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After about 10-15 minutes, my phone battery died. The more I drove, the more it became clear that the dirt road was designed for ATVs and not MINIs. Nope, I was headed in another direction entirely. I kept driving, past a few other RVs, snapping a few photos and kept driving some more, thinking the road might eventually get me back to our coach. TIP: Do a Google search for BLM land in the area you’re headed, you will find info on locations, access, directions, facilities and costs on their website!įeeling adventurous, I decided to take the MINI for a drive up closer to Dome Rock and ended up on dirt road yet again.
#Boondocking in arizona free#
The permit was completely free and allowed us to stay up to 14 days, but we were only there for 2 nights. I ended up finding this useful information on the BLM website while writing this post – complete with access directions to Dome Rock camping – so I just learned something new. (D’oh – can’t believe I didn’t think of that at the time). All I had to do was complete a form with our details and dates of our stay and I was given a copy to post up in the window of our RV. About a mile up the road there was a BLM “camp host” (see pics below) parked with his RV and car just off to the side of Dome Rock Road West. With no instructions or guidelines on the BLM sign at the road’s entrance, I stopped to ask a neighboring RVer who directed me back to Dome Rock Road West, a little further along than we’d driven the night before. In order to legally stay on BLM land, you need to register and get a permit, yet in all the blog posts I’d read, no-one had mentioned how or where you get one from! So on Thursday morning I took the MINI to find out. Being in the rocky, dry desert, Quartzsite is a harsh environment, but it had more vegetation than where we’d stayed near Yuma. The ground was a hard, gravel rocky road covered in thousands of pieces of quartz, probably why the place is named Quartzsite. We awoke to discover we were actually in a great location – not too close to other rigs and with a nice view of the mountains and yes, Dome Rock! We wouldn’t have to move after all. Having the MINI as our toad proved to be very handy to drive ahead and scope out the landscape first before bringing in the coach TIP: Arrive before dark especially if your setup is a truck and trailer OR fifth wheel. We’d have to wait until morning to see what our location was really like, and assess if we’d need to move. We didn’t want to bother the other RVs so we quickly found a place to park the coach and setup for the night. Yay! I called Marc to come on up as I drove back to the entrance of the dirt road to meet him and guide him in. I drove up a little further and found lots of open space and level enough ground to safely park. Soon enough, another car drove by so I followed them into a dirt road then saw a sign for BLM land and at least a half a dozen other parked rigs. There were no other cars in sight. Marc decided to pull over for a bit while I went on ahead, in search of a decent and safe place for us to park.
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Marc drove the coach and followed me in the MINI for about 5 miles along Dome Rock Road West. No street lights, no buildings, just wide open desert land. The problem was, we had arrived in the dark (which we don’t recommend) and not surprisingly, BLM land isn’t lit up with signs and easy access roads like a campground! We couldn’t see Dome Rock – just a few imposing shadows of things that could be big rocks… or mountains – it was hard to say. We had no idea even which road to take, so decided to just take “Dome Rock Road West” as it sounded like a reasonable guess. On the drive, I had researched a couple of blog posts for ideas and we decided to head toward Dome Rock, as it apparently had good cellular/internet signal and great views of the rock.
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Quartzsite has an abundance of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land where you can park and stay for free. Fortunately, we were doing well with our water and had enough on board to last us for another 3-4 days, so Marc dropped the MINI so I could scout out a suitable place to park before taking the coach in. It was only an 85 mile drive (less than 2 hours) but we were still on the road at twilight, taking in the changing colors of the sky as we drove. We pulled into Love’s Travel Stop to fuel the coach and learned they didn’t have a dump station or a tap where we could fill our water tank. We left Yuma for Quartzsite on Wednesday afternoon to avoid the high winds. All will be revealed – literally – in this post and video. We dropped in to see what it’s all about and ended up discovering two very unusual highlights. Part 3 of our boondocking adventure continues in Quartzsite, Arizona where we got a taste of the town that is famous for attracting the largest gathering of RVers in the world.