Venturing into Nevada
Journey through Nevada in our RV
After an incredibly delightful week at Clear Lake Campground with our friends from Northern California’s Lake County, we bid our former home adieu and moseyed east. But we weren’t quite out of friends just yet.
A day in the Nevada desert
Peggy’s friend from her having a real job days, Natalie, and Natalie’s husband, Scott, also left California for browner pastures as we did and settled into the Nevada desert on 40 acres. This is an incredible ranch with a stream that flows through it much of the year and ATV trails that lead into the nearby mountains. Their land is much less brown than ours.
We mooch docked at their house and, while we thought we’d have to kick on the AC, the night delivered the perfect ambient sleeping temperatures. That doesn’t mean we didn’t take advantage of our power system from ABC Upfitters.
After a restful night in the desert Peggy and Natalie hopped into the couples’ ATV for a tour of the ranch. Then Scott and I headed into the desert for a great tour of some of the foothills and the hidden spots there.
Like many places in Nevada with hills, miners have poured over the place and you can find remnants of these past endeavors. We also startled one heck of a big owl and caught an antelope getting a drink in a stream. Scott is a surveyor and has mapped out much of the area for his own interest and his description, and hitting the trails in the ATV, made for a great morning. Plus there was biscuits and gravy.
Peggy and Natalie also harvested eggs from their chickens and we even got a few for the road. Bonus!
Bouge and Bodega
We recently got the Bodega MCD25D powered cooler to review and we’ve been doing just that. This latest cooler sits in the back seat of our truck and keeps snacks and drinks cold while we’re shuttling along the highways and byways of this great land.
In our truck, a 2015 Ram 2500 Tradesman, none of the power outlets work when the truck is shut off so I got an idea. I brought along our Bouge JuiceGo portable power station to power the cooler from its power port (I still think of it as a cigarette lighter adaptor). The cooler is pretty efficient and doesn’t seem to kill off the Bouge even when in the truck for 24 hours.
When I start the truck it recharges the power station so the cooler is perpetually cool, man 😎.
This set-up may get a more permanent home in our truck for Costco runs and that sort of thing. I’m digging always having cool water within reach. And cheese sticks.
Public Restroom Company
My mind is an odd place to be but, for some time, I’ve wondered why there isn’t a company that makes public restrooms in a factory-like setting. So you can imagine my glee when I was passed by several trucks carrying prefab public restrooms. It’s not often that a toilet is faster than I am but I have raced to the toilet now and then.
The outhouse buildings themselves were wrapped in plastic so I couldn’t see what they actually looked like but said plastic was emblazoned with “Public Restroom Company” on it. When we got to camp I wasted a good amount of time looking at the company’s website and YouTube videos.
The company makes a number of things including public restrooms but also concession buildings, shower houses, storage units, scorekeeper booths, ticket booths and more. Public Restroom Company’s boast is that their buildings are built in a factory in Nevada and then installed by lifting them off a truck and plopping them in place. Neat.
The lights are on but nobody’s home
While had intended to boondock our way to our next destination Peggy found a self-serve campground that has pull-through full hook-up sites for $40. Deal! Plus I wanted to see what this was like as the campground uses a self-service model - there are no humans in attendance.
Clark RV Park in Battle Mountain, Nevada is an unusual place in that it’s completely self-service. You choose a site, go up to the kiosk in the main building and pay for the site. The campground has a good number of pull-through and back-in sites, all of which are $40 per night.
It’s clearly a new campground with everything immaculate and in good working order. There’s a laundromat, showers, a nice gathering spot and the sites are fairly large and covered with gravel.
We got to walk to the local coffee joint, which didn’t have regular old coffee 🤷♂️, so we also walked to the local Maverick gas station that had a row of those coffee machines that grind the beans right then and there. Plus a pretty good chorizo burrito.
I liked this quiet campground quite a bit which, of course, is close enough to railroad tracks that you can hear the trains sounding off in the middle of the night. But what I didn’t like is that you have to write your credit card number on a slip of paper if you choose to pay that way. Bleh, talk about a great way to get hacked.
So I just threw a couple of $20s in the envelope and called it good.
Well that sucks
I like to pride myself in being able to drive and back a trailer like a pro. So how is it that, when I turned into the Love’s gas station, I caught the side of the trailer on their concrete barrier? Oh the words I know.
Now I could blame the fact that the shadows were weird and the spaces were tight and someone painted those concrete barriers black so they just blend in. But, still, I like to think that I’m better than that.
Anyhow, while we’ve been really pleased with how well this 2025 Rockwood Mini Lite 2506FK has held up we do now have a repair to schedule when we go to the FROG rally in Indiana in August. At least I just mutilated the skirt molding and didn’t damage anything important. Besides my ego.
