Excellent second-hand recommendation

I’ve never met Tristan of the SUV RVing channel, but after watching a bunch of his videos I feel like we’re friends. Or could be. Nice guy.

Tristan also has a pay site with info about his adventures, including an interactive map featuring the places he boondocked. He prefers to get away from it all. So I checked to see if he offered anything between Alamo Lake and, say, Prescott AZ. He did—a location he was told about by a local fellow. That means I was taking the recommendation of a guy who took the recommendation of a guy.

I was concerned when I studied the map. Although Tristan said it was BLM land, I knew at least part of the area off the highway was Arizona State Trust land. I had camped there twice before and was chased away by the sheriff the second time because I didn’t have a permit. I bought the permit this year but hadn’t gotten around to printing it out. I decided to give it a try anyway. Tristan’s spot could be beyond the state land.

The dirt road was rutted and lumpy, pitching the Rolling Steel Tent left and right. It was slow going, with lots of little washouts crossing this way and that. Like speed bumps and dips all the way. Three miles felt like twenty. I kept telling myself, “At least there won’t be a lot of big RVs down this way.” But I saw the reassuring BLM road number posts. Okay. No hassles from authorities.

When I finally got to the site, hell yeah, it was worth the drive!

The white dot in the distance is the Rolling Steel Tent