Snowbird 101: Free Camping

Our Escape trailer has adequate solar panel, battery storage and ac inverter capacity to run all our electrical needs for many days even in the worst of sunlight conditions (almost never experienced in the southwestern desert).  With 30 gallons of fresh water and 28 gallons of grey and black water storage, we can go five to seven days off the grid so lets go find the end of the road, out of the way place where life just happens, unplugged.  To get there, we head down Highway 99 and usually make it to Bakersfield or over Highway 58 at Tehachapi pass the first day.  Given a late start, en route traffic or just short days of winter, we might stop for the night at one of the great Snowbird/boondocker RV parks...   

Walmart...friend to many RVers.   The Walmart on CA 58 west of Bakersfield is RV friendly.  Walmart, often referred to as the best free, $100/night RV park in America (after you factor in the supplies you purchase the next morning) is generally a sure bet for a free night stopover.  Once we get on the road, heading for the Mojave desert we have lots of choices diverting off of CA58 heading east.

Amboy Crater, located 80 miles east of Barstow on a remnant of old Highway 66, has a paved parking pad just off the road to the day use/crater trailhead parking area.  There is room for about 10 RVs, a wonderful place to watch the sunset behind the crater.  And of course it is free.

We used to keep a boat at Lake Mojave, one of the Colorado River reservoirs, back in the 1980s.  We used to pass Amboy Crater on our way to a boating/camping outing.  We would joke that someday we'll have to take a vacation in Amboy; joke being Amboy consisted of a boarded up motel, and gas station, the picture of desolation.  Thirty years later, we finally had our Amboy vacation. 

The three mile round-trip hike to the crater is a good way to start the trip.  Exercise before spending hours driving south.

Anza-Borrego offers a wealth of camping, hiking and boondocking opportunities.  A local real estate developer has committed a sizable portion of his net-worth to beautifying the Borrego Springs area with whimsical metal sculptures: some 130 total depicting dinosaurs, herds of wild horsesand elephants to name a few. 

You can dry camp in many spots around the park.  One popular area for boondocking is along the road from Borrego Springs to Salton City (S22)  near the eastern border of the park.

Any experienced Snowbirder will have have heard about Quartzsite, Arizona.  The town of 3,000 permanent residents swells to a rumored peak of 300,000 snowbirds (some say 3,000,000) in the winder.  Free camping or very inexpensive camping on Federal land is the draw.  Quartzsite is surrounded by five Bureau of Land Management supervised free camping areas and a large "Long Term Visitor Area." 

Dome Rock straddles Dome Rock Road west of Quartzsite, within sight of Interstate 10.  You must be self-contained, there are no services, but you can stake out your piece of heaven and stay for up to 14 days free.  Just bring lots of water and food...grocery shopping in Quartzsite is of the AM/PM mini mart variety. 

Dome Rock is popular for group rendezvous.  We camped next to 25 Safari Trek RVers who converged on Dome Rock from all over the U.S.  An All Fiberglass Trailer Rally is held at DR around the second week of February every year.

About the only rule in a free BLM camping area, besides the usual, carry out your trash, don't dump/spill any liquids leave only foot prints etc is you must stay at least 15 feet away from your neighbor.  Don't expect a lot of privacy and quiet (there are no rules about running a generator).  If you are solar equipped you just have to put up with the noise.

I like to look for ghost towns.  I carry a map book with ghost towns identified as a tool to locate good boondocking sites.  We found this spot in the mountains south west of Safford, AZ on Forest Service land.  The FS permits up to 16 days of free camping in what they refer to as Disbursed camping sites.  Stay 100 feet from any sources of water and use existing sites.  With drought prevalent in much of the West, check for campfire regulations before starting one and always use an existing fire ring.

We had a hundred square miles of territory all to ourselves, if you don't count the cows, soaring hawks, jack rabbits and coyotes.

The rancher that held the grazing rights to the land we were camped on stopped by one morning for a neighborly conversation.  He told us the only remnant of the ghost town we were seeking, Gillespie, was a portion of an adobe wall, all that remained of the local school house.

We enjoyed four days of hiking, seeking old memories and making a few new ones of our own.