RV Homeless by Choice

Dateline Rhinelander, Wisconsin

We left Peshtigo WI Monday morning and trundled across the state to our next destination:  Rhinelander, where my old Army buddy Tom lives.  We made it without incident, but the radio tracker did not work for some reason so I cannot link us to the map showing our latest route.  Since we're planning to leave Rhinelander tomorrow for Plymouth, WI, I likely will not have time to troubleshoot the equipment so we'll see if any tracking results from that.
Back to our story about becoming truly changelings:  Selling our "real house" and hitting the road full time in the RV.
I left tale-telling in our last epistle, dear reader, about the time we arrived in Yuma, AZ,  and drove up to the US Army's YPG (Yuma Proving Ground) north of Yuma and crossed that military complex to access the BLM's Imperial Dam area straddling the AZ and CA borders involving the wonderful Colorado River.   We had friends from Grants NM already parked there for the winter and they talked us into their immediate neighborhood via our ham radios.  On BLM lands, the public is allowed to camp for free in various areas for 14 days for free, but having to move at least 25 miles away to gain another 14 days' free camping.  We elected to pay the BLM Season Pass fee of $180 to be able to stay at any campsite of our choice for the duration of the winter, essentially available from October through April each season.  Various BLM areas have different services available, and at Imperial Dam the amenities include fresh water stations, waste dump stations, trash dumpsters, and restrooms mainly intended for tent campers.  These restrooms also included OUTDOOR showers, without walls.  These must be intended for the free spirits in the area.  We dared not expose our fish-belly white skins to the world, not even to try it out.  Not that anyone could work up much interest in watching me cavorting in such fashion.  Even in Vietnam we had a couple of curtains and modicums of privacy in our thrown-together field showers.
Hundreds , HUNDREDS, of thousands of RV'ers take advantage of these desert delights each winter and it is a kick to walk about and view all the license plates from mostly northern states and areas including Vancouver, other Canadian districts, Alaska, the Dakotas, and of course Michigan and Minnesota.  Not to mention the entire Northeastern states.
The uninformed might wonder what so many Old Farts could possibly do to maintain sanity so far from "Home", but there are actually more activities of all sorts, fixed and mobile businesses catering to mobile home dwellers and travelers, wintertime church congregations to handle the hordes of wandering worshipers such as we, and DANCING.  We found (with only minimal searching) more that just a couple of dance halls where weekly dances were held, WITH LIVE BANDS, in Yuma.  We had a grand time attending and dancing at least once a week for very minimal cover charges to help pay the electric bills.  (Now that winter is over and all we RV'ers are scattered to cooler climes for the summer, we find NO such fun activities going on.  In Albuquerque, dance halls have all but disappeared, even those selling liquor to invigorate incomes.)
Since we stayed in the Yuma area all winter from December 2017 to April 2018, we certainly have more stories to tell about this wonderful area.  However, it is again well past my bed-time and I will attempt to resume the narrative sometime later.... again.