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Joshua Tree National Park – Ryan Campground

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Joshua Tree National Park – Ryan Campground
February 13th – 15th, 2023 (2 nights)

Joshua Tree National Park is a fantastic place in the high desert to visit in the winter, spring, and fall (too hot in the summer).  The Joshua trees (not really trees but succulents), unusual rock formations, hiking, rock climbing and dark night skies are the main draws.  The best reason for staying overnight in the park is because once the sun sets, the daytime crowds go, leaving quiet peacefulness.  And, the stars are so bright here; it’s the perfect place for stargazing (away from all the city lights).  It’s also not too far a drive for us from San Diego, making it a fantastic mid-week break for rest and solitude.  We chose to visit Ryan Campground (one of many campgrounds inside the park) because it is small and away from the busier tourist areas.  We purchased an annual park pass (America The Beautiful Pass, $80) when we visited Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in September, so we avoided the $30 entrance fee.

Located at an elevation of around 4,400 ft., Ryan Campground has only 31 campsites @$20/night (reservation only) and is centrally located within the national park.  There are also 4 equestrian sites ($15/night) and 3 bicycle sites ($5/night, first come first served).  There is no running water at the campground and only pit toilets.  There is no cellphone reception here, so if you want to be connected bring your Starlink (or be prepared to drive about 10 minutes back toward the entrance where the hilltop overlooks the valley below).  There are some nice hikes from within the campground and exhibits within a close drive.  On our first day, after setting up our Scamp 13’ in campsite #5 (a nice one) and having lunch, we hiked from the campground to Ryan Ranch and then onto Lost Horse Well.  It’s a short hike (only .3 miles) to the decaying adobe walls of the ranch house and bunk house (circa 1896).  Lost Horse Well is just a little farther.  We also walked part of the Geology Tour Rd. trail from the campground (6.6 miles).  Although we didn’t see any Bighorn Sheep (which are known to be in the area,  we did see a number of strikingly beautiful bluebirds (bright sky blue color) called Mountain Bluebirds.   After hiking, we drove to Keys View — a short drive up to the top of a crest of the Little San Bernardino Mountains.  There are benches at the top and panoramic views of the Coachella Valley below– including the Salton Sea, Santa Rosa Mountains, 10,800 peak of San Jacinto Peak (behind Palm Springs), and the snow-covered peak of 11,500 San Gorgonio Mountain.  The San Andreas Fault can be seen below along the eastern part of the Coachella Valley with its jagged slabs of rock and other geological anomalies.

The wind started kicking up strongly on our first night with 20 to 30 mph winds with gusts up to 60 mph.  We had received a Severe Weather Advisory email from recreation.gov when driving into the park without further details (and we didn’t have internet access to research what was coming our way once we arrived at the campground).   Tent campers were having a rough time with their tents sometimes folding up in the wind; many of these campers slept in their cars for shelter.  One man, who is travelling the country by bike, told me he was almost swept off his feet when trying to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Since campgrounds here have no water, we arrived with our Scamp 13’s fresh tank full (giving us some extra ballast).  Our rear stabilizers were down which also helped weather the gusts.  We were unhitched, but the Scamp handled the strong wind well (with only occasional shaking, despite the wind hitting the Scamp directly on its side – the Scamp’s aerodynamic shape likely helped).  The wind was so loud that, despite wearing earplugs and playing white noise, it was difficult to sleep (it sounded like we were on a boat in a fierce storm at sea).  Meanwhile, temperatures dropped into the 20’s and we cranked up our Scamp’s furnace to stay toasty.

The wind continued to blow hard the next day.  It was sunny, but cool and windy.  We bundled up in our down jackets with wind breakers over them.  We drove to the visitor’s center (about 30 minutes) to see their exhibits and souvenirs and also spent some time on our phones (since we had cellphone reception here).  On the way back to Ryan Campground, we stopped at numerous outdoor exhibits and trails which included Cap Rock & Intersection Rock (including .3 mile nature loop) and Creosote Trail.  We also stopped at some popular rock climbing spots.  Some of the names of these rocks are interesting:  Hemingway Buttress, Banana Cracks, Heart of Darkness, Target Rock, The Oyster Bar, Split Personality Rock, Agent Orange, East Wall Hall of Horrors, Exorcist, Diamond Dogs, and Nurn’s Romp.  We tried to visually connect the names of the rocks with the rock shapes, but they didn’t really match.  We guess the rock names are more aligned with the climbing experiences rather than the rocks’ appearances.  The most epic experience though, was walking along desert trails filled with Joshua trees (sights that cannot be matched anywhere else).  The trees, actually a type of Yucca, were, according to legend, named by Mormon immigrants crossing through the desert in the 1850s.  They saw the gnarled outstretched limbs of the trees as reaching their hands up to the sky in prayer (and/or pointing toward the Promised Land) and, so, named them after the biblical figure Joshua.

The wind calmed a bit in the evening of our last night, only to pave the way for an unexpected snowstorm!  Click here for a short video of the snowstorm at our campsite.  Yes, it was actually snowing!  We sure were glad to have two filled propane tanks on board (although we only used a small fraction of one) so we could run our heater all night.  We were very comfortable inside the warm cozy interior of the Scamp (watching movies and playing Sequence and Backgammon games). Looking out the Scamp’s panoramic windows watching the snow blanket the desert floor was a mesmerizing site.  Equally as captivating, was watching the tent campers scrambling to their cars for supplies during the blizzard.  It was difficult to imagine how they were able to bundle up enough in the cold to sleep in their tents (most likely didn’t have propane heaters and we witnessed some sleeping in their cars).  We heard some scary stories the following morning from tent campers who battled extreme cold during the night (temps in the teens).  People also exchanged hot food and hot drinks the morning after the snowstorm.

Our last morning at Ryan Campground was calm with blue skies (temperatures in the 20’s).  We had a chance to take a nice early morning hike (Keys View Rd trail) from the campground (around a two mile round trip flat desert walk) before heading home.  Because we plan to come back, we made note of a number of ranger programs which look interesting–including, Keys Ranch Tour  ($10 for adults, reservations the day before), All About Joshua Trees, and the Evening Program.  Although we experienced a wild weather ride on this trip, it was really exciting and satisfying.  It was great to see how our Scamp 13’ pushed through the challenges with flying colors.  And, these experiences will no doubt elevate our game for future trips.  Speaking of future trips, our next planned trip is back here next month at Jumbo Rocks Campground!  Stay tuned!

Disclaimer:  You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale.  These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences.  However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer.  It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything correctly. 

Why it’s Smart to be a Zen Boondocker, Even if You Never Plan to Go Off-Grid

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Why it’s Smart to be a Zen Boondocker, Even if You Never Plan to Go Off-Grid
If you plan on using your small travel trailer anywhere other than at a RV park or home with hookups, it will benefit you greatly to have the skills to go off-grid (even if you never plan to do serious off-grid camping).  Many National and State Parks (as well as regional parks) offer no hookups (although shared water spigots are very common and sometimes central Dump stations are available).  On a recent visit to Joshua Tree National Park, we discovered some water spigots at the entrance, but no hookups at the end of the long road at the Jumbo Rocks Campground.  Taking ample water supplies for our kitchen and shower along with fresh drinking water made the trip there very pleasurable.  And having solar panels and a separate battery power station meant we didn’t need to worry about running down our Scamp’s onboard 12-volt battery.  Propane provided power for our gas stove, refrigerator, water heater, and furnace.  And, using our Holy Grail Portable Grey Water Tank Solution effectively doubled our Grey Water tank capacity and, in turn, staying capacity to about 5 – 6 days!

To make things even more interesting and enticing to be a Zen Boondocker, there is also often a significant daily rate difference for sites with and without hookups for campgrounds which offer them.  We discovered this on our visit to Oceano Dunes Campground in Pismo Beach.  Hookup spots (Electric & Water only) at this campground were $40 per night and only $25 per night without hookups at the time of our trip!  While it’s tempting to select campsites with hookups over ones without if they are available, there is often another substantial benefit other than monetary to choose a non-hookup site instead.  Hook-up sites are sometimes at newer locations within a campground which may be less scenic and/or with sites much closer together than older sites farther away from the utilities. For example, at Oceano Dunes, the hookup sites were much smaller and closer together all clustered at the front of the campground in a parking lot near the entrance.  And, the non-hookup sites were much farther back from the entrance in their own section with much more green space surrounding them (each with a picnic table and fire pit!) and alongside a scenic lagoon and walking trails.  So even when visiting campgrounds with hookups, it’s still a great benefit to be able to choose a non-hookup site and go for a few days without having to plug into an electric outlet, hookup to a water hose, or connect to a dump line.

Another great benefit of being a Zen Boondocker is that it makes staying on friends’ and family’s driveways and Boondockers Welcome sites nice and easy (even if they don’t have a water hose or electrical outlet at the driveway).  No problem!  We’ve found that for longer trips (e.g. travelling from our home in Carlsbad to northern locations like Lake Tahoe or even Oregon) stop overs at family homes in Santa Barbara, Oakland, and even Boondockers Welcome locations provide great break points to reduce overly long tiring drives.  So, being able to easily spend a night or two with no concerns about water, power, or dumping makes our small travel trailer truly self-contained and very useful.

Site availability is another factor which allows Zen Boondockers with small travel trailers more campground options.  It’s not uncommon for the larger sites with hookups to completely book out very quickly, often leaving the smaller non-hookup sites as “scraps”.  However, we’ve found these “scraps” to not only be more likely available but also often ideal and more desirable.  For example, at D.L. Bliss State Park in Lake Tahoe, we skipped the larger hookup sites farther from the lake, and, instead, opted for a tiny 15’ spot in the tent camping area.  The site we chose was the closest to the lake and had no hookups.  However, there was a water spigot close to the site and we were able to set up our solar panel.  It turned out the site was fantastic and we could see the water from our bedroom!  After looking over the entire campground, we felt our site was probably the best one because it was so close to the lake and had a fantastic view.

Factors for Zen Boondocking
Here are the essential factors to consider in order to become a Zen Boondocker and enjoy all of its benefits:

Conservation
We try to use water sparingly, but are not overly obsessive about it.  Many boondockers are super conscious about catching water and reusing it, taking bird baths or only bathing once per week, ….  Our philosophy is to be comfortable during our trips while still being able to extend our stays without having to relocate.  We do try to rinse our dishes outside if water is available and it’s allowed at the campsite.  But, we also take short hot showers at the end of each day and brush our teeth at the sink.  In order to compensate, we plan our trips so we are not dry camping more than a few days straight which means with the measures taken below it’s possible to be a Zen Boondocker and glamp out (2 showers a day, etc.) at the same time!

Food & Water
It’s helpful to know how long you will expect to be gone on your trip to help plan out your food and water needs.  Provisioning (e.g. store shopping) during the journey may be necessary if it is a long one.  We’ve found that for a 10-day trip, we can carry all the food and drinking water we need in our SUV.  However, we do need to resupply our fresh trailer water reserves during the 10-day trip around every four days (assuming we are carrying our two 6 gallon jugs of resupply fresh water for sink/shower/toilet).

Food
We always map out our trip before leaving and write down every meal for each day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).  We turn on our Scamp’s refrigerator a couple nights before our trip and then fill it the day before we leave (our Scamp is stored in our home’s garage and has electricity).  We load most of our food into cardboard boxes and store them in our SUV.  We can carry up to 12 days (enough for 2 people) of food in cardboard containers within our SUV.

Drinking Water
We always bring two 4 gallon BPA-free water jugs in the back of our SUV for all our drinking and cooking needs when we go on a typical 10-day trip in our Scamp.  We fill these tanks at home by using our reverse osmosis system.  By carrying an additional 8 gallons of fresh water in our tow vehicle, we are effectively increasing our Fresh water tank supply by 67% (12 gallons Fresh increased to 20 gallons)!!!  This gives us a lot more fresh water supply.  Health experts typically recommend a person drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day (8×8 rule), which is about ½ gallon of water per person per day.  So, by using this rule, two people would bring 10 gallons of water on their 10-day trip (1/2 gallon/day x 2 people x 10 days).  We tend to drink slightly less water than this amount because we also drink coconut water, macadamia milk in our cereal, oat milk in our tea, sometimes soup for lunch, and we eat a lot of juicy fruits (like oranges).  So, for us, bringing 8 gallons of fresh water on a 10 day trip works out great (we always have extra water when we return home).

Fresh Water for Trailer
In addition to bringing drinking water, we also will fill two separate 6-gallon jugs if we are heading straight for a dry campsite (no water or water spigots nearby).  We use these to refill our Scamp’s fresh water tank (12 gallons + 6 gallons in hot water heater tank) when it runs low (usually after a couple of days with 2 people showering daily).  We stayed at a Boondockers Welcome location right outside Joshua Tree National Park which had no hookups.  Having the extra 12 gallons of fresh water to fill our Scamp’s Fresh water tank made a couple day stay smooth.  And, with our portable jugs, it was easy for us to refill them at a visitor’s center close by without having to relocate our Scamp.  We can go about four days before having to refill our Scamp’s Fresh water tank.

Electricity
It’s best to start your journey with your small travel trailer’s 12-volt battery completely charged.  We plug our Scamp into our 110-volt outlet in our garage a few days before we leave and keep it plugged in while we run our refrigerator before the trip.  The trailer’s 12-volt battery will also charge while we are driving since the Scamp is plugged into our tow vehicle and receives a charge.  To keep our 12-volt battery charged when we are at the campsite without hookups, we bring a 100-Watt solar panel briefcase and hope the sun is shining.  The solar panel does a great job of keeping our batteries fully charged during the day and provides enough power so our 12-volt battery can easily last the night.  We can still go a couple of days without the solar panel if we are careful to just run the essentials sparingly (LED lights, water pumps, fan, etc.).  To help reduce the draw on our Scamp’s 12-volt battery, we also carry an auxiliary battery power bank (which we also fully charge before we leave home).  Our Jackery 500 is a 518Wh lithium battery which we use for charging our phones, cameras, drone, television, and an electric toothbrush when boondocking to reserve all of our Scamp’s 12-volt battery power for essential devices/functions.  On longer trips between campgrounds, we usually place the Jackery 500 at the back of our SUV and charge it with the tow vehicle’s 12VDC port so the Jackery 500 energy is replenished during our drive.

Propane
Propane does a great job of powering all our appliances which can run on this gas.  Propane is efficient and can last a long time.  Appliances in our Scamp that can run off propane are the gas stove, refrigerator, furnace, and hot water heater.  The great thing about propane is that you can carry a lot of it (we always carry 2 Viking composite propane tanks) and it can be run without hookups.  One just has to take care to follow proper safety protocols when running propane.  Small travel trailers are usually outfitted with combination smoke / carbon monoxide detector alarms.  The one in our 2020 Scamp 13’ is located near the front door under one of the dinette seats.  It’s essential that every small travel trailer have one of these alarms because smoke and carbon monoxide exposure can be lethal.

Holding Tanks
These are the tanks that hold the Fresh, Grey, and Black water.

Fresh Water Holding Tank
The Fresh water holding tank has already been addressed above within the Food & Water section.

Grey Water Holding Tank
The Grey water tank is generally the Achilles heel for small travel trailers.  This is the place where used fresh water goes (e.g. waste water from the sink and shower).  For us two people (taking 2 showers each night), our Scamp’s twenty-one gallon Grey tank fills up in about three days.  To extend our time off-grid, I developed the Holy Grail Portable Grey Water Tank Solution.  Using this solution (which utilizes four 5 gallon jugs), we are able to almost double the off-grid capability of the Grey water tank.  And, it certainly is nice not having to limit campground visits to only 2 – 3 days due to Grey water tank size.  For the Scamp’s 21-gallon Grey tank, this system effectively doubles time between dumps from 2 – 3 days to 4 – 6 days (depending on water use).  And, it’s also really great not having to pack everything up and drive to a central Dump in the middle of a trip and then have to drive back to the campsite to set up the trailer all over again (which we had to do in the middle of our 3-night stay at D.L. Bliss State Park at Lake Tahoe).

Black Water Tank
This is the holding tank for the toilet – it holds sewage and waste water.  In our Scamp, we’ve found that the 9 gallon Black tank takes much longer to fill than the Grey tank.  Our Black tank usually takes about 6 days (two people) before needing to be dumped.  There isn’t really a clean way (pardon the pun) to extend the time between Dumps for the Black tank.  Some people dump this biohazard material into portable containers to extend their time off grid, but we choose to only drain Black Water at a Dump station.  In turn, our Zen Boondocking needs to be refreshed with a Dump every 5 – 6 days.

Conclusion
Being a Zen Boondocker will open up new worlds for you and your small travel trailer.  You will not only be able to go to remote off-grid locations, but, more practically, enjoy the many advantages of choosing campsites without hookups and extend your stays at these locations.  For example, you might be able to stay at more scenic and roomy campsites for longer periods of time at a lower cost than campsites with hookups.  And, visits to places without hookups (such as Joshua Tree National Park) will no longer be limited to just an overnight stay.  So, find your center, and become Zen with your Boondocking spirit!

Disclaimer:  You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale.  These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences.  However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer.  It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything correctly. 

Wonder Valley (Twenty Nine Palms)

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Wonder Valley (Twenty Nine Palms)
December 12th – 14th, 2020

About a 3-hour drive from San Diego and close to Palm Springs, Wonder Valley is a desert oasis in Twenty Nine Palms, California boasting wide open views and dark skies filled with billions of stars.  It’s located very close to Joshua Tree National Park, which borders the Colorado and Mojave deserts.  The main features of the park are the magnificent Joshua Trees which stand over 20 feet tall and the massive boulder formations which take many shapes.  This is one of the few, if only, places Joshua Trees are found (some say they are also found in Jerusalem).

Although the overnight campgrounds were closed at the time of our visit due to the mandatory pandemic California shut down, the park was still open for day use.  We really wanted to go not only to see Joshua Tree National Park for the first time, but also to witness the peak of the Gemenid meteor showers.  Fortunately, there is a Boondockers Welcome location very close to the park entrance in Wonder Valley and the owner was very nice in accommodating us for a couple of nights!  The boondocking campsite we stayed at is a very large flat paved 2 acre area butting up to the desert.  There was one other travel trailer on this site when we arrived, but the area is large enough to fit 10 rigs, so we had plenty of space!

When we arrived it was very windy, but still clear and sunny.  We were careful to position our Scamp 13’ small travel trailer directly into the wind to minimize buffeting of the trailer.  The wind was very strong, but just blew right over us from the front of the trailer and we didn’t feel or hear much of it.  Since there are no hookups at this location, we made sure to fully charge our Scamp’s batteries the day before leaving, fill our Scamp’s freshwater tank with 12 gallons of fresh water and the hot water heater with 6 gallons of fresh water, bring one full 4 gallon jug of drinking water and 2 x 6 gallon water jugs to refill our freshwater tank, bring our Jackery 500 auxiliary power bank, as well as pack our refrigerator and storage box with enough food for a few days.  We found out later there is a free water spigot to supply campers’ water jugs at the Visitor’s Center at the entrance of the park on Utah Trail road.  We also made sure to bring our solar panels since we would need a little help from the sun to keep our Scamp 13’ batteries charged.

We had a nice late lunch in the Scamp after arriving (some pasta cooked up on the stove) and decided to check out the Visitor’s Center.  We found some really cool Joshua Tree t-shirts and spoke to some park rangers a bit.  They told us the park would be closed from 10 p.m. – 5 a.m. in honor of the coronavirus curfew now in effect.  Darkness falls early in December in the desert and we decided to wait until the next day (Sunday) to go into the park.  It was very cold and windy in the evening (early 30’s at night), so we decided to watch a movie hoping the wind would settle (see how to watch movies in the wild).  Our Scamp furnace kept us nice and toasty.  The wind did quiet eventually and we were able to see some meteors!  The sky at night here is very dark and the stars sparkle!  The location feels very remote.

The next morning we took a little walk around our campsite in the desert.  There are many interesting dilapidated shacks that dot the landscape – our Boondockers Welcome host explained to us that they are the byproduct of the Small Tract Act of 1938, a federal homestead act that deeded mostly 5-acre plots of land to distribute 457,000 acres of desert that the Bureau of Land Management deemed useless (the act was repealed in 1979).  Under the guidelines, homesteaders were granted the land if they built homes no smaller than 12 x 16 feet (192 square feet).  Most of these structures are tiny, currently in terrible condition, and many still have original old furnishings – we saw one with an old oven and a tea kettle still on the stove!  However, some of these shacks have been renovated and we also saw the new construction of a mini-home (supposedly by a man from Texas building his “dream” home)!

After a decadent pancake breakfast in our Scamp, we headed back to the Visitor’s Center to purchase an America the Beautiful Annual Pass ($80) which allows unlimited entry into National Parks for a year as well as other government lands.  We are planning on going to Death Valley National Park, Pinnacles National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, as well as other National Parks this year, so having the pass will save a lot on entrance fees (currently $30 per car at Joshua Tree National Park).  Driving into the park was easy and there are places to stop along the roads.  Based on the time of year and the strict pandemic orders, there were hardly any visitors during our trip.  There are a lot of very interesting trails, plants (including Joshua Trees), and rock formations to keep one busy for days.  We saw Skull Rock which looks like it sounds and completed an easy 2 mile hike to Split Rock.  We really didn’t have enough time to see everything and, in turn, we plan to come back in April with friends and will stay inside the park at Jumbo Rocks campground. Joshua Tree National Park is definitely a must visit if only to see the curiously interesting and one-of-a-kind Joshua trees!

Disclaimer:  You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale.  These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences.  However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer.  It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything correctly.