Tag Archives: travel

On Rest & Relaxation

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After a few busy, stressful months, I finally enjoy a few stress free days on my boat and reflect on how pleasant it is to just relax.

I’ve had a pretty busy few months this year.

February

After a nice two week stay at the Holtville Hot Springs in my camper, with visits to the tubs at least once a day, I started the long drive home. It had been a very mild winter in central Washington State and there wasn’t any snow on the ground. In fact, my housesitter reported that things were already starting to green up. In mid February. Continue reading →

Video: Lifting a Ranger Tug off a Trailer and Blocking it in a Boatyard

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Another boating video made especially for folks who don’t hang around in boatyards.

I towed my boat from home to its summer home in Bellingham on Friday. It was a stressful, time-consuming non-event. The road over Stevens Pass was wet, but not icy. A landslide closed the northbound lanes of I-5 just south of my destination, so I had to take a detour with an oversized load in tow.

Fun times!

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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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