Last year on our epic family road trip to South Dakota, Kim found us a place to camp with a stunning view close to Badlands National Park. The only catch…it wasn’t a “normal” campsite. There were no connections of any kind, no camp personnel to help direct you, and no actual “campsites” marked for use. This was boondocking.
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What is Boondocking
Boondocking, also known as dry camping, is a term RV campers use to describe camping without hookups or assistance. So, there is no available electricity, water, or sewer connections. It’s up to you to provide for yourself….if you need it, be sure to bring it with you.
Another way to refer to this type of situation is being “self-contained”…you use the power, water, etc that you brought with you to provide for your needs.
Our Setup
We had never tried boondocking before…after all, we had only been RVer’s for about 3 months. So when Kim asked about camping for 1 night “on our own” I was a little nervous, but then she showed me some pictures of this place and I was all-in!
I had read several articles and watched a lot of YouTube about boondocking, so I felt pretty confident that we could make it. Most of the articles and videos I had seen were from folks who had pretty elaborate boondocking setups. Many had massive solar arrays and huge banks of lithium ion batteries to provide power. Some even bragged that they could run their RV air conditioning off of battery power alone! We, on the other hand, had none of that. Our RV came with one 12 volt battery attached, and a small 50 watt solar panel on the roof. So I knew we weren’t set up to be boondocking warriors, but it was only 1 night…surely we could make it for just 1 night on our own!
Our rig, like most, consumes electricity from a couple different sources. All the lights (inside and out) run off of 12 volt (battery) power. Same with our awning and expandable slide. In addition, we have a 12 volt fridge/freezer combo in our kitchen so that’s pulling from the battery too. We can hold 50 gallons of fresh water in our tank (more than enough for 1 night), but we have to run a water pump (12 volt) in order to get the water from our tank to the various faucets. I figured we had more than enough power to do those tasks.
The kicker (I thought) was going to be climate control. You see, RV air conditioning runs off of 120 volt AC power as does anything else that plugs into a wall outlet in an RV. That power comes from plugging the rig into an outside power source (found at most campsites in the country), which we wouldn’t have access to. Remember those YouTube videos where people were running AC from batteries? Well that requires massive battery banks and large power inverters. We wouldn’t have any of that either…we were boondocking!
So looking at the weather, the evening temps were forecast to be in the 60’s…cool enough to make it without AC. It would be nice to have a way to circulate the air and make it even more comfortable, but that required fans that plugged into the wall outlets (not 12 volt battery power). Hmm….how to solve that dilemma?
Inverter. Yep, an inverter….thats a device that converts 12 volt DC power from your RV battery to 120 volt AC power like whats in your house. Now I said we wouldn’t have a massive inverter, but I wasn’t trying to run my AC, just a few fans….and the fridge in my outside kitchen…and the microwave if needed…and charge all of our devices….and of course run my coffee pot in the morning….OK, its a lot! But, I did some calculations and decided that since I wouldn’t be running all of that at once, I could get by with a simple 2,000 watt inverter. So I got one, and practiced wiring it up in the drive way and voila…it worked! I had fans spinning away and I was feeling pretty good about my whole plan.
I realized that I only had 1 battery, instead of big bank of 4-6 lithium ion batteries like the YouTube guys, so I decided to bring my 12 volt battery charger from home…just in case.
The Big Day Arrives
So, the first few days of our South Dakota Road trip went great. We made good time, saw some sights and were having a blast. Then the day arrived for our boondocking adventure. We had camped the night before in Blue Mounds State Park in Minnesota and were looking at about a 6 hour drive to Wall, SD.
We left out that morning ready to tackle the day. The drive was a bit windy, and a bit long but we passed the time by looking at the beautiful signs and counting the number of Wall Drug signs along the way.
- Have you been to Wall Drug? Wanna take a guess at how many signs we saw? Comment below and let us know your thoughts.
We finally made it to Wall Drug in Wall, SD and found ample RV parking. After a couple hours of looking around, we found a place to fill our fresh water tanks, and then it was off to boondock on the Badlands Wall. We found the spot without too much trouble, and Kim was right….it was breathtakingly beautiful….actually, stunning would be a more accurate description!
After finding a place to camp for the night (right on the edge of the wall) we proceeded to set up camp for the night. I put out the slide, engaged our stabilizers, unfurled the awning…..and hooked up my inverter. For a couple of hours everything was great, and I was feeling like a boondocking king! In order to maintain our comfort, I was using our 1 RV battery to run the slide, awning, lights, jacks, and inside fridge/freezer. That battery was also running the generator, which had 3 fans, our device chargers, and our outside fridge all connected. For 2 hours we had the time of our lives, hiking into the badlands, cooking supper, snapping pictures and enjoying life.
About 6:00 PM though, life became a bit less enjoyable. Weston and I were hiking on the mounds around the site, when Kim called out saying all the fans had stopped and her phone wouldn’t charge. I moseyed my way back and saw that she was exactly right. I check the battery voltage only to find the reading was 11.2 volts. Now in the 12 volt battery world, a “full charge” is usually around 12.6 volts. a 50% charge (which the experts recommend never going below) is about 12.06 volts. A critically low charge of only 10% is usually 11.3 volts, and anything under that is considered dead….and that was us.
I was a little nervous, but remember…I had brought my battery charger for just this scenario. So, I cranked up the truck, plugged in the charger and hooked it up. Weston and I then resumed our hike and left the charger to do it’s thing. Now, it’s a rapid charger so after 30 minutes I returned to shut off the truck, figuring I had at least 80% charge by then. The digital readout on the charger was when I first began to worry……4%. 4%, really? I unhooked the charger to rest it and then hooked it back up again, hoping that the previous number was a mistake….3%. Now I really began to worry. I ran the charger for another 30 minutes….6%.
At this point I began to panic a bit. I realized I had killed our only battery by draining it way too low. But that’s not what made me panic….I had to tell Kim! That thought sent a shiver down my spine. At this point it was starting to get dark. I broke the news to Kim…”Babe, our battery is dead. And it’s so dead it won’t recharge.” Surprisingly, she took the news pretty well! I told her we could run into the town of Wall (only about 10 minutes away) grab a new battery and we’d be all good….but I was wrong again! Apparently the town of Wall shuts down right around 7:00. We found a couple of open gas stations but that was about it. No WalMart and the only auto parts store was closed. By the time we made it back to the RV it was completely dark. Kim asked if she could take a shower and I assured her she could…we still had 50 gallons of water available and a propane hot water heater. Weston dug into his stash of flashlights and passed them out to us all. A couple minutes later Kim comes out of the bathroom, only slightly wet saying the shower won’t turn on and all she got was a trickle of water. Then I realized….no power = no water pump!
Kim suggested we pack up and pull the RV into one of the campsites in Wall, but without power I couldn’t put in the slide…or raise the stabilizers…or even raise the tongue jack to get us re-hitched! We were truly stuck!
We decided the only thing to do was wait until morning and try again to get a new battery. That night I went to bed dry, dirty and embarrassed. When the morning came, we headed back into town only to find the auto parts store didn’t have the battery we needed. So, off we went to Rapid City one hour to the west. Fortunately we found a WalMart, bought TWO new batteries and made our way back the The Wolf (the name we affectionately call our rig).
After hooking up the new battery we took showers, had breakfast, pulled in the slide, hitched up, and made our way through the Badlands to our next stop, the Badlands/White River KOA Holiday, and full hookups!
Lessons Learned
It’s funny how time changes the way you feel about things. In the moment I felt like our boondocking adventure was an epic disaster, and the worst part of our whole RVing experience. But on our long drive home as we talked about our trip, Kim and I both remembered boondocking on the Wall as being an exciting adventure that we tackled as a family and overcame in the end. We learned some valuable lessons about RV power consumption… but we also learned to function and support each other as a family team. These are the kinds of adventures that can create and strengthen your family bond just like it did ours. We still talk and laugh about that night now, and I’m sure we will into the future.
- What kinds of disaster adventures has your family made it through?
- Any boondocking tips and/or tricks you’d like to share? Post a comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
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