Day 6: 'Boondocking Adventures Continue at Smuggler’s Run’

Since we didn’t have far to travel today, we decided to take our time getting ready this morning.  Beamer got another walk on his harness and Kitty got some play time in.  Beamer even got a nice warm soak in the small "tub" in the trailer, so that Rick didn't have to start up the generator again, to heat him up.



It was a super easy drive to our next camping spot, another boondocking site on BLM land, only 2 hours from Tucson. The site we picked was called Smuggler’s Run and true to its name, there were signs posted, warning about illegal activity in the area.  Since we are only 100 miles or so from the Mexican border, we do see evidence of what has taken place here over the past few decades.  In fact, the campsite that we picked had a few VERY old cars that had turned almost to dust in the Arizona heat. 

While I was out taking Beamer for a walk, a nice young couple came walking down the gravel road and I offered to show Beamer to them, which they were very excited about.  They were full timers with two very young girls and had been on the road for 2 years.  The wife was a semi-famous children’s book author, Tara Dairman.  She wrote “All Four Stars”, which seems to be doing quite well in sales.  We got a lot of tips from them, about living the RV life, which we will be putting into action very soon.

The trailer took a beating with all the back road driving we have been doing, but it’s pretty minor.  It is built for off road travels, so we aren’t too worried.  Beamer’s cage has suffered the most and all the screws on the hinges will need to be glued in, as they have all come loose. 

We are getting used to living with limited power, but we can still watch movies on the TV, running off of battery power.  Since this is turning out to be a very easy way to live (for free, no RV campground charges) we have decided to only get an RV campground every 3 days, to get a hot shower and recharge batteries.  If we get solar panels at some point, we can probably extend that timeline to every 7-10 days, but for now, we plan to get a reservation only every 3 days.

A dry river bed behind our camping spot


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