of the road for the night. And it's you know, not logical fears, right, There's definitely questions. But um, up until this point, have we had any issues. No, aside from just being called occasionally. I think that's the

biggest issue. But I would say that's more because of well, our heater in our r V is on the fritz, and we don't want to use a space heater while the generators running because it puts too much power to the generator. So sometimes we'll just leave on the engine in the front half of the chassis of the truck r V to stay warm, but then it gets really hot and so we have to turn it off and then we'll turn it back on in the morning type

of situation. But there's a lot of different things that you have to deal with when owning an r V and uh getting them fixed and finding the time to get them fixed, because sometimes you're just on the run and going all the time and just traveling so much.

So when dry camping, there's definitely a lot of questions that come about, um, are there gonna be a lot of like wild animals and bears and things like that, And even on the Bureau of Land Management where they allow boondocking, you're not gonna have um too much wildlife or too much fear of that because um it's normally in a part of the land where it's not like covered in forest. It's not like you're gonna be driving

twenty minutes into the woods. Um, you're gonna be on the outskirts and where there's not a lot of things, but you still have to be bear aware and you have to put away your foods and things like that. You don't want to leave them. I'll leave them out all night for animals to to get them. UM. A lot of people have the other question, can you leave your rig um certain situations yes, other situations no. UM.

I would not leave your rig in a truck stop, but that's kind of obvious, right for many reasons, just a lot of people coming in and out, and you're not supposed to stay in truck stops more than sometimes four hours, sometimes six, sometimes twelve. It just depends on that state. So you actually have to look it up as you're traveling. So boon docking is it's pretty um simple in the fact of set up, but there's a

lot of technicalities behind it to really find the right places. UM. There's great resources out there like free roam, which is an app that will help you find it. Then there's like campadem um, and then another one is uh the Bureau of Land Management BLM offices, ranger stations, and then even word of mouth. UM. But they're going to tell you where, when, and how. A lot of these apps have even cell phone strength signal to um what the

local areas like. So it's actually there's some great resources out there to help you find those places when you are looking for um boondocking opportunities. There's always this thing where Matt and I are together and we have fins. We're not alone. Boon docking alone is definitely a different experience UM, and there's some different fears. I mean, even the times where I was out there and Matt was on a trip back home to Chicago or um somewhere else, uh,

A boon docking by myself was totally different. UM. I didn't want to turn on the lights. I didn't have like a safety and numbers type of feel, and so I just kind of stayed in the dark and just like like jumped on my tablet and watched the movies. And I did not make it a home. So it's kind of weird, but I, you know, these were irrational fears that I had, and now, UM, I don't have

those same exact fears. But in the beginning, when we were just getting started and it was the first time by myself, like you know, everyone can have that fear of just like where they're boondocking and you know, not wanting to have conversations with people, but most people won't bother you. If you're boon docking for long term, there's

some things that you definitely have to check. You want to make sure that you're propane is full, UM, your batteries are charged, and refrigerator works while um not attached to power. But when we get into boondocking for a long time, there's some things that you want to know. Is like you're even if you're on like beer of land management land or your boon docking and a rest station, a lot of times you're not allowed to use your

generators at night. Uh, there are still quiet hours per se um and that's so you don't disturb the wildlife at night. It's also so you don't disturb your neighbors, you don't cause any issues. So you have to really

understand what you're getting into. You're going to set up your r V almost similarly to when we were talking about hooking up the r V, but basically the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna go over to your A C unit and make sure that your a C is off, your heat is off, because that creates

a big surge when you start your generator. And what we're talking about right now starting a generator because you want to have electricity to charge your appliances, you want to watch a movie, you need to work, you need to you know, showers, so you want warm hot water, and you know, how do we do these things? How do we turn those on? Um, So basically, you're gonna go to a C unit, turn it off, make sure that nothing's on, and then you're gonna go over and in the side of our r V we have a

built in generator. So basically we have a button on the inside that just hit start. You prime it first by pushing the button down for about five seconds and the light will come on to let you know you're good, and then you hit start and you hold it and then your generator will start. Our generators fuel comes from our engine, so we of course have to make sure

that we have a full tank of gas. UM. Now, if you're it's an off board generator, you know you're gonna have to make sure to have a like five gallon jug back up and things like that to make sure that you don't run out of fuel if you're staying UH in a boon docking situation for multiple times. Because there's always different types of generators and how they're set up within your RV, so it's gonna be a little bit different for you than it is for Matt

and myself. But once your generators on, what we do next is we push out our bed and so that's where our slideout is in the rear um, so we push out that beds that way we have our full bed um and then I normally turn on the hot water heater, so I'll have to make sure that my propane is on on the outside. So basically I'll have to walk around the r V to where our propane

tank is. I'll make sure that that is open so that way propane is fueling into the r V, and then I'll come back in turn on the hot water heater, and I'll wait for about five seconds to hear the pilot kick on, and then that is what allows me to know, okay, it's on, because you'll know, once you start getting used to this, you'll hear this like sound inside of your RV that UH is telling you that it's on. It's a little bit different sounding, but the

rhythms more like that. But yeah, so then you'll have that on. You'll be able to do dishes, you'll be able to um, take warm showers, wash your hands with warm water, different things like that. Now r r V with the heater, it's UM having issues with the blower motor. Um, that's what I've gotten it down to so far. I just have to take it in and really get it figured out. But that's actually kind of good because that means my fridge it's still getting propane to keep it cold, um,

even when that generator is off. There's different things like this. There's different technicalities that you have to understand when boon docking. That's different from electrical setup because our fridge works off electricity as well, and so when we have electricity coming in from the r V park, it's all fine and dandy. We don't have to worry about propane. But when we're boon docking, we do have to worry about propane. And so that is when you have to understand how your

systems start to flow. And through a year of r V ownership, over a year now, UM, I've really started to understand these. Now there's some technicalities that I don't quite get yet. But that's a learning thing. So I'm I'm a learner and I'm figuring it out as we go. And this is a beautiful part is our heater doesn't work because that propane pilot is separate from the hot water pilot light. Um. And then there's even another one

for your oven and still open things like that. So, um, you have to understand where your pilot lights are, um, what they do to control the temperatures within your RV. Right, so keeping cold food cold, frozen food frozen, keeping shower water hots that way you're not taking a freezing cold shower in the middle of the winter because that happens. Uh. Those are miserable. I have to do one or two of those last year, and um uh yeah, I definitely don't want to do with that again. You are listening

to park Landia from my heart radio. Hi, I'm Matt and I'm Brad. This Parklandia. So can you leave your rig after you set it up? Can you leave it? Yes, you can leave your rig there as long as you know, um, it's in an appropriate and safe area. Now you're gonna want to lock your door, is you know you're gonna want to do all the safety precautions that you do with a normal home, but you're not going to get

your thing uh towed away in most cases. Um, unless you or maybe more being obnoxious, you're destructing the land, You're you're you're just being overall jerk. That's when they're gonna take you know, take you out. But if you're being respectful of your neighbors of the situation of boondocking, then you're gonna be fine. Um. You know, if you're closer to a city, of course, you know you're gonna want to take some extra safety precautions. Um. And that's

coming from t people from the city. But honestly, most people aren't gonna mess with you uh in these situations either. Now, when it comes to leaving pets alone when boondocking, I have a hard time leaving Finn in our r V while we're boondocking, So it kind of limits the things that we're able to do when boondocking for an extended

period of time. Um. But if I do, or when I do, like let's say we're going on a little hike and we're coming back, I always make sure that generators running with the a c or heat or on whatever is necessary to make sure that Finny doesn't get uh too hot or too cold, because we want to take care of him like he takes care of us. So you're going for your first time boon docking, ever, I would recommend to make sure to know where the closest r V park is. And the reason why is

because you want to test it out locally. You want to test out near your home or within a friend or family's home before you just go do it for a whole week. You know, you want to go learn kind of like what we did with Mammoth Caves. You know, when we were first learning how to just hook up in r V, we went to man Caves and we checked it out and tried it out, found our mistakes and our issues, and that really helped us in the long haul um because we had like a small instance

of what we needed. And then in these situations and boon docking, when you're going to do that, you want to test that out locally as well. You can even test out in your own backyard, but just make sure that you're not going to your fridge in your home for a beer. You want to know that you can have a cold beer in your in your fridge in your r V as well, So make sure to take the time to learn about your r V. Watch some videos.

There's great YouTube tutorials on YouTube about boon docking for the first time, mistakes, for the first time issues that they run into. And I think it's really an important thing to do your research before you just go halfway across the country to think you can boon dock anywhere and everywhere, because finding these places are not easy. They're not close to things, they're not going to be in your national parks, their normal not around your national parks.

But sometimes you know you can get away with it for the night, but you know you have to be very careful because you do not want to disturb the wildlife. The reason, the main reason why boondocking is not allowed in national parks is because people will run their generators or their vehicles all night. Well, that changes the ecosystem, the wildlife's behavior, the whole entire shebang of what that national park is about, and it's about preserving and protecting

those animals and wildlife. So when people are boondocking in national parks and the large numbers, it's not safe for that environment. So that's boon docking with Brad. That's one of the hardest episodes to really talk about because there's so many different situations with boondocking. And if you have questions, please please please reach out to us on Twitter at park landy up Pod, Instagram at parklandia Pod, or or start a conversation in our Parklandia Rangers Facebook group. This

is about like campfire conversations. We really want you to start a conversation so we can get community impact and and feedback because that is what makes Parklandia so special to us, is the community that it's building. So please reach out to us. We're so excited and so happy to have you listening today because we love all of this. You've been listening to park Landia, a show about national parks.

Parklandia is a production of My Heart Radio, created by Matt Carouac, Brad Carouac, and Christopher has the otis producer and edited by Mike John's. Our executive producer is Christopher hasiotis our researcher. It's jeff Lyn shield A Special Things goes out to Gabrielle Collin's Crystal Waters and the rest of the Parklandia crew and Hey listeners. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people like you find our show. You can

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