We brought the Bounder home after a couple months of free parking on friends' ranch in Unaweep Canyon near Gateway CO., Heaven on earth! We're relative newcomers to boondocking and were fortunate enough to have very generous friends with their tractor with brush hog and loader. We mowed the existing old road that runs through their ranch and took a chainsaw to the overhanging oak brush, then cut a new road down through the brush and trees to the creek where we dug out a trench to level the coach. At that point my friend suggested we dig a French drain to act as a septic system. We used his old back hoe and dug about a 6 x 8' hole, filled it half full of gravel, turned a plastic trash can upside down on top of the gravel, ran a pvc pipe out the bottom of the trash can and over to the edge of the hole and filled the hole with dirt. I had an extra length of sewer hose so we could make it about 15' from the coach. He then suggested we haul his 300 gal water tank down and set it up on the hill above the coach which we did. Did I say we were boondocking? Well, we didn't have electricity!  Uh---well, we did have a generator and solar panels to charge the batteries- and we still ran the batteries down and about froze in the middle of the night the second weekend we were there. We had been leaving a night lite on and the refrigerator and furnace both have 12v fan motors, which I guess used up electricity more than the solar panels built up. I'd like more information about that. We got the panels at Harbor freight a few years ago and had never used them and they didn't have any instructions with them. We had the same experience a second time then started running the generator about an hour before going to bed. We didn't have enough propane to last as long as we'd like so I'm wondering if we can buy an extra propane tank and somehow run a hose to a t at the tank on the coach? Maybe a propane distributer has something for that?  All in all what a blast and we're hoping to get an earlier start next year. The temperature was in the thirties yesterday morning so we thought it was time to bring it home and we were getting low on propane. I know you old heads at boondocking are thinking what a wuss- but we were pretty happy to do as well as we did. My 72 yr. old wife had a bear encounter, but we never saw  the mt. lions that the neighbor captured on their trail-cam. They saw a pride of six-very unusual! I'll try to attach some photos of our camp.  Not sure how to do that.  Lee

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Comment by Ray Hancock on November 1, 2015 at 3:42pm

Sounds just like what I want to be doing. But winter is here and I haven't sold the house yet. My dream is to be somewhere just like you describe, but in many places, so I can see the country. I took a long trip in my Dreamer this past summer and still had to be back at a scheduled time, I hate that part.

Good job on the septic system, sounds very green; to be politically correct.
The math part of your electrical issue you describe is simple, knowing the capacities and output of your equipment is the difficult part. Maybe I'll develop spreadsheet that would make things easier for non-electrical types.

I have to partially disagree with Rich on the propane aspect of where to get help and parts for what you describe. Our local propane distributor has all the parts and is more than willing to work out the safest way to apply whatever you want to your RV if you DIY. 

I still don't have a PG furnace yet so we'll use electric and stay close to someones house for this winter.

Happy Wandering looking forward to see how you do next season.

Comment by Rich Thomas on October 27, 2015 at 8:11pm

Hi Lee, sounds like you had a pretty nice adventure. You would do better by going to an RV dealer or some on line RV place such as PPL or Camping World for your Propane question. They do have such an animal and it's made for RV's instead of something possibly cobbled together by a general sales type operation. Think Safety. I enjoyed your story and liked the septic system you put together; It made me chuckle a bit as it reminded me of a time in my very distant past. Cheers     

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