REAL Boondocking

      After the Jojoba resort, our next destination involves REAL Boondocking. Off the blacktop, out in the boonies, no services, no fees. Still in California, but just barely. As I leave I-8 (between El Centro and Yuma) and head north on a little 2-lane road, the first thing I see is a guy with his RV and an ATV off on the sandy acreage to the side. He gives me a big grin and a wave, he seems to know what my goal is. I wave back and keep going nearly 5 miles and then turn off the pavement onto a wide dirt road (see last pic in "Leaving Jojoba"). There are berms on both sides and no visible place in sight to turn this large motorhome around if things get bad. This is where I start wondering "Am I crazy to be doing this?". Eventually we see a few scattered RVs out 100 yards off the dirt road and come to the openings in the berms they used to get there. Farther on, the road is getting more rugged and we decide to unhitch our little truck to explore and try to find a good camping spot where the big rig can actually go. After a few "maybes", we find one we really like. Linda offers to drive the motorhome there, and she gets it turned around and drives about a mile to the spot without scraping or bottoming at all (see why I married her?, lol). We've pointed our nose to the west, tilted half our solar panels up toward the south, and settled in for some quiet time to enjoy the beauty of this area. Our nearest "neighbor" is 200+ yards away, so it's been very quiet and peaceful.

Jerry’s posting 1-14-15                   There's gold in these hills, lol. The dirt road we came in on is called the "American Girl Mine Road" (reminds me of the American Girl dolls, my daughter had one). Anyway, there was a gold rush here around 1877, and in the years after there has been commercial mining off and on, depending on the price of gold. We can see trucks going in/out the current operation quite a ways off. I'm not a rock-hound, but one of the first things I did here was walk around our site for about 20 minutes and pick up some samples of the interesting rocks just laying around. Here's a pic of my "rock collection".

Jerry’s posting 1-15-15

We drove the truck into Yuma for supplies today. And yeah, the motorhome was still there when we got back. The temperature in our RV has reached a comfortable 82 degrees the last two days. There is generally a little breeze here so you can adjust the temp by how much you open windows, very nice. I could get used to having January like this. I'm amazed by how clean this area is, I've wandered over many acres and have only seen one cigarette butt, and you have to search quite a bit to find any scrap left by people. I'm very impressed by how the folks using this area are doing the right thing ("leave it cleaner than you found it"). We are enjoying the sunsets every night, it's quite a show here. Hard to capture the glory with little photo skills and point-n-click action, but you can get the idea.