Are you interested in boondocking in your RV but not ready to spend thousands of dollars? You’re in luck because you don’t have to.
First, let’s define “boondocking.” It can take on a lot of forms depending on where you are camping. But essentially, it refers to not having any hookups for electricity, water, or sewer. In other words, it’s camping but in an RV.
Looking at online forums and social media posts will make you think you can’t go camping in an RV because you haven’t invested thousands of dollars in lithium-ion battery packs and a solar array large enough to run the International Space Station.
But many RVs are made to go “off-grid,” and others can be adapted easily enough. That’s assuming you aren’t looking to spend the weekend in the desert in a rig that rivals the comfort and performance of your house. If you want to leave home but not leave any conveniences behind, then you don’t want to go camping. You want to go to what is commonly referred to now as “glamping.”
Getting away from people, light pollution, noise pollution, and other modern-day nuisances can mean finding a nice spot in the woods of the Midwest. Or maybe an empty spot in the desert of the Southwest.
The key is determining your basic needs for power, water, sewer, lighting, and cooking.
We travel about 9 months annually in a 30-foot 2022 Airstream Flying Cloud Office. We avoid modern campgrounds and RV parks when possible. Due to work commitments, that’s not as often as we would like. That’s particularly true in some parts of the country where finding open spaces to camp is more difficult. Boondocking for us might mean something as rudimentary as staying overnight in a Walmart parking lot in between destinations. It might mean enjoying a stay at a Harvest Hosts location. Or, ideally, it’s being by ourselves in a remote spot in the desert or a quiet, established rustic campground in a national park or a state forest.
Here are some specs of our rig and additional equipment for comparison with what you might already have. Note that some of what we have is more than others need. We often work full-time and use computers and the internet heavily, even while boondocking. More on that later.
Our equipment:
- Two 80-amp hour AGM batteries
- 380 watts of installed solar panels on the roof
- 52-gallon fresh water tank (plus 8 gallons in collapsible, portable water bags.)
- 41-gallon gray water tank
- 35-gallon black water tank
- Three 100-watt portable solar panels
- 2,850 watts of portable battery packs (Two 1,000-watt units, a 500-watt unit, and a 350-watt unit that we have collected over time. If we weren’t working full time, a fraction of these devices, if any, would be needed.)
- A 3,200-watt Firman generator (actually, it’s 2,900 watts since it’s dual fuel, and we’ve only ever run it on propane, which provides fewer watts.) Fun fact: we run the generator a lot more to exercise it than we do to recharge our batteries.
As mentioned, you need to think about your basic needs. And you need to be in a camping mindset. If you want to park anywhere without hookups but still run multiple air conditioners, a residential-size refrigerator, fancy espresso machine, hair dryer, washer and dryer, dishwasher, and ice maker — well, then you’re not really camping anyway, so this doesn’t pertain to you.
When we boondock, we move into camping mode. That means we take Navy showers. We limit how many lights we run at one time. We cook over a propane stove or an outdoor grill.
Unfortunately, we often still have to work full time. And we use the internet heavily for video calls, uploading large files, and other tasks. That’s important to note because we use power-hungry devices such as computers, phones, extra monitors, a Verizon hotspot, and Starlink. We would prefer not to do that in camping mode, but we have to pay for our Airstream somehow!
When boondocking, we have gone nearly a week without hookups, albeit in a very sunny desert environment. That meant we had plenty of solar power to replenish our batteries.
We could have gone much longer if power was the only thing holding us back. Or even fresh water, because we carry portable water bags, and you can usually find somewhere to refill them easily.
Our gray and blank tank space is our biggest issue when trying to stay out longer. Because it’s an Airstream, the tanks aren’t as large as you might find in larger rigs, particularly Class A motorhomes or fifth-wheels. Some people say you can dump gray water on the ground. That’s illegal in many places and not environmentally friendly. And, of course, dumping your black tank on the ground is never acceptable.
On a side note, we cannot figure out why so many manufacturers are building smaller rigs with tons of power to go off-grid for long periods and then saddling them with a 5-gallon cassette toilet. Those make no sense for boondocking!
Let’s use our week in Big Bend National Park this summer as a good example of how we can boondock for a while.
As noted, we had 60 gallons of fresh water available. We made that last for showers, flushing the toilet, washing hands, making coffee, and cooking. Generally, we have canned sparkling water on board, which helps us avoid using our fresh water for drinking. We only did Navy showers, and we didn’t shower every day because you don’t need to. If you want to freshen up, which is advisable, we recommend Venture Wipes. Navy showers — turning the water on to get wet and to rinse, but leaving it off while soaping and cleaning — help a lot to conserve gray tank space.
Although we were in a rustic campground, they had toilets available, so we used those when we could to help conserve black tank space. Also, while exploring, we used bathrooms elsewhere since we were away from the rig.
Power consumption was scaled back only in that we couldn’t run our air conditioners or microwave. But we have a DC-only refrigerator, which means it can’t run on propane, so that’s a constant drain on our rig’s batteries. Because so much sun shone each day, we didn’t really scale back on our use of lights. Plus, we often charge our phones and small devices like Kindles through our Airstream’s USB plugs, which draw directly from our AGM batteries.
It was well above 100 degrees during the day, and without air conditioning, we had both Fantastic Fan vents running on at least Medium speed most of the day. Big Bend’s location is great, though, because the temps drop to the 60s or 70s overnight. We took advantage of that by ensuring we cooled the rig off after the sun went down and then used all of our windows, the fans, and the awnings to keep things as cool as possible during the heat of the day.
The biggest draw on our power was Starlink and the laptop and desktop computers we use for work, producing our YouTube channel, and other tasks.
To keep the rig’s batteries healthy and well-stocked, we tapped into our portable battery packs. The smaller units easily kept up with the computers for the day, and our larger packs could power Starlink for much of the day. We used our portable solar panels to help recharge the big battery packs. We didn’t need them to recharge our Airstream batteries. Our generator also wasn’t needed.
Things would have been quite different if we had been camping in the Midwest—either because shade from trees blocked our solar panels or because cloudy days made them useless. In that case, we would likely have pulled out the generator at some point to replenish the batteries and the battery packs.
If you add up everything we travel with, yes we probably have as much invested in our power supplies as if we had installed more solar and lithium batteries. But there are some key differences.
First, we didn’t buy all of these things at once, so we could spread out the cost of our investment.
Second, the portable batteries, the portable solar panels, and the generator have other uses. We take them with us on weekend camping trips in our tow vehicle, a one-ton Chevrolet van. And the generator is available for use in our sticks-and-bricks while we’re there for the fall if our electricity goes out.
And let’s not forget, we wouldn’t need most of the extra power if it weren’t for the computers, monitors, and Starlink.
So, if you’re looking to boondock for a weekend, a long weekend, or even a week — analyze your power and water needs (including wastewater) to see what’s necessary. And do so with a camping mindset instead of a glamping mindset. We have friends who have long preached the motto, “Start small, start now.” They often use that when talking about camping rigs. You shouldn’t wait until you can afford the largest rig to start making memories. Take the rig you have now and get going.
We would argue the same is true for boondocking. Head out for a weekend and track your real-world power and water use to compare it with your estimates. Then, adjust accordingly, either by using less water and electricity or supplementing them somehow.
But build things up in stages, as slowly as possible, until you eventually reach what you need. Otherwise, you’ll be waiting to make memories, and that’s a shame.
When we share stories from the road, they are rarely about some RV resort we couldn’t wait to leave. Our favorites are from boondocking spots we found, enjoyed, and didn’t want to leave.
Do you have questions or concerns about what you need to go boondocking? Comment below or reach out to us at trekersorg(@)gmail.com. We’re happy to help!
Keep on trekin’, and we’ll see you out there. Or maybe we won’t because you found an awesome spot to boondock that you’re keeping to yourself!