A Boondocking Spot for all Seasons

For various and sundry reasons we spent nine weeks during this winter "boondocking" in two different casino parking lots. Since we only spend about 20 weeks a year in the Southwest, we were anxious to get out of this scene:

 and get back to this scene:

It's understandable that most people who travel in RVs want to be near plenty of other people in RVs and all the conversation, happy hours, and pot luck dinners that go along with that scene. We are in the minority that does this with the goal of finding places to camp where nobody else is around. Our criteria for our 5-Star boondocking spots are simple but difficult to achieve:

There are no other campers in sight or earshot both day and night.
There is no road noise.
There are three or four bars of Verizon 4G.
Interesting hiking and dog walking outside our door.

With estimates of more than 1 million people in the U.S. who are currently living full time on the road, these criteria are becoming more difficult to achieve each year. Add to that the tendency of armed government workers to arbitrarily close down large sections of public land each year, and finding these spots becomes challenging. This year we had one taken away from us, but we were able to find three new spots, so that counts as a successful Winter season for us.

The downside of these spots is that you are usually more than 50 miles from a Walmart and 30 miles from any basic services. We consider these to be advantages, but it freaks out most normal people. We regularly go three weeks without needing a store of any kind and could probably go three months if the world went Mad Max on us.

Our first spot after leaving the gambling degenerates behind was about 10 miles from the US/Mexico border and gave us a taste of all four seasons during our 20 day stay. We saw a low of 19 degrees and a high of 79 degrees. Rain, sleet and snow were all part of the fun.

The only excitement was watching a refueling exercise one day.

The snow and sleet looked impressive, but didn't stay with us for very long.

These remote spots always offer plenty of hiking and exploring. Although we still like to see the world by foot, walking 10-15 miles isn't as easy now as it was 10 years ago. It looks like we may succumb to old age at some point in the near future and invest in mountain bikes. All of the best places we stay are perfect for exploring by bike.

Our next boondocking spot near Picacho Peak had a little bit of distant road noise and some distant visible lights at night, but it still checked almost all of the boxes. After this spot, we start the slow move back north to Idaho.