We’ve been camping on America’s public lands for many years now, enjoying all the blessings and benefits that this beautiful lifestyle offers — multi-million dollar views out our windows, incredible wildlife sightings on a regular basis, and the delicious peace and quiet that go with living in nature.

What’s a painless and useful way to say “thanks” for the privilege of being able to live this way? Whenever we set up camp in a new boondocking spot, we take a moment to clean up our site before we settle in. It takes just a few minutes, and it makes our new front and backyard so much more attractive.

Boondocking and boating at Roosevelt Lake in Arizona

Lots of people volunteer their time to help out the various government agencies that manage America’s public lands, and they usually receive either a free RV campsite and/or a small stipend for their work. This is a fantastic exchange, however, it doesn’t need to be so formal and there doesn’t even need to be a tit-for-tat trade. Besides, in places like Arizona’s Roosevelt Lake where camping costs seniors just $3 a night, the volunteer host is hardly making a killing!

We recently arrived at a campsite to find it very overgrown with weeds, so Mark grabbed his rake and hedge trimmer and began doing a little groundskeeping to trim back the thorny mesquite and palo verde trees and to get rid of the piles of tumbleweeds.

Folks kept driving by and asking Mark if he were the campground host. When he said, “No, I’m just cleaning up a little,” they looked puzzled and asked him why he was raking. The answer is easy: We love our lifestyle and want the privilege of camping on public land to be available to us and others in the future!

Besides, sometimes it makes Mark feel happy and goofy enough that he whips out his rake and starts playing air guitar!

More info: Camping at Roosevelt Lake

Related posts:

• Lakeside Camping at Roosevelt Lake – May 1, 2014
• Roosevelt Lake – Desert Oasis – April 15, 2009
• What is Happening to our Public Lands?

We had a special reunion last night with our good friends Rich and Mark who joined us with their popup trailers. We circled the wagons and warmed our hands over a great campfire together. Popup trailers are so cool. Our friend Mark camps in an Aliner Chalet (on the left) that is cute as a button and sets up in seconds. But I’m partial to the popup tent trailer that Rich and his wife Mary camp in (on the right), because it used to be ours!!

We circled the wagons around a glowing campfire.

This is the little trailer that started us on the road to full-time RVing, and we spent way more nights in it during the two years we owned it than seems possible. We drove away with it every Friday as soon as we got off work, and we camped in it right through til Monday morning sometimes. It was fantastic to see it again and to remember the many great trips we took in it.

Rich welcomes us into our old popup tent-trailer we called the Luvnest… so many great camping memories!

A little trailer like this is the ideal way to get your feet wet and see if the RVing life is for you before you turn your life upside down and put your life savings into a bigger RV for full-timing. (Of course, we did meet a couple once who had been full-timing in a popup tent trailer like this for four years — and they were very happy!). If you want to run off to live in an RV a few years down the road, a little buggy like this can satisfy your itch and give you a taste of freedom right now!

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Yesterday started out like many days, with a cup of coffee and a peek at the sunrise. But without warning, it suddenly turned into a Major Day of Reorganizing our Stuff. How that happened, I’m not entirely sure!

We’ve been losing a lot of things lately — a magic marker we just bought, a UV filter for one of our camera lenses, a magnifying glass. None of it is mission critical, but it was getting on Mark’s nerves, because he’s not a person who loses stuff. That’s my job!

I always thought I was orderly, but in our little household he is the tidy one, the one who knows where things are and who keeps us on track as we navigate our way through life. I’m the one who knows how to sweet talk the computers when they get cranky, who gets the paperwork done, and who makes those nasty but necessary phone calls where you’re put on hold forever.

So, when he suddenly started opening all the cabinets and flashing things in my direction saying, “Do you want to keep this?” as he placed it in a growing trash heap in the middle of the floor, I knew I’d better snap to attention and join the party, or he’d get to the back of the cabinets before I had a chance to know what had once been in them.

Yikes!!

As the papers flew, and the boxes of miscellaneous stuff got emptied, and the properly sorted goodies found new homes in new places, Mark suddenly stopped. He had a funny smile on his face as he held out a little slip of paper in his hand.

“Look what I found,” he finally said, passing it to me. “I cut this out years ago…”

A true gem we found buried under a bunch of stuff…

Oh my. How true that is. We feel so lucky to have found a way of life that makes us truly happy, and we say that to each other every day. For everyone reading this — if you are dreaming of a life of travel, or you have other dreams you hold close to your heart, be bold, conquer your fears and take the steps to make it happen! It is so worthwhile in the end.

Our buggy is now better organized than it has been in years. Three lawn bags full of clutter left this tiny home! We never did find those missing items, but John Irving’s wise words of wisdom have found a place on our wall!

If you need some pointers for getting organized, our full-time RVing friend Donna Smallin Kuper is a best-selling author of books on decluttering, and she has oodles of organizing tips at her website! Her hubby Mike blogs about their life on the road at Flying the Koop.

New to this site? Visit our Home page to read more about our full-time traveling lifestyle and our Intro for RVers to find out where we keep all the good stuff. If you like what you see, we'd love for you to subscribe to receive our latest posts!