Tag Archives: California

A Look Back at this Winter 2025/26 Travels

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I take a quick look back at the nearly three month trip I took to Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

As regular readers know, I go south every winter. I love my home but I don’t like winters here. It isn’t the cold as much as it’s the dreariness. So I go south, usually to Arizona and the desert southwest, although I did spend two winters on my boat on the Great Loop in mostly Florida a few years ago.

This year, I left on November 27, 2025 (Thanksgiving Day) and returned home on February 12, 2026. I have an excellent winter housesitter, which takes a lot of the worries out of leaving home for so long. He’s a skier and he likes the proximity of Mission Ridge and Steven’s Pass, two local ski resorts. He was not happy about the lack of real winter weather this year. But that lack of winter weather is what got me home early; I was supposed to come home at the end of February.

I thought I’d take a few minutes to write up a summary of my trip’s expenses. I think I managed to do it quite affordably this year. You be the judge.

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Another Stay at the Hot Springs

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I spend another two weeks boondocking at the Holtville Hot Spring. My last visit here?

I’m writing this from my very comfortable campsite at the Holtville Hot Spring, a BLM managed long-term visitor area. This is probably my seventh or eighth visit and I’m planning on staying for about two weeks. That’s why I took the effort to find a campsite that clicked all my boxes — privacy, quiet, space for my pups to run off leash, close (but not too close) to the hot spring tubs — and position my equipment in a way that makes everything easy to access. This is also the third time on this winter trip that I’ve taken the camper off the truck, giving me a little bit more flexibility when it comes to running errands in town.

Drone Photo of Campsite
My campsite, which has two driveways, is tucked in among bare salt cedar trees just off the campground’s main road.

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Boondocking

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If you’re properly prepared and have the right approach, it’s a surprisingly affordable way to travel in the southwest and beyond.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I got a request from one of my YouTube subscribers for more information about boondocking in an RV. This is a topic near and dear to me, as I spend a good portion of every winter camping for free on public land in Arizona and California. It’s a nice, inexpensive way to enjoy nature and solitude. Kind of like having your own mobile Walden Pond.

Boondocking Defined

Boondocking — at least the way I see it — is camping without any RV hookups or conveniences. Although this is usually done in parking lots (think Walmart) or on public land, you can be boondocking in a campground if that campground has no services. It basically means relying on your own equipment for power, water, sanitation (toilet), and food storage/prep. It usually refers to staying in a vehicle or RV, although I suppose you can do it with a tent, too. (I’ve already had enough tent camping in my life, so I won’t address that here.)

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Snowbirding 2022: A Visit to 5 Palms Hot Spring

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Tracking down another California Hot Spring — with some difficulty.

In mid January 2022, I departed my campsite at the Holtville Hot Spring and headed toward Salton Sea where I had a campground reservation at a state park. Along the way, I tracked down and visited the 5 Palms Hot Spring. This is the video I made of my campground departure and Hot Spring Visit.

It took me a while to put this together because I originally planned to turn the whole day into one video. It was going long and I didn’t like the way it was coming out. So I cut a bunch out and reworked it for this. I’ll likely have another video from that day soon — I visited a weird place on Salton Sea and took a lot of video clips there that are definitely worth seeing if you like to see weird, abandoned stuff. How about subscribing and turning on that notification bell so you know when I release new videos?

Please don’t be afraid to share your thoughts or questions in the comments for this video.

Snowbirding 2022: My Travels To Date

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A map of where I’ve traveled so far.

I’m in Tucson now, in the Ringtail dry camping lot of Catalina State Park. I love this park, which is nestled into a little canyon where I can easily fool myself into thinking that the nearest Walmart isn’t less than 2 miles from my camper door. I’m not terribly fond of the campground, though, since the sites are tiny slots and, for some reason, my picnic table and fire ring seem to be located more conveniently for the slot next door. I will admit that it’s a lot nicer than the gravel parking lot I stayed 5 nights in in Quartzsite last week. At least there’s desert out my back yard — instead of a yahoo with a toy hauler and dogs that won’t quit barking.


Here’s where I stayed last night: at a dispersed forest service camping area southeast of Apache Junction, AZ. It was wonderfully quiet — until the shooters camped about a half mile away woke up and started shooting again.

I was trying to visualize where I’d been so far on this trip and decided to enlist the help of GoogleMaps. I took a screen shot of the map covering the area I’m in and drew in lines for the roads I’d traveled, then red dots for where I’ve stayed and blue numbers to indicate how many days at each place. The numbers don’t add up — there’s about 4 days unaccounted for — so I likely spent a few more days at certain locations than I think I did.

Anywhere, here’s the map: