escapees

A month of travel and adventure

Leave a Comment / Family, Story / By / 2022-03-03

So much has happened since we left Buckeye. We spent a wonderful week with the Ruprecht family first at Shadow Ridge RV resort and then exploring BLM land in Ajo, AZ. Camping is more fun with friends! The best moment for me came when Tyler asked Eric for his helmet, and then looked on in amazement when Tyler rode off, pedalling on his bike. I had not realised Eric had not seen him ride before. 

We continued boondocking in Marana near Tucson. We met with a few other families we met through Fulltime Families, and had some nice evenings around the campgrounds hearing stories from much more experienced nomads. We even got our knives sharpened by a very entrepreneurial 14 year old girl, “Dull is Dangerous” is her motto. She is going places!

Then off to Buckskin Mountain State Park along the Colorado River. After a lot of desert, the kids had some good times playing in the river. But best of all was meeting up with my friend Annie. I knew Annie back in Amsterdam in my late teens. It was the strangest thing to realize it had been almost 20 years since I last saw her. She visited with her 2 dogs and we were able to rig up an ez-up tent from our back patio to create another room. 

From Buckskin we returned to the SARA Park Rodeo grounds at Lake Havasu for the Escapees Winter Blast Hangout. This promised to be a lot of fun, with firework shows almost every night. We found that the best show was actually on Sunday, when they were determined to let off all their fireworks in one grand display, so that they could avoid the pit of despair that awaited all unused fireworks at the end of the show.

Weather had been beautiful and we felt super fortunate to snag a few nights at Lake Havasu State Park right at the lake. Unfortunately winds picked up again and temperatures dropped, so the peaceful time at the beach was more reminiscent of a stroll along the beach at Scheveningen.

Then off to Quartzsite. This place is a boondockers paradise in winter, with a lot of long term options. Most places allow you to stay max 14 days, but here you can buy a permit for the whole winter season, and many people take advantage of this. We gathered here for a Grand Design rally. It was somewhat surrealistic to see all these same luxury RV’s parked together in the middle of the desert. We met some very nice people, and were amazed by the solar setup done by Joshua of Rooted Off Grid, they have solar panels on slide-out racks, which look like wings on their modified-3-axle Solitude 390RK, which gives them 6kWh of power, allowing them to run their RV like it has full electric hookups.

After Quartzsite, we had a few days to kill before heading to the Xscapers Convergence in Tucson. I had heard many good things about Lake Mittry near Yuma and wanted to check it out. And though it is pretty amazing, it just was not for us. The water was unreachable for the kids and we encountered plenty of mosquitos. Now if you have kayaks or want to spend your time fishing from one of the many jetties jutting out into the lake, this would be the place to go. Anyhow, I decided it was time for full hookups before our next 8 day stretch boondocking, so we booked at a random RV park half way. We are at Sonoran RV Park in Gila Bend, there is not much here, but the park is super nice. We drove in and a friendly gentleman led us right to our spot. The kids and I got ready for the 90 degree pool giving Eric time to set up our site. After spending a few weeks in the desert a large body of water is such an amazing thing. Tyler took a minute, but with some help from a friendly surrogate grandmother quickly found his confidence again swimming around. Aidan was not really sure what to do with so much water, but after almost an hour of clinging to me found that the top step was awesome to lay on and semi crawl and scoot back and forth. By the end of our pool visit he was jumping into my arms from the side. 

On the project side of things, we’ve expanded our battery capacity to 12v 600Ah, giving us ample power for longer boondocking stays, though we still need to expand our solar array to match it. We also made wooden slats for our bed, which are a lot prettier than the plywood we used before!

Xscapers Bash 2022

Leave a Comment / Family, Story / By / 2022-01-18

We left Yuma and made it up to Lake Havasu where we stayed at the Sara Park Rodeo Grounds to attend the Xscapers Annual Bash. We had an early arrival ticket so that Eric could attend the “RVers Boot Camp Express” to learn everything there is to know about RV’s in one day.

We were one of the first to arrive, but in the next 2 days the place filled up with about 400 full time RV’ers ready to party! We were set up in the family section and met many new friends. Tyler had a blast playing with all the kids and joining in on all the activities, and Aidan really found the artist within him.

The bash was also an opportunity to have mail delivered, and Nadine decided to pick it up with the boys while Eric was in class. Big mistake, Aidan almost got buried! Luckily there were other families there to help and two teenagers were instructed to help with the heavy lifting.

A ferris wheel was being erected and Tyler was adament to be the first one on it. It only took sneaking out of the opening ceremony to make that happen. Nadine joined him, and they had some amazing views as they spun around while watching the sun set behind the mountains.

Tyler and Aidan also proved to be super party people. Ty found an awesome green hat and quickly made many friends. Aidan has discovered music, and just can’t sit still when the band starts playing, he runs right on to the stage and starts shaking his little hips.

What else… there was a bouncy house, a bucking unicorn that Tyler stayed on for almost a minute, a bit of karaoke, video games, face painting, and climbing up the giant dirt pile.

The first thing boondocking taught us, is that the dealer installed battery will not get you through the night, and worse still it will not run the coffee machine in the morning. Eric’s bootcamp knowledge was going to be put to the test! We had bought a great lithium battery, but unfortunately after several attempts of charging it we found that is was a dud. A second battery was waiting for us 3 hours away at Eric’s parents, so after the kids went to sleep Eric left to go pick it up and return the next morning. He got everything installed, and even installed a new converter so that we can actually get a full charge. Now we can really boondock! He also installed our side cameras, and had a bit of a scary moment when he had to drill in to the side cap. He is becoming quite the handy man, I think maybe he’ll be signing up to become a certified RV technician before the year is up.

After such a busy week, at least we found a great place to relax. We are parked right at the beach of Lake Havasu, with a great big sand box right at our feet. Driving up, Tyler asked: “Do we have our sand toys?”.