After 21 days of boondocking there was one thing we looked forward to more than anything else. You guessed it! A nice long shower. In the desert it is always dusty, and the need to apply shampoo twice indicated where a good bit of dust had settled upon my person. I used a dry shampoo while boondocking and while it worked, it certainly wasn’t as good as standing in the shower. That is just one of the reasons why boondocking for weeks at a time is not for everyone. Realistically, most RVers never boondock at all.
After 18 days of boondocking/no hookups/dry camping (take your pick) we are in an RV park with full hookups. Besides water, electric and sewer, we have 4 bars on our Visible cell phone data service so we can stream with no problem. We had a wonderful time boondocking, making great friends, but when your home is where you park it, having creature comforts can make life far easier. To make it even better we were flabbergasted to discover my cousin Steve, he of the Minnesota branch of my family, was staying at the same RV park. Our life guide, Sara N. Dippity has has struck again. Life is far better than just good.
A fire ring is a structure that helps contain a campfire. There are many kinds of premade fire rings one sees in campgrounds and RV parks. These can be anything from a raised metal ring to an inner tube of a washing machine. Out here in the desert, where there are no designated campsites, we can build our own fire ring. The desert here on the Arizona/California border has numerous rocks that can be gathered and stacked into a ring.
Before starting to build the fire ring we marked out on the ground the size we felt it should be. We cannot collect firewood where we are staying so we use purchased split wood that is approximately 18 inches (45 cm) in length. The final interior dimensions of the fire ring were roughly 24 in. x 32 in. (60 cm x 80 cm). Some people build big fires and would need a larger fire ring. We build a smaller fire so this size is appropriate. Each fire ring needs to be built to your needs and the weather conditions.
Once we had settled on the size of the ring we wanted, we walked the surrounding area in search of rocks with which to construct it. We were lucky that there were a number of larger rocks nearby, so we used those. Had there only been small rocks available we would have needed many more to build the ring to the height we wanted. We chose to leave some small gaps between the rocks to allow air to get to the fire. We also built it to a height that would contain most embers that shot out from the fire. Under different conditions we would have built it differently or would have entirely forgone a fire if the conditions were not suitable for a fire.
[You may notice this post has two more paragraphs than my normal posts. WHen i get wordy I make numerous grammatical errors. I had my DW proof read the top three paragraphs of this post and she caught many errors I made. To sum up, the above post is how we made one fire ring. If you chose to make a fire ring you do it at your own risk.]
What a difference a day makes. We are now about 75 miles south of Quartzsite parked on what is called Quail Hill. The dusty rocky terrain of Quartzsite has been replaced with sand and gravel which supports a great deal more vegetation. If you are used to trees and greenery coving the ground, this is in stark contrast and the beauty may not be apparent. We grew up with trees and greenery, but once we moved from the eastern US to the west, we embraced these types of landscape as true beauty. As the saying goes: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
