Before a camper gets too far south, the camping changes. There are other campers everywhere. "Dispersed" camping is not very dispersed at all.
Perhaps this should be the year I practice what I preach: accept the fact that you can't get away from other campers, and deliberately move close to solarized campers. That is pretty easy to do. With practice you can glance at a camper a long way off and tell that they should be avoided. The signs are: noisy motorsports around their rig; a toy hauler (fifth wheel trailer); ID or MT license plates; no line of solar panels on the roof; a construction site generator on the ground; a long thick extension cord coming off their rig.
Consider this rig:
He could be a great guy and a good camping neighbor, but as you scout out a neighborhood you should stay clear of a rig like this. What exactly is in that box on the upper story? But if you look closely, you can see a solar panel on the roof. So he might be OK.
I guess I just don't have the guts to move in close to a solarized camper, probably because it is so easy to imagine them looking out their window at me, and wondering who the impudent jerk is!
Years ago I wondered how far solarization would go. It would interesting to see some statistics. Let's guess that it is now 50% at desert camping locations. Has it saturated at 50%? It almost seems so. What stops it from going higher?
1. Newbies. RV culture has a high turnover rate and a large crop of freshmen every year. The poor little devils have spent so much to get started that it is understandable that they would hold off on the solar panels. They say, "I don't understand that solar stuff. One of these days I will get around to doing my homework." Usually one of the spouses say, "Let's hold off on the solar, and see how much we actually like boondocking." In fact that argument is circular.
2. Unhelpful blogs and video channels, who complicate solarization because they want more and more and more clickbait income. Or the blog goes on a theological rant about what "full charging" is.
3. The high cost of lithium batteries and the notion that you will be "old school" if you use lower cost lead-acid batteries. I wish people would stop using the "harmful gases" argument against lead-acid batteries.
4. The notion that everything needs to be electrical in a rig, even the cooking or water-heating. It has gotten to the point that people no longer believe you can put a pan of water on a propane stove and boil it, because it takes "too much time." They think they need a microwave or induction stove top -- then they can sit in a chair and press buttons on a remote control or smartphone app to control the stove.
Using a 900 Watt Mr. Coffee or electric toaster is stupid! Use your propane stove to heat water and drip it over the coffee grounds with a cone filter (or AeroPress or French press, etc.) Make your toast on a skillet on a propane stove.
5. The use of cheap-shit converters (from the factory) that charge your batteries with 13.5 Volts DC. That is what the RV industry typically puts in an RV. It is OK for an RV park, but not for dispersed camping. Then the snowbird boondocker runs his 8 Kilowatt, Chinese-made, Harbor Freight generator for hours and hours, instead of the 30 minutes it would take it the battery charger put out 14.3 Volts DC.
Most people don't know that you can buy a $40 module that easily plugs in to their crappy 13.5 Volts DC charger, and converts it to a "three stage" charger that puts out 14.3 Volts DC.
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