Unplug & Go Off-grid Family Style
How do you feel about boondocking and off-grid living?
If you're picturing the families who live in the wild parts of Alaska, snowed in for months with their only access to civilization and groceries by four-wheel drive or airplane, you're thinking like I was just a few short years before we fell in love with off-grid living.
I had no idea what it was or why I needed it in my life - until I tried it.
The year was 2015, and we were headed west. After traveling full-time in the east for a while, we knew we needed a reprieve from campgrounds and RV parks, so we had decked out our Aistream with solar panels and a big battery bank so that we could escape them for weeks at a time. One camper. One family. One long stretch of secluded beach. And enough water in our tanks and solar power in the sky to meet our every need for a few weeks. That was our recipe for off-grid adventuring around the Gulf from Alabama to Texas that winter with plans to adjust before heading further west into the real boondocking haven lands.
While we weren't exactly roughing it in our 2014 model Airstream sleeping on memory foam mattresses, showering every day, and drinking pour-over coffee in the mornings, we were officially living off of the sun for all of our power needs and using only the water we could carry or refill from national park water refill stations, and we loved it.
No parking lots, no traffic, no hustle and bustle - just us and the wild.
On Padre Island National Seashore, we woke up in the mornings with the ocean waves singing to us, spent our days exploring for a while, settling into school and work wherever we could, and walking the beaches looking for shells. We ate our meals picnic-style on the beach or inside our tiny home looking at the ocean when the winds threw sand, and we spent our evenings listening to the sounds of nature. Then we headed west to Big Bend, the Mojave, Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Joshua Tree and tucked ourselves into national forests and Bureau of Land Management spots, carrying on with life as usual with a big, beautiful backyard and plenty of room to explore, hike, and roam.
And what we found was less distraction, less hurry, and more family togetherness. So we kept going back to the wild - to boondocking, to off-grid living.
Since then, we've been off-grid a lot, and we still love it. In fact, we love it so much that we've moved on from the Airstream for this winter and spent the last couple of months outfitting our catamaran with the solar setup we need to go off-grid for the next 4 months in a different way. (More on that later!) Here are a few photos and details from our past off-grid adventures on our travel blog: California's wine country, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Tetons, Zion National Park, White Sands, Padre Island National Seashore, Rutherford Beach, Joshua Tree National Park and more desert boondocking.
We're addicted to the wild - it calls to us, and we've found so many friends who feel the same way. Some call us hippies or crunchy folks, and maybe we are, but that's okay with me.
As I write this, we're just days away from celebrating Christmas with our families - a time of year so full of magic, excitement, and the joy of giving and family togetherness that it almost seems unreal. But as I sit here trying to enjoy the season with my own family, I find myself so ready to be done with the "buy me! buy me!" culture that has become the norm of this season, and it pushes me back to the sweet simplicity of going off the grid, reminding me what it's like to talk about a stick, rock, or jellyfish someone found rather than the latest video game feature they just have to have.
If you're wondering why on earth anyone would choose this kind of adventure, I hear ya - I was in that boat for so long - especially when water or power ran low our first couple of times out and I panicked for a few seconds. Here are the benefits we've found:
1 - The quiet
No hum of traffic. No sirens. No televisions blaring.
2 - The simplicity
No temptation to stay on the computer too long or let the kids play video games past their screen limit for the day when you're on a power budget. There's also not a whole lot of temptation to run to the store for just one more thing when that store is a few hours away.
3 - The sustainability
The planet's not losing a thing when we're living on solar energy.
4 - The family time
It feels like I become a different person in the wild, and so does everyone else in my family. We're more relaxed, more hopeful, more curious, more alive.
5 - The freedom
So many things to discover that can only be discovered away from civilization.
If you listened to this week's podcast interview, you already know that there are loads of resources out there now for anyone interested in going off the grid to camp or adventure. The family I interviewed for that podcast - the Longneckers of Tiny Shiny Home - are into boondocking and the off-grid lifestyle even more than we are. They inspire us, and they aren't alone. Here are a few other families who write about adventuring together off the beaten path:
the Campendium crew - (the folks who run the site where we find our off-grid camping spots)
& if you really don't want to be off-grid more than a few hours with your crew, here's a little article on our site about hiking for the first time with your crew. Or, if you're more of a hard-core off the grid adventurer like the folks in this New York Times article I'm in love with right now, I'd love for you to share your tips too. I've got my eye on a few overnight backpacking adventures with our boys for the upcoming summer, and I'll take all the good advice I can get!
Let’s go after those family adventures you’ve been dreaming of together.
Have you ever tried an off-grid adventure? Or do you have a question for other off-grid adventurers?