Painted Rock Petroglyph Site and Campground–
This BLM site previously known as Painted Rock State Park is located 11 miles north of I 8 via Exit 102 and west of Gila Bend, Arizona. This is an amazing ancient archaeological site containing hundreds of pre-historic petroglyphs. The rocks also show evidence of more recent etchings of visitors to the area and a small amount of human caused damage.
We were quite amazed at the number of petroglyphs easily seen at this site and spent quite a bit of time there.
There’s a primitive campground at the site and when we were there we saw a few other RVs camping there.
40,000 miles of fulltiming–
Sometime last week our odometer rolled over and passed 40,000 miles. We’ve been fultiming for about two and a half years, ever since we took delivery on our (Lazy Daze) RV in August of 2010 and we’ve been traveling ever since. I believe 40,000 miles of RV travel is substantial in any ones book, so we were excited to realize just how much we have been traveling and how many beautiful places we have been lucky enough to see.
RV size—
We’re glad we’ve made the trade-offs that were right for us and chose an RV that is considered “too small” for fulltiming. Living fulltime in an 27 foot RV comes with pros and cons, not the least of which is lack of space. When you travel so much, a smaller RV is easier to drive, park, etc.. RVs are not gas efficient and ours is no exception. At only about 10 miles to the gallon, we feel we can somewhat justify it since we use precious few other resources. Most of our needs are met by our self contained vehicle.
Boondocking–
We started this adventure knowing we were far from rich but wanted to see many of the beautiful and interesting places in North America. If we were going to have to spend a substantial amount of money on fuel to travel, our other expenses had to be minimized. Since we usually don’t much care for campgrounds and knew the West was rife with boondock sites we became aggressive boondockers and rarely ever hooked-up to the grid. Did make an early-on substantial investment in solar but the “return on equity” was realized in less than two years while affording us the ability to use our electric appliances So, when we stop driving in the evening, we choose a boondock site and park. The couch batteries are usually charged enough to allow the use of the microwave for a short time and to be able to use the computers and/or watch TV. If we find we’re in a place and for whatever reason don’t want to be there, well that’s why RVs have wheels.
Shopping–
Shopping in a town that is new to us has not been a problem. Our GPS has a store locator and we just select one we would like to try and park in the back of the parking lot. Just as we would at “home” we pick up the sales flyer at the door and adjust our meal plan shopping list as appropriate. A perk of having the RV in the grocery store parking lot is that the perishable food can be put directly into the refrigerator and freezer.
Connectivity–
We use the 20 G Millencom Hotspot for Verizon Wi-fi for our Internet connection and pay all our bills, do all our banking and Jerry trades stock options on line. Our cell phones are “not-smart”, older phones but they work and meet our needs. Both the internet and the cell phone connection benefit from the increased signal strength due to the Wilson Antenna/booster we bought last summer.
We’re not much for TV watching so we’re quite satisfied with our wind-up RV aerial with an inexpensive “Wingman” aerial booster attached and just use the local tv channels when we’re interested in the programing.
