Better Than Quartzsite Arizona Desert Boondocking | Safety, Driving, Parking, & More!

Why do we like resorts, RV resorts, that is campgrounds, campsites, and boondocking? Why do we like both of them? Why do we do the flip-flop? You can have the best of both worlds. You don't need to just do one or the other or one's not better than the other. You can do both. They both complement each other truly. They really do. RV resort has so much more of a meaning after you've gone boondocking for weeks and weeks back to back. Yeah. Full hookups, long showers, unlimited power, electric heat. I feel like I'm almost in a house. I got to flip the veg. Keep talking. So there was snow in Phoenix. There was snow in Tucson. We're just leaving Casa Grande. We didn't see any snow, but we did get a lot of rain. We got cold weather and we even got some hail a few times. But when you're in a rainy streak, it's really nice to have some asphalt, asphalt to park, but more for us asphalt to go on our morning walks. We usually spend an hour and a half walking every single morning. We start when it's dark and then we end after sunrise. But as great as it is after a week. You get a little bored. We're ready to go. It's time to go. We want to continue seeing this beautiful country. That's why we have a small class B. That's why it's easy for us to get up and move and go. And we're completely self-contained and we're now able to boondock for a full seven days. And that's great. We're excited about that and we want to do it more. So tomorrow morning. We're on the road and I will pipe in and say, this is a great example of why we love Thousand Trails. We don't preach a lot about Thousand Trails. We are Thousand Trails members. Some people love it. Some people hate it. And for us, it's just a really great way to complement boondocking. We're not here for the pool. We're not here for the amenities. We are here to plug in, get some hookups and re-establish our routine. And usually we get ahead on work. We get ahead on our just feeling good about our workouts, our eating. It's just a consistency. It's like a home base to plug in and get some consistency and then go explore again. We don't even know where we're going. This is the calm before the storm. Like we're super calm right now and it's a Sunday night. Definitely feeling Sunday vibes and really just loving life, feeling good. Tomorrow we're going to wake up. We're going to scramble. Checkout is about 11. We usually struggle to get out by 11 because we like to do our full morning routine, which is wake up, have coffee, do computer work, go on our five mile walk, have breakfast, do our resistance training, shower, dump our tanks. We do a light cleaning. And by the time you get done with all of that, it's like 1130 and then we leave. Time to go. Fifth wheel semi setup. I see a lot of semis. Continue on South Cattle Tank Road for three quarters of a mile. So these roads are pretty narrow, but... Our sprinter is narrow. Yeah, big deal. Yeah, this is great out here. It's beautiful. What's your first impression? That it's exactly what I was looking for as far as the saguaros and just the terrain and the desert. You kind of feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, although you're not that far in the middle of nowhere. Aaron has been craving cactuses. He just wants to be like sleeping in a cactus field. And this is definitely it. This is my shot. This is it. Watch the pinstriping. We recently just watched the movie Tombstone to help get us in the wild, wild west spirit. Yep. And we plan on visiting Tombstone here shortly. We do. Here's the dilemmas with boondocking. Beautiful, beautiful area out here. But we are just a little too close to somebody and we like to give more space. We always get a little irritated if people get close to us when they could go somewhere else. Yeah, but the road starts to get a lot more rutted up there. And so that's kind of the problem. It's like people always kind of congregate close because it's hard for vehicles to get way off road. You know, we can see somebody. They're not super close. That might be, I don't know, a couple hundred feet or something. But we think it's like questionable. So if it's questionable, then it's a good sign that we should just go somewhere else. Yeah. So I'm going to go out and spot Chris and hopefully see if we can make it down these roads without bottoming out. I'm starting to hear coyotes yipping. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that. They're out there. They're welcoming us. All right, keep going a little bit. Slow though. Really slow. Okay, we're good there. Keep going. And then slow down for a sec. Slow. Keep going. All right, let me check. Okay, keep going. Keep going. Yeah, that wasn't too bad. That's the slow going and boondocking though. It's just like being with Jesse and Melissa and Jared and Rebecca again. Yeah, it's just like off-roading, isn't it? At 0.5 miles an hour. Yeah, not bad. Better ground clearance than I thought. I first looked at that, I'm like, no way. It's one of those things where it's like, yeah, it might be fine, but you could very easily just reverse and leave the way you came in and not have to worry about it. Yeah. But then you never really get to test your true capabilities. See how the road kind of twists up there a little bit? That's what I don't like. So you're gonna have to kind of hug it all the way to the left, I think. Yeah. Close to that tree as possible without hitting it. Okay, keep going. That was kind of tight. It's not that bad. It's just tight. Might be staying more than a couple nights since we're putting some work into getting in here. Yep. All right. That's the only spot I didn't like. We're away from all the cars. Yeah. That spot looks pretty good. Right about there. It's back on. It's a sharp curve. Are we gonna back on? Yeah, back on right into it. Perfect spot. So pretty out here. Getting in right at perfect timing. That was exhilarating. But the job's not done yet. So back to boondocking. It's kind of nerve-wracking coming out here again. We've been taking it easy and staying in the RV parks over the holidays. And we just started boondocking again in Quartzsite. Now we're still out in the desert, obviously. And it's... Man, it's just... Once you get out here, it's so peaceful. So worth it. It's so beautiful. But there's always just a few parts of the road that are just a little more sketchy than I would want them to be. Today was the very first time that we ever had five of the six tires on the ground. That's part of four-wheeling, three-wheeling, five-wheeling. That's part of off-roading. That's what duallys are for, right? Yeah. It really wasn't that bad. It was just an interesting little part of the road. So we're gonna set up and stay for a few days. And we'll show you what it's like out here. It's beautiful. You're gonna love it. Shame to cover up that pretty view. It is. I'm gonna clean the windows so we can get a... Oh, it's beautiful out there. I love the desert. Don't you? We all love the desert. We're gonna clean up the windows. That's something that we learned that an extra five minutes changes your views so much. I like this Windex in the can better than the bottles because this store is a lot more compact since it's a narrow container. What'd you say, compact? Compact. I'm delirious from a travel day. How's that? Streak-free? Looks pretty good through the lens. Okay. Looks pretty good. Otherwise, in here, now I swivel the seats around. I take all the water out of the bathroom. Shuffle the waters up front. Set up the kitchen. Set up the Berkey. Get water rolling in there. Aaron can show you what he does out there. I'll do the bikes and the table and chairs and stuff tomorrow. Okay. It's windy and cold. I don't think we're grilling tonight. Are we? Probably not. You're the grill master. So one of the things I do to help me feel more comfortable in a new area, especially out in the middle of nowhere, boondocking, which many people ask about, is I just kind of canvas the area a little bit. Walk around. Check it out. Get familiar with your surroundings. See who's out here. What kind of stuff's left behind. And you can learn a lot and it will make you feel hopefully more comfortable. Otherwise, sometimes we see things that we necessarily don't want to stick around for. You know, maybe trash or signs of partying or, you know, shooting a little too close to where we're camping. That type of thing. Like something in another world. Such a different landscape than what we're used to where we grew up in the Midwest. This is just so different. I think that's why I like the west, the southwest so much. Just look at that. Unbelievable. Sun's gonna set right behind the van. It's dinner time. I'm super hungry and we are going to just make some tacos. And I'm gonna use my beef taco seasoning recipe that I use all the time. This is on my blog. And I'm gonna do a salad for myself and tacos for Aaron, which is like one of the best things about my recipes is you can serve it how you want it. So they're usually just protein based and then you can put it up however you want, depending on your veggies and your carbs and all that. But for my salad dressing, I'm doing a sour cream tajin dressing. So it's super simple and I want to show you how I make it. So all I did was took some of the sour cream. I measured out 15 grams, which is one tablespoon. And I like to use my scale so that I don't get measuring spoons dirty, especially when we're boondocking. And I use my scale a lot for that, just for like portioning out recipes, not so much for the tracking of stuff, but just be consistent with what I'm putting into something. So you start with some sour cream. I always use the full fat sour cream. It's more satisfying. It tastes better, less crap in it. Start with that. Oh, and I really like these squeeze bags because as you use it, it condenses down. And you know how I feel about saving space in a fridge. You don't have to have a big Tupperware of something that's half empty. So these are awesome. And then from there you throw in a little sprinkle of this Tajin, which is like crack. And I also put in a little bit of salt. And then from there, it's so easy. All you got to do is mix in a tiny bit of water. If you have lime juice, fresh limes that you're going to be serving, that would be even better. But I'm not going to be cutting up a lime tonight. So use the lime if we got it. If you don't, water is just as good. And the trick with the water is do as little as possible. Just do a little drizzle like that. I don't even measure it out. It's just like a tiny little squirt. And you just mix it together. And the goal here is to just get it into a drizzle consistency. Kind of like when you go to Chipotle and they spoon on that sour cream and it's like super drizzly. This is what's going to allow you to drizzle it over your salad. So this is a little thick for drizzling. I'm going to just add a touch more. And you can do it to however thick you want it. So that's it. That's my super easy salad dressing. The sour cream is awesome because it's very simple ingredients. And you can put whatever herbs or spices you want, depending on what you're putting a dressing on. So if you want a creamy dressing, there's a tip. If you want more like day-to-day stuff like this, I put a lot on my Instagram storylines. So follow me there for more tips on what I eat. Get the cat hair out of my eggs. So we just finished our morning walk. And typically we do 60 to 90 minutes in the morning. We try to get five miles, but that's a pretty hefty walk. So we're thinking about toning that back a little bit in the morning so that we can get the workout done earlier. Spring's here. Spring has sprung. It's coming. And so it's going to start getting warmer and warmer. And we'd like to get the workout done as quick as possible. We are big morning workout people because at this point in our life, we've played around with all different times and we adhere absolutely the best to morning. If you don't do it in the morning, if we don't do it in the morning, other things come up and we skip it. So yeah, we do like to do it right when we get back from our walk. However, I never recommend doing cardio before training. So that's why we're scaling it back a little bit, just because we don't want to get too wiped out before we start working out. Like in today's case, I am very tired and worn out from yesterday. So I am going to take a break. I'm going to eat my eggs, my breakfast, and then I'm going to work out. But what an amazing walk out here. Like this is why we come out to these types of areas because it's just as beautiful as like a national park. It's super secluded out here. There's only a handful of people off this road because it's only small cars, trucks, truck campers, camper vans can fit out here. Maybe a little tiny trailer that has some ground clearance, but otherwise this is not very super big rig friendly. Although we do know somebody that was out here with the class A, but just right in the beginning, one spot where you could fit it. And that's about it. Yeah. So for those of you that have seen our court site videos, we have two that we just released and we're talking about boondocking, how easy it is. And we kind of went through, you know, dumping in the tanks and our trash and a little bit about electrical and things like that. This is completely different than court site. This is the type of area that you have to do a little bit more research, maybe some recon if your vehicle is going to fit. The roads are extremely narrow. Scout it out. Yeah. The roads are uneven. This is a washboard, but they're like rutted and potholed. And the big difference, the big upside is the beauty. Yeah. Like in the seclusion. So you saw the court site footage. This out here is completely different. It is so amazing. This is one of my favorite types of scenery out here, the saguaros and the chollas. And we have mountains in the background and it's just this desert terrain, but it's a lot of like shrubberage and it's just, it's amazing. And so this is like the fun, it's not really advanced boondocking, but it takes a little bit more time to get to. And it's a little bit, it's kind of like what we were doing last summer when we first started. We had no idea what we were doing and what we were getting into. Yeah. And the most important things for these situations, as if you're unfamiliar with the area, is get in early. Don't save it for like a getting in at sunset type thing because it will be horrible. Yes. These are not the great like one night stopover spots. I would much rather stay at a Cracker Barrel, you know, if I'm just traveling through the area or a place that I know off a Campendium that's really quick. Easy, like for example, the Quartzsite area, that was so easy just to turn off the road. It's flat, it's level. You don't have to worry about much of anything. So this is completely different. And this is what I picture when I picture boondocking. And it's the best feeling when you set up. You've got a great spot. You'd love it. And you're, you have an entire week's worth of food. You have an empty black tank. Full of water. You have plenty of drinking water. Like we are set to stay. And that is just a great feeling. Yeah. The batteries are full. You know, solar is starting to get a little bit better. And this is why we stress so hard to be able to get that week standard that we wanted. Because it's just, it's a much better feeling than like two or three days. Or if we want to just spend two, three, four days out here, we don't have to worry about stretching it and conserving as much. But I don't know how long we're going to stay here. And that's also the beauty of it. You know, the cell signal is great. The weather is projected to be great. You got to watch out for rain and things like that in these type of areas. Because it is dirt and sand and the roads can get washed out. Yes. So in regards to how we spend our days, what a typical day looks like. Our days are really the same, whether we're at an RV park or if we're boondocking. True. The differences are surrounding and like the aura that you feel while you're parked. Yeah, there's the trade-off of the abundant comforts, energy, water, trash, where you're not thinking about that type of stuff. And then the trade-off here to where it's more like recharging your soul. It's very therapeutic out here. Yeah, the beauty out here. But you have to then conserve and worry about lights. Our workout, we get our meals and we work all day. So we'll show you some parts, bits and pieces here and there.