To boondock in the RV world means to go without hookups –water, electricity, and sewer. Most people who boondock have a portable generator for electricity and they use their tanks carefully. An RV has 3 holding tanks – one for fresh water, one for toilet sewer called the black, and one for shower and sink water called the grey. Some RV’s have really large tanks making boondocking even easier. We, however, have medium size tanks. Our fresh water is 63 gallons which can last us quite a while as we can always use bottled water for cooking and drinking and I can skip dishes by using paper plates. Our black is 39 gallons which will usually last us for a week. But our grey is 55 which sounds like a lot until you realize how much water you use when you take a shower. And there is our problem with boondocking….we like the long, hot, showers. Or even short, hot showers. But either way we like daily showers and you just can’t do that with a 55 gallon holding tank.
When we left Three Forks we drove south on 287 and then 87 into Idaho. It was a beautiful drive through rolling hills and following a mountain stream. The colors were beginning to change and so the fields were all turning golden. Our destination was just over a hundred miles into Island Park, Idaho. We had reservations for Henry’s Lake State Park. We would have water and electricity, but no sewer. So we were going to kinda, sorta, boondock. We had reserved a nice big pull through right next to the bathrooms and showers. The plan was to use the showers at the park and to be very careful with the cooking. Maybe I wouldn’t cook at all and we could just eat out!
The views were great and the showers worked just fine. We even found out about a grey water dump, so Lee carried over buckets from the sinks and we had easy sailing for a full week. I did have to cook, but only a few times! Now we know a little more about boondocking, but I think we will still limit our selves to doing without sewer only when there are nice showers near by. We do like our creature comforts!
3 comments:
You guys are just too funny. Even with the fifth wheel, we plan on doing a lot of real boon docking. Navy showers really do work great.
Well, at least you took the first step into boondocking.
We can actually make it 2 weeks on the black tank and I bet you could too. The sensors in the Excel we have are worthless so we have been experimenting. Yes 2 weeks on the black. One week and 6 navy showers on the grey tank so if we took fewer showers we could make it longer. The fresh water tank is what trips us up but we haven't gone to bottled water for drinking and cooking. We are trying to get so we could go 2 weeks. However we will have to do something for power. John wants solar instead of a generator so it may be awhile!
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