We Made The Worst RV Boondocking MISTAKE Ever

From taking a ride on a gondola for the first time ever to exploring a ghost town on top of a mountain, this week we're taking full advantage of our free boondocking spot just down the road from Telluride, Colorado. As we pack up and head to our next destination, we're gonna tell you everything you need to know about boondocking, including showing you some of the more nerve-wracking parts. A big dip. Okay, there goes the truck over the big dip. That wasn't too bad. Oh no, I'm concerned about how much we're leaning. Oh gosh! And even take you along for the ride as we make one of the worst mistakes we've ever made in our two years of full-time RVing. Going on a gondola ride and I'm so excited! All right, yeah. Craig's not excited. I don't know. I don't even know if it's going to be good. It's going to be cold, probably. Cold? It's so hot already. That's going up. Not really. No? Would you ride a gondola? Would you be? Who are you in this situation? Victoria? She ain't telling you that we got to walk all the way back down. Okay, first, there's three gondolas in Telluride area. They're all free, and they take you from one area of the mountain to the other area, and then you can walk back down, and it's going to be fun. She's forcing me to have fun. Forcing you to have fun. Okay. Gondola, this way. I didn't know what that symbol was. And then that way. I guess we gotta go up. See the gondola? It's right there. I feel like you're talking to me like a maverick or something. You see it? It's right there. You see it? Yeah. An old school telephone. I think we'll see. I hope so. So there's multiple gondolas that you can ride between where you park in Mountain Village to Telluride and it's a 2.4 mile trip takes approximately 12 minutes across all the gondolas and again it's all free which is pretty cool. Coming up to the first station here about to get off see how this goes because we have no clue we've never done this before. I hope. You ready? Getting there. Okay let's see if the doors open. Oh my gosh they're not opening. What do we do? Maybe they will accept it? Oh, she's going to open up. Let's get up now. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. We did it. We made it. We survived. Now we're getting on the next one. There's kind of a certain skill to it. Yeah. Yeah, there is. It's like getting on a ski lift. Yeah. You have to do it carefully. I feel like we're very unbalanced here. I'm going to sit on this side. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Check out the whole little mountain village over there. So what we're about to get off at is at an elevation of 10,940 feet. 540 feet. 540 feet. Still it's over 10,500 feet and it's that's a decent elevation. We're going up this whole time. It's an uphill ride here. Oh yeah. So you can't walk this trail down but it's over five miles long and I don't know if I wanna walk all the way down five miles. It's this zigzag right here you can kind of see it. It looks like a dirt road. Yeah not particularly scenic either because it's just a ski run I think when there's snow. On the gondola ride. It is windy. Oh my goodness. Made it to Telluride. You want a pretzel? Sounds Sounds kind of good. So one of our fun pastimes when we go to new cities is finding the expensive neighborhood and going and looking at houses. All of Telluride is an expensive neighborhood, which we already knew. Okay, we got a 2,300 square feet house. Oh yes, this nice pink one I believe, yes. Cute, cute. Okay, it's a little bit bigger than the last one, so how much you think? Well, seeing how the last one was two million and it was, I don't know, it probably wouldn't be here in a couple years because it was so old and dilapidated looking. I'm gonna have to say this one's probably five million. Oh, you over guessed. Did I? This one's 4.1. A steal. Oh my gosh. Get it today. 4.1 million. We clearly are fans of more space. And these lots are so small. But this is fun though. I just don't know if you would make... Wow, I cannot believe how expensive these houses are. How would you make your investment back? I don't know, let's look at my... Before the house fell down. Craig used to be a home inspector, so he's always talking about how he doesn't understand how these really, really old houses are so expensive because they're not, like, you buy an early 1900s house, like, it can't last for that much longer, right? No, and I can assure you, all these houses have termite damage. Look at this one. Like, it's being redone. That's something that looks like it. That's what I'm saying, and that's what you're buying, though, just because they slapped a couple band-aids on it, so you can't see all that, but... I don't know. Are we doing it? Okay. Okay. How about this one across the road? Is it? That's for sale, right? Oh. For sale? Okay. Let's check. Zillow. What do you think it is? You got this little part that's built on. This looks nice. Oh, I just checked Zillow. I think it has to be... How much, you think? Probably 10 million. Oh, you're low. Low? Yes. Hello? Yes. Oh my gosh, what year was it built? Oop, one second, check this again. 93 and it's 4100 square feet, so it's a little bit newer. For some of the people that bought some houses during the 90s, you know that was prime time for some polybutylene piping, so hopefully for a house that's over 10 million dollars they got rid of that. What's your new guess, what's your new guess? I guess, how big was it? 4100 square feet. It has to be. It better not be more than 15 million. Nope, 14.8. Oh my gosh. Get it today and tell you right. Wow. Let us know if we can come visit for ski season. Yeah, let me know if you got room during skiing time. I love it. It's a beautiful town, gorgeous views. I love that people live here, but this is a fun game for us on Zillow. So we've seen what there is to see in Telluride. We're heading back on the gondola towards the truck and then maybe gonna drive around and see what we can find in the area. There's ghost towns. We decided to drive up to the ghost town of Alta, Colorado, which required driving up this kind of crazy dirt road. You don't technically need four-wheel drive, but you definitely want something higher clearance. And be aware, the road is very skinny and there are not so many opportunities to let people pass. Not much passing room on this road up to the ghost town. None at all, I would say. Ooh, my eyes. It's pretty rough too. And finally, after a couple miles of driving up this road, we made it to the top. I don't know about this. Are you sure? You're about to run into a fire pit. Okay, we made it to the ghost town. It's all this. We got a fire pit. I guess you could camp here. That would be crazy. Check it out. Oh, there's a little pond. Huh. And there's a snow. Somebody else has already been over here. No don't you throw that at me. What are you talking about? I'm just making a snowman. No you're not. Stop it. I don't even have anywhere to go. I'm amazed. What's wrong with you? My hands are hurting. That's cold. So we just got done visiting the ghost town. It's pretty cool. It looks like the structures were built a long time ago and maybe this mine stayed open for a while so like there's electric electricity that was ran to the houses at one point. There was actual plumbing at one point although the houses are like falling down. I don't know it must have not have stayed around much longer after electricity but um that's pretty cool to see. Now we're gonna get back check on the doggos take them for a walk. It was a good day. Fun times in Telluride. We're packing up here this morning at our boondocking spot that's near Telluride to head six hours towards Denver to a new boondocking spot. Totally new area of Colorado. I'm pretty excited. Along the way we're gonna try to let you know everything you could possibly need to know about boondocking because we've been doing a lot of it in Colorado and really Over the past year and a half, we've boondocked extensively and we love it, absolutely love it. Let's start with the basics. What is boondocking? So boondocking is when you're camping in your RV without any hookups. So no sewer, no power, no water, well, no hookups to those things. You still have all of those things if you do things right with your RV because it's self-contained. However, since you don't have hookups and you've just been filling up your tank while you've been boondocking, that means that you've got to figure out where to dump your tanks. We usually find dump stations on either Campendium or iOverlander apps. There's a way you can filter by dump stations, which is really great. And today we're going back to the same dump station that we dumped out on the way here because there are dumpsters there. One of the most difficult things about boondocking is Finding a place to take your trash because there just isn't like an app with a list of dumpsters that you can dump at. So you're always kind of trying to find the dumpsters yourself. But yeah, if you, if you boondock, where's your go-to dumpster place? Again, truck stops or big gas stations that often have... See, we're really full here. I can barely get these trash bags out. Are usually good go-to spots. This dump station that we're going to that's at an Exxon has a bunch of big dumpsters and the dump station is free as long as you fuel up. So we'll top off the fuel tank while we're there. So this is the last thing we got to do before we head out. I'm still a little nervous about getting off this road at the entrance. There's a big old like lip. So that's the other thing about boondocking is there are no promises on the conditions of the roads. They're not necessarily maintained roads or made for you and your big rig or small rig or any rig. They're just there. They're public lands so you've got to do your due diligence. What we usually do is try to read as many reviews as necessary. Craig's trying to trip me with the With the Starlink cord. And then once you get at the spot you just got to use your best judgment on whether or not you should be turning in or going down a road. We used our best judgment when coming in and made it here, but going down a big dip is a lot different than going up a big dip. So fingers crossed we have a plan. There's a certain angle we can try to go at and hopefully all our jack stands are there by the end of this hour. So we've got everything picked up all we got to do is bring the slides in and hitch up to the truck and then we're out of here. Out of here Not as easy as it sounds though and it's not even like that exciting that thing because this place is pretty amazing. Yeah this place is really good. We're moving on to the next the next spot there's supposed to be some really good climbing where we're going so excited. We've been here seven days and we have uh still we're two-thirds on the black tank seems like more More than it should be, but have... Two-thirds on one gray tank and one-third on another gray tank, so lots of room in our gray tank still. Probably could have made it our 14 days, I always say that, but that black tank, I don't know, but we are empty on water. Uh-oh, Craig's pulling out the backup camera. I think I've used it three times now. It is a bit of a hassle to like pull out, but useful when needed. Yeah, situations like this is good to have. Look at that boy, he's so cute, isn't he? Okay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay. There's a pothole here, you might miss it. The other thing about boondocking spots is they're often in places without service. So walkie-talkies would be great. We really need to get some of those. Otherwise you better have your hand sandal, pat, hand sandal, hand signals down pat. There's a trash can across the road the whole town. Look at this trailhead right across the road. That is a dumpster. We've been saving our trash for no reason. So sometimes at like BLM land or national forest places like trailheads there will be dumpsters. And I guess we just haven't seen it in long enough that we just forgot to even look. I'm not sure how we missed this this entire time. So, Fiona, look out for dumpsters if you're, you know, at a boondocking spot. Probably can't see it, but this is the culprit that we are worried about. Ready? You know the plan? You're going so fast! Yikes! Putting four-wheel drive on. Oh my gosh. It's like so leaning, but there's... A big dip. Okay. There goes the truck over the big dip. That wasn't too bad. Oh no. I'm concerned about how much we're leaning. It's about to go up. Oh gosh. It's going up. It's going up. It's going up. It's going back up. The jack didn't hit. Thank goodness there is this little pull off right here that we can pull on. I have my heart pumping. Good. The things you do for a good boondocking spot, I tell you. We did not... It got so close to the camper. The what? The truck? Yeah. I was worried about that. We were leaning so much and I know Craig says that with a fifth wheel, it really would have to lean so much for it to tip over, but it makes me so nervous every time. And our jacks did not touch. It was like within this. Yeah, that back jack was about that close to the ground, but we still had like an inch at least, so. Oh man and it was like traffic coming but I couldn't like get out of the road all the way because of how close the bed rail was to like the cap of the RV. It was nerve-racking. Oh no, that one's that's scary that's probably one of the The closest, so back in our early days, we probably didn't watch it as close because we didn't know better, but now knowing and knowing to watch and where to watch on the RV, oh my gosh. You're talking about where the bed, I mean the cap of the RV, how close it comes to the bed rail. It was probably, oh my gosh, it was close. That's why I let off and it rolled back down a little bit because I thought I was on the hip. I thought you were about to back up because of that. Yeah, it was scary. Holy Snakes. They look close over there. Yeah. But they're shorter. They're shorter. Well, a bumper pull technically should be able to turn over easier because of how it connects on that ball. There's not really anything to kind of hold it. But with the kingpin, it kind of holds it. Like you can only go so far before it starts turning your truck over. The bounce with the RV. Yeah, they never like big enough. That one wasn't too bad. Not too bad. The worst roundabout we were ever in was in Mexico, for sure, where it was like a four lane roundabout in La Paz, I'm pretty sure that's how many lanes it was, and it was extremely confusing. Oh my gosh. And I don't even know, it was just like, I don't even know how they got through it. Actually, if you watch Less Junk, More Journey, when they went to Mexico, he did a little bid on it or whatever. Everything he said about that roundabout is so true. It is, I don't know what they were thinking when they made this thing. It was a nightmare. I mean, many of the roads in Mexico, you're kind of like, what were they thinking here? It's just, you know, different than our roads. But, hey, we made it with the old rig. Yeah, we made it. We didn't care as much about that one, though, so it wasn't as bad. But with this new one, I don't want nothing to happen. There's a bunch of water everywhere. I don't know. I hope it ain't from him. I don't know either. I hope not too. Maybe he just overfilled his water tank. I hope. That could be what it is. It doesn't look like it's coming from the sewer spot. So we're back at this station that we dumped at last time. They do want you to at least top off your tank if you use their dump. And they keep it locked. It kind of makes sense to just, you know, go ahead and top off or whatever. But we've got to get the key and then we're going to dump and then we'll be back on the road. In case anyone wondering why Craig's doing acrobatics over here. I don't like driving with my shoes on. So he always has to take his shoes back off whenever he gets somewhere. Oh no, my feet sometimes are getting sweaty just driving all that nervousness, I guess. Even my hands. Sometimes my hands, again, I have to hold them in front of the AC. What about you? You drive with shoes on or shoes off? Let us know. When it comes to dump stations we usually try to find free ones like I already mentioned Campendian and Ioverlander are the two apps that we usually use however there's also a website rvdumpsites.net and it lists But pretty much all the dump stations across the United States, it'll tell you whether it's free or paid or you have to be a guest to use it. And while we usually try to find free ones, we also pay our fair share of $10 to $15 charges at Love's, truck stops or other places like that that charge a fee because by the time we drive 45 minutes out of the way to get a free one, we've wasted that much money and gas. So we usually just choose ones that are convenient and on the way to our next location. Black tank is dumped, it's been flushed, now we're just still waiting on the fresh water to finish filling up. Always takes the longest. We got us some snacks for our extremely excruciating long drive. Four hours. We've already drove like an hour though, so it was really like five hours, five and a half, something like that. We have hit some road work. How'd they let it get this bad? I don't know. For how many years though? How long did they put this job off? Gosh, it's a lot of potholes. Yeah, I watched for falling rock, potholes, the road just ending. So Monarch Pass is on our way on Highway 50 from one area of Colorado to the other. And honestly the grade has been kind of crazy. Like we went way uphill and for the longest time and then to go way downhill. Yeah, there ain't no flat land. And sometimes the up feels unnecessary. Oh, I had to wait to film anything until we got past it because the whole time the truck was very steep. Yeah, it was very steep both ways, but made it. And before driving it, I did. This is my little tip for you. If you're ever curious about a road, just Google like RV Highway 50 Colorado. And there's all these RV forums where for many, many years, people have been talking about roads and how passable they are with RVs. You will find varying opinions. But usually if I find a good handful of people who are like, yeah, it's doable, we've done it with our 40 foot, blah, blah, blah, then I'm like, okay, we're probably good. Now, everybody on there is like, do not do it, then obviously, we find a new route. Now we always talk about arriving to a new boondocking spot is always so nerve-wracking and the reason why is because with boondocking, it's always first come, first serve. There's no reservations, there's no guarantee that there's going to be any spots, so you always want to try to have a backup plan. I always try to have at least one other spot to check, sometimes two, and if I'm real worried, at least some kind of last resort overnight parking spot that we can go to. It's also why we try not to arrive too late in the day, although today we are going to be getting there at 4.13. So... Oh, this traffic is awful. I don't understand. Like, we're in the middle of nowhere, it feels like, and there's just, like, we're not even moving hardly. Traffic. We're stopping again. I don't know what's going on. There's a traffic light now, but... Oh. We've been stopping for a quarter mile now. We have actually gotten to boondocking spots before and they've been completely full or there's newly placed no camping signs, so we've had to go to our plan B or C to find a spot. So always have your backup plans when boondocking. In terms of how I find these spots and the backup spots, I usually use Campendium Set 2. The price filter of zero dollars, and then I'll check iOverlander for more recent reviews. Check out last week's video. I do a full deep dive in terms of how we plan out and find our boondocking spots, because there's a little bit more to it, but those are my two favorite apps. iOverlander, just so you know, tends to be more for van lifers and truck campers, it's like smaller rig people, so just know that when you're reading the reviews, but they also tend to have more recent reviews I'm a little nervous about the spot that we're going to today because, well, these spots in Colorado, they've been a toss-up for whether or not we should really actually turn into them with our 35-foot rig, wouldn't you say? Yeah. Though, we have turned into them each time. And as you saw on our way out this morning, that was... Yeah, that was probably the worst one we've ever been through. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, we're getting close. Getting close. The other thing I look for when looking for boondocking spots, particularly in the summer, is on Campendium it lists the elevation. So even though it was like 90 something degrees in a lot of towns we were driving through today, we're going up to a spot that's at 10,000 feet so it should be cooler. So far we're already down to 78 and I think we still have some elevation to climb because otherwise Craig can't sleep. We'll be going to a campground. I just rechecked the satellite view. I know we have to turn. It's going to be on the areas on the left, but once we turn off, I can see that there's more spots. It looks like if we turn right, once we get on the road, so that's what we're going to try to do. As long as nothing looks crazy, like there's not even any huge potholes or drop-offs because the thing that you can't always see on satellite view is an elevation. So sometimes it's just a cliff and you don't know it until you get there. Okay, like I said, I think we wanna go to the right. Oh, these branches are kind of low. There you are. Maybe get out and walk it. So the other thing that I highly encourage you doing is scouting an area. So if you aren't sure, before you get too far into the woods- This is like a concrete pad right here. Oh, I guess we could just back in right here. I don't know. Well, I'm gonna get out and do a little bit of walking around and make sure we're not gonna get ourselves in a pickle, because we can't quite tell what's around that corner right there. See these branches are kind of low. The BLM land is supposed to go up to, like those are some people's houses over there, but it's supposed to have this area covered. And I'm wanting somewhere that's a little bit more open because with solar and Starlink, we're looking for the more open areas instead of the more shaded areas. So it could be that we get this spot here. I'm checking it out. Oh, somebody's talking to Craig over there. I'm thinking that spot right there looks pretty nice. See, I thought turning right would be better. Turns out turning left is better. Well, hopefully. Hopefully. Messed up. Rather. Somebody did. I messed up. So, and it's not even because we were filming. I thought for sure one day we were going to have an accident and it was going to be because I was paying too much attention to filming something and not what I was supposed to be paying attention to. But I can't even blame it on that. No. We have no footage to show you of it. Yeah. Part of it was other people in the area. Talking, so if you are a full-time RVer, even if you're not a full-time RVer, try not to talk to people while they're backing in or pulling in. Or pulling in or trying to... Which is not just that fault, it's partly our fault. I take pretty much full responsibility for this. But it doesn't help when your dogs run out to somebody that's trying to dodge obstacles and you're talking to them as well and then yelling at them because your dogs ran out. But anyways... Last clip ended with us saying that we hope left was going to be the right way to go. And it was, well it could have been, but it ended up not being. There was a couple of routes to take and there was this cut through that I had walked and I'd scouted and I looked around and there was these people there and they were like yeah it looks good and their dogs were there and again it's fine I just was kind of distracted and I didn't think about the angle we were going to be pulling into this little road because there was a lot of trees as you saw we stopped and didn't turn at the first turn because of low hanging branches. And then on the passenger side, my side, while turning, we might have, and by might have, definitely did hit a tree. Whoa. It ain't that dramatic. A branch hit the roof. Oh yeah, not a whole tree, just a branch. Does that make it better? Not really. So a branch hit the roof and ripped the roof on the edge of the roof where it folds over the the side. The brand new roof on our brand new fifth wheel. Yeah, ripped it and typically when it's right there you can't just repair it. I'm going to share it. So I think we're going to end up having to get a new roof at some point. Right now we have it covered up with tape. Craig got up there, put the tape on it right away. We didn't, I didn't film anything. To be totally honest with you guys, I know say we always like handle the things in stride and with a smile on our faces. There was not a smile on my face. Honestly, we don't know what we're going to do. We are feel pretty good about the patch that's up there for right now. It should last us at least a couple of months until we can figure out what we're going to do, where we want to get it in at. I do not want to have to do this whole solar system, all the panels on top again. I'm so sick of it. It is old, and it wouldn't be as bad this time just because it's not freezing cold outside. But still, the amount of time and labor that's involved to take all them panels off and do all the unit strut and all that, it's too much. Everyone's feeling bad for us. He's like, I know. You guys really messed up. I feel bad for you. So that's the disappointing news. Cheers. So. Boondocking tip number whatever we're on. Watch out for branches because again these boondocking locations that you're going to it's public land. Nobody's coming through and clearing the branches regularly to make sure that they fit different rig heights or anything like that. It's really fully up to you and after two years Being on the road and boondocking, we just made the worst mistake of all of our lives. Seems pretty bad. I guess it's better than like a tree limb poking a hole in the fiberglass wall because I don't know what you'd do with that. That's true. It could have been worse. It's like an actual part that can be replaced you know. And we'll get it fixed but It does stink because it was new. I wish it would have happened on our own rig, then it would have been like, whatever, leave the patch till we get rid of it. But we have more boondocking tips to give you. So this one was all about like finding and picking your spot. But what about like once you're there, how do you manage your power and your water and all of that stuff? We didn't get to include it in this one because, well, This one went a different route, so hit the subscribe button and catch our next boondocking video for everything you need to know about boondocking. Thank you guys. Leave us words of encouragement in the comments or just tell us how dumb we are, whichever one floats your boat. We'll talk to you guys next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.