boondocking – Our Off Grid Tiny Life ~ Boondock or Bust

Tiny House and Land For Sale

Due to serious health issues we have decided to put our tiny house cabin and land up for sale. 😞

Mountain Cabin with great views and abundant wildlife to call your neighbors.

Details:

600 watt solar system that includes solar panels with a battery set up with 600 Amp hours, Go Power 1500 watt inverter with and a 12 volt electrical system with LED lights etc.

Cabin has a 200 watt wind generator to provide additional on site power.

The interior bath features a Natures Head composting toilet and a separate indoor shower. There is a refillable water storage tank with pump.

Tankless hot water heater runs on propane.

Propane wall mount heater. Kitchen has a refrigerator (runs on solar) and cooking stove and kitchen sink with counter tops.

Cabin has a covered front porch and a 10′ X 20′ rear deck with fire pit and Sail Shade provides shade .

Property has a separate level gravel RV pad and terrific view and a timber covered hills. The Rio Chama Valley offer the best in all kinds of outdoor recreational activities for all 4 seasons of the year. El Vado Lake is just a short drive to great boating and fishing. If you are looking for a “Tiny House” this one is ready to go.
$44,900

Click on this link to see the MLS listing on Zillow:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Lot-36-UNIT-4-Tierra-Amarilla-NM-87520/2094669932_zpid/

See below for additional photos. Click the images to view full size!

Our New Rig

Well, new to us that is. 🙂 We have downsized to a 1986 Lance 900 series truck camper!

The camper is in great shape and all systems work! The only thing it doesn’t have is AC but it is wired to have an AC unit in it. At some point we will add one in.

Our 1986 Lance 900 series and 2006 GMC 2500 HD

Looking good on the GMC!

Inside is a bit dated of course. What can you expect from the 80’s? So, our mission is to totally update it and make it a bit more modern! And as we are leaving for South Carolina on July 25th we better get cracking!

What will we do for AC in the south? Well, we are just going to throw a window unit in it as a temp solution. Yeah, it will be a bit redneck-ish but better that than melting in the heat!

Large booth seating with a nice window for views

Queen size bed with lots of storage space

Full bathroom but will be using our composting toilet instead

In the next couple of weeks we will be adding solar, repainting everything and generally just giving it a really good cleaning. There are some minor repairs to make but nothing that is too difficult.

We will get as much done as we can before leaving for SC and our daughters college graduation and will finish up all the renovations when we return in August!

Our plan is to leave our little off grid cabin before the snow flies (generally October) and then hit the road for the winter!

Stay tuned for our maiden voyage. Hopefully it all goes as planned but you never know with us. 😜

Officially Downsizing!

Ok y’all, we are in the cabin for the summer (woohoo!!) so we’ve decided to put our rig up for sale! We want to downsize to something smaller for our winter adventures but before we do that this one has to go.If you have followed this page this past year you know this has been a fun rig and we’ve had some great adventures in it! But, we really want to camp in some areas that we just can’t get this rig into so it’s got to go to someone who will enjoy it as much as we have. So, if anyone is near northern New Mexico and has any interest in this beautiful travel trailer here are the specifics! Even if you’re not close by, we can certainly work a deal.

For Sale!! 2015 Aspen Trail 2780RLS 30′ travel trailer by Dutchmen.

$16000.00 OBO (no low ball offers, please)

Purchased new June 2015 for $30k. MSRP $33,900

We are downsizing so our loss is your gain!

Clean title – no money owed on this rig!

This is a beautiful travel trailer and we have hauled it from South Carolina to New Mexico. We traveled full time in it for about a year so all the bugs and kinks are worked out! It is in great condition with only very minor wear and tear.

Features:

Power tongue jack and manual stabilizers.

Included is the anti-sway bar kit with heavy duty tow ball hitch.

One large slide (slide topper) with couch and dinette. Both fold down into beds for the kids! SLEEPS 6!

Automatic awning 18′ with LED exterior lighting.

Gorgeous L shaped kitchen with stove/oven combo, split sink with modern faucet, microwave and dual propane/electric fridge/freezer. Propane/electric 6 gallon hot water heater.

Lots of cabinet and storage space in this unit.

All lighting has been converted to LED and it has one 100 watt solar panel with a 30amp PWM charge controller and one 100 amp hour deep cycle battery. It is set up to add three more 100 watt Renogy solar panels up top (as the brackets are still there and no holes were put in roof as they were Dicor’d down) and there is a large battery bank area in the pass through to add more batteries. 12 volt plugs have been added throughout for ease of charging phones/laptops or running a 12 volt fan.

Ducted air conditioning and furnace. Both work perfectly!

It has been set up for boondocking (dry camping) and we have a composting toilet that we have removed so it will need a regular flush toilet added which we will be happy to do pending sale – or better yet, just get a composting toilet! 😊

A mattress will also be needed as we kept the Temperpedic we bought for it. It will hold a full length queen size mattress.

Large storage under bed and dinette. Large pass through storage as well.

Everything works and has been well maintained this past year. There are new seals/bearings in the wheels with better high temp grease that is an upgrade from factory. New water pump was installed for better PSI with a water saving Oxygenics shower head.

Spare tire and rack.

Stereo system with outdoor speakers.

So many features it’s hard to list them all! Just ask if you have any questions.

This is a NON SMOKING rig. We do have a dog but the rig is very clean!

Any questions please Email me at boondockorbust@gmail.com

Located in Tierra Amarilla, NM. More images will be added but here are a few!

Snow Day in April!

This past week we knew we had a storm coming. It mostly just showed rain but to be on the safe side we loaded up on propane, groceries and the like. And it’s a good thing we did!

Over the weekend we had a bit of rain and snow but it didn’t stick around and it really didn’t seem all that bad. Then Sunday it all changed. Around 3pm a little light snow started coming down.

A little light snow. No biggie!

And then around 5pm it really started falling.

Getting heavier!

The weather service predicted about 1-2″ of snow fall. Boy, were they wrong!

Good morning! A good 6 inches or more and still falling!

The snow was supposed to stop by 10am. But as of this writing at 11am it is still coming down heavy. It’s supposed to turn to rain later in the day which will of course melt it all off and make everything a soupy, muddy mess. As we are a mile and a half down a dirt road we will be staying put until everything dries out. The 4 Runner can make it out if necessary but it’s better to stay put and enjoy this last (hopefully) snow storm of the season! It really is quite beautiful and our new metal roof on the cabin is holding up well. Cheers!

Early morning light. Tons of snow!

The cabin looks so magical in the snow! You see our wind turbine? 🙂

And the RV looks pretty damn cozy too.

Winter?? No wait, it’s spring! Hello, New Mexico!

It’s a good thing we don’t have to be anywhere – we are pretty well snowed in for now. 🙂 We had to get up on the roof of the RV and clean off the solar panels and run the genny for a bit! It’s always nice to have a back up system.

The road out. Not going anywhere!

Our tiny house homestead build!

We’ve been very quiet lately! We left Santa Fe back in early March and got ourselves up to our new hometown in northern New Mexico. It was still COLD and there was still snow on the ground. The road to our property was impossible to get through, but we were close and that’s what mattered to us.

The road to our property - a muddy mess! — The road to our property in late February – a muddy mess!

We did manage to buy ourselves a 4 wheel drive vehicle though! We found a well maintained (older) Toyota 4 Runner and snatched it up. It needed new tires but otherwise was in perfect shape.

Our new little Toyota 4 Runner! Perfect run around vehicle

After about a week or so of nice sunny weather our road managed to dry up and we made it to our cabin! It was nice to see that everything was still in great shape and it had handled the winter well.

Made it to the cabin after 4 months away

Our RV pad we had put in last fall looked in great shape too and we couldn’t wait to get started on our build.

Here is an update on our build. As we are maintaining a separate blog for our Tiny House project you can read about that here:

http://offgridtinylife.com/2016/03/10/the-build-begins/

And the second installment:

http://offgridtinylife.com/2016/03/31/the-build-continues/

And yesterday (4/4), after spending a month at an RV park in town we were finally FINALLY able to get our rig up the mountain and set up on the RV pad! The thrill of waking up this morning to the sounds of nature were beyond compare. It is beautiful here and quiet and the wildlife abounds.

We are home! You can see the cabin on the hill behind the RV.

It is still a bit cold but nothing we can’t handle. The solar on the RV is working like a charm! We sure love this life.

Be sure to follow our Off Grid Tiny Life homestead blog! We are building a tiny house cabin on 5 1/2 acres in northern New Mexico. We are completely off grid and will still continue to travel in the RV from time to time or even do some truck camping!

Camping at American Girl Mine

After spending a couple of weeks at Quartzsite we were starting to get frustrated with the crowds and rude people. We had a huge rally group park right on top of us and one guy nearly hit our dog (who was on his cable by our rig) with his RV. Time to go!

We decided to head down HWY 95 towards Yuma and decided to stop one night at KOFA wildlife refuge.

Overnighting at KOFA wildlife refuge

After chatting with some other RVer’s we decided to head to American Girl Mine. This is another BLM area on the California side of Yuma.

All set up at American Girl Mine BLM area

There was a big gathering of fellow RVer’s including Aluminarium, Wanderwasi, Drive-Dive-Devour, Bold & Adventurous, Finding Marshall, 2 Wander Away and many others!

The first night there we had a low key gathering for happy hour and enjoyed a glorious sunset!

Sunset in the desert

We’ve been big fans of Aluminarium since we started this journey so it was awesome to meet Leigh, Brian and Curtis! We love their website Campendium which provides so much good info on boondocking areas, state parks and RV parks. You can leave a review of any place you’ve stayed as a helpful resource to others.

Leigh was also kind enough to feature us on her blog!! Of course, it could be the fact that we were sucking up wearing our Campendium hoodies too! 😜

Wearing our Campendium hoodies!

While we were there, Jase of Wanderwasi was kind enough to get some great drone footage of us and our rig! This was such an awesome thing for him to do and we so appreciated having this great memory!

There was a lot of great walking/hiking areas including the old mine shafts and tailings.

American Girl Mine

Just up the road was Tumco Ghost Town. Another great area to explore with a ton of history behind it. Very interesting to see the remains of the old buildings and mining areas.

Tumco Ghost Town

Another awesome aspect of being in the desert were the hummingbirds! We had so many come and visit our feeder and I was actually able to capture this great shot of this pretty girl.

Female hummingbird captured with my iPhone 6. She would let me sit within inches of her!

The desert is amazing in so many ways. It’s so surprising to me that so much can survive there in the extremes of summer.

Surviving the odds

And of course, the sunsets will blow you away!

Another glorious desert sunset

We spent nearly a month in the area and while we enjoyed it immensely we were really ready to see our property again! So on February 5th we loaded up and headed to New Mexico. We are currently staying in Santa Fe as the snow is just a little high yet at our place, though with the current warm temperatures everything will be turning to mush and mud soon!

The RV park we are staying at is nothing to write home about, but it’s close to Santa Fe, an hour and a half from our property and is convenient if nothing else. Sometimes this life is not very glamorous but then again it provides a lot more freedom!

Christmas in Quartzsite

Christmas & New Year’s Eve

Back to Quartzsite we go! Our plan was to have a nice quiet Christmas and NYE with minimal fuss and we certainly achieved that. This time we we stayed on the north side of town at Plamosa Road BLM area. This area is nice and quiet and a lot further out in the desert than Dome Rock. Our closest neighbors were half a mile away and there was a real sense of peace and tranquility.

Our two weeks at Plamosa was pretty nice. Most days were sunny which afforded us long walks with great desert views! And what clouds we had really helped give us spectacular sunsets!

Christmas day found us in the kitchen! Mark made fabulous lox and bagels to start our day along with yummy mimosas!

Then for dinner we had the most yummy – PRIME RIB (if you don’t like red meat, look away now lol)! Our prime rib was made Paula Deen style (recipe here), with smoky green beans & bacon and herb roasted red potatoes. TASTY in the extreme! Dessert was Rum Chata over ice!

Rum Chata for dessert with Christmas Spirit in the diffuser!

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve found us walking a lot (had to burn off that dinner!) and just taking short drives around Quartzsite. People were starting to roll in and the place was really filling up all around town!

For New Year’s Eve we again planned a quiet day/night. While in California we had gone to Costco and found a huge magnum of Prosecco! My favorite!

We enjoyed a wonderful day of reflection and all that we had done, seen and achieved in 2015. We know that 2016 brings a lot of fun things for us and perhaps some changes as well.

We will be working on our new property this summer and well as taking a trip out to South Carolina in August when our daughter graduates from college! This is such a huge achievement in her life and we are so proud of her and all she has accomplished. 🙂

We also hope you and your family have a wonderful, safe and healthy New Year! May 2016 bring you everything you could ever desire or deserve.