This week we're boondocking at Richard Bong State Recreation Area in Wisconsin, and the episode opens with a scene. Not scenery, a scene. Narrow park roads, soft grass on both sides, and a 40-foot Brinkley that needed to end up backed into a spot that looked, from the driver's seat, roughly the size of a parking space at a grocery store. The back-in section of this video runs almost twelve minutes and we left it long on purpose, because this is the part of RV life nobody's highlight reel shows.
The back-in from hell (or at least from Wisconsin)
Here's what made it hard: the approach road was too narrow to swing wide, the ground off the pavement was soft enough that we didn't trust it with truck weight, and the angle into the site meant Nathan couldn't see the driver's-side rear of the trailer for most of the maneuver. So it became a two-person radio operation with a lot of pull-forward resets and one bystander couple who watched the whole thing like it was a matinee.
We got it in. Eventually. No damage, no stuck truck, one slightly bruised ego. If you're new to towing, the honest takeaway is that everyone has parking jobs like this, and the only real failure is refusing to pull forward and start over.
Settling in for an off-grid week
Once we were level, the week got good fast. Richard Bong SRA gives you space in a way commercial campgrounds can't: we set up what we call our private yard with the mat, chairs, and the collapsible table, and the nearest neighbor was a comfortable distance away instead of a window's width.
Running fully off-grid with no generator means the site itself is part of your power system. We picked our spot partly for sun angle, and we walk through that thinking in the video: where the panels needed exposure through the afternoon, and what shade would have cost us. A heat advisory rolled through during the week, which turned battery management into a daily conversation. Fans and shade during the day, and a close eye on the battery monitor at night.
The battery check partway through the week confirmed the strategy was working. Solar covered us, but it covered us because we picked the site with the sun in mind. The same rig parked under trees would have been in trouble by day three.
Fried rice and future plans
Dinner highlight of the week: Fabiola made fried rice on the Blackstone, plus extra portions as meal prep for upcoming travel days. Having ready food on a travel day is one of those small habits that removes a decision when you're tired, and tired is when we make our worst decisions.
Over dinner we talked through our first impressions of Harvest Hosts, which we've just started using for overnights between longer stops. Short version: we like the idea a lot, wineries and farms beat parking lots, and we're planning more of them into the route. Longer verdict coming once we've done enough stays to have a real opinion.
Fireflies showed up after dark, the kayaks came out during the week, and the spot that took twelve minutes to park in turned out to be one of our favorites so far. Funny how often those two things go together.
The full back-in, unedited struggles included, is in the video on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.