Do locals not like van dwellers?

[flying kurbmaster]

Someone can correct me but I don’t see a problem with my grey water. It is all plant based, I usually scatter it over the ground from a bucket I place under my spout. Sometimes I pour it over a fire pit. If I am rinsing a cup or brushing my teeth I often just let it fall to thé ground depending where I am. I doubt anyone would notice nor can I see any harm to the environment. I personally don’t like the idea of poo in plastic bags in the landfill hence the reason I use a porta potti and dump in sewage systems.

 

[Cammalu]

Just a question: On page 9 of this thread Jim says the wash behind YARC camp was stinky. Sounds like you are saying that even if there was a vault toilet or dump station at YARC camp that people would still be doing their stinky business in the wash and not at the facility?

I actually met some people who only toilet trained their kids to use a cat hole & had no idea what to do with a toilet. If that is true at YARC camp you are correct, no point in installing an adequate number of vault toilets.
-crofter

Yes, there were people not taking their stuff to the dump station. That’s correct. Last year that didn’t happen. That was the early years of camp before the rangers told everyone who didn’t have a black tank that they had to move somewhere near a bathroom.

That doesn’t mean that everyone uses the bathroom even if parked close. I don’t police the area. Everyone knows what they are supposed to do. If they don’t then they can deal with the rangers.

 

[crofter]

That must be why they put perfume and vending machines in the bathrooms, to get people to go in there.    -c

 

[highdesertranger]

crofter you are reading way to much into this.

Jim was talking about the shower area that was in the wash.

The reason the people were camped at the YARC camp without tanks was because they wanted to camp at the YARC camp, not because of lack of room around the vault toilets. When the ranger told them to move they moved over to around the vault toilets.

I have already alluded to it once now I will state it flat out,

Please stay on subject which is "Do locals not like van dwellers".

Any more post that do not relate to this subject will be deleted. If anybody wants to discuss if the LTVA's have enough outhouses Please start your own thread.

Highdesertranger

 

[tx2sturgis]

I think anytime a vehicle is parked somewhere close by some 'locals' and they arent sure if it might be...well nobody knows until the authorities check into it.

Back in January, I had someone drop a gooseneck trailer...right in front of my driveway! Yeah....what the heck?





I didnt see it happen because I was busy elsewhere on the property and there is a stockade fence that blocks the view.

Anyway, after an hour, I thought...hmmm...this thing might be stolen, and the license tag, dated 2016, was expired...

OK, so they didnt contact me about blocking my driveway, the tag is expired...it's been an hour. I finally decided to call the local sheriffs office.

They ran the tag and contacted the owner. Then they called me back and said the farmer would be back to get it, they had a problem with the pickup and had to drop the trailer and go get the pickup truck repaired. 

OK, I told the officer, no problem...but I was just not sure what the deal was.

From the owners perspective, he probably thought, 'well that ******** called the cops on me!'...but from my perspective, I saw it as something that needed to be reported.

This does not mean that locals dont like farmers, or ranchers, or vandwellers for that matter...just that sometimes we see something that seems out of the ordinary and we might want to let someone know.

Just sayin.

 

[user 423]

Good points. Right in front of a driveway though? WTF. Then again, didn't your place sit empty for a long time before you bought it?

Maybe he thought it was still an abandoned property...LOL.

 

[tx2sturgis]

I don't know what he was thinking...in fact, later in the day I heard a vehicle accelerating and poof...he (or somebody) was driving off with the trailer...they never said a word to me.

So who knows.

But the point is that sometimes, from a 'local' property owners perspective, things don't look quite right.

 

[PlethoraOfGuns]

Well this one is obvious. Don't block people's driveways! If I blocked someone's driveway for the night, I'd surely expect a knock on the door by one of the locals finest. There are easy ways to get locals to not like van dwellers.

 

[jimindenver]

I'd like to respond in the sense of how things are seen.

A resident, a ranger, or even you looking at the next dweller/RV'r and sees that person dumping a liquid on the ground, what is it you assume they are pouring out? Do you automatically assume that they are dumping grey water with special soap? Most people would not.

In the LTVA the rule is no dumping. A ranger could see me emptying my fresh water tank before I took off and not care. No dumping is no dumping. Give them the special soap excuse and they might make a note of it on your ticket. Many use a 5 gallon jug that is taken to the dump station.

Two issues with not wasting the resource and helping a plant out. First if you get plants to start growing in a drought and then you stop watering them when you leave the new growth dries up and becomes a fire fuel.

The second is that many plants produce next years seed this year. Next year when it rains, say during the monsoon not only do they germinate and grow but the pollinators show up too. Should the monsoon not come the seeds do not grow because it would be a waste and there would be no seeds for the next year, so they wait. It is the same if you water them and force them to grow when they will not be pollinated . there will be no seeds for next year.

In front of the laundromat in Ehrenberg there were two plants on either side of the main entrance. One was healthy, the other was dead. There was a sign there saying not to dump your cooler water on the plants.

It was two seasons ago that Yarc camp got busted for dumping. A complaint brought the second ranger visit. The first started out as a sticker check until the ranger spotted a hole behind a rig. He just stood there and stared at it for a while and then left visibly upset. The person was spoken to by me and another. One asked what the hell was he thinking, was he trying to get them kicked out? The excuses started with it should be okay because he used special soap. So special that it left a lime green slime on the walls of the hole. The next excuse was he should be allowed to dump because they allow the ATV's to tear everything up. In the end it was pure laziness and entitlement because it was a travel trailer with tanks that were winterized. He didn't want to dewinterize because he might have to redo it when he went back to the cold spot of the nation named...FLORIDA. Unfortunately he wasn't around to explain that when the ranger was there.

You can come up with every excuse in the world for breaking the rules. Just don't think that a good excuse makes it okay to break the rules. Anyone that sees you doing it doesn't care either. It may even give them the opinion that the next person that they see in the spot is going to break the rules too.

 

[sneaks]

I also live in a rural area. We don’t have a post office, a Main St, traffic lights, street lights, we aren’t even a town. Here there’s lots of old fire roads, turnoffs, etc. where people boondock, even two businesses in the area (food/gas) that used to let people bunk for the night in the dirt lots when passing through… until catalytic converters started disappearing out of parked cars around the area. Wasn’t a traveler that got busted for it, a garage a few towns over got nicked for $100,000s in theft, loading up a van with the “goods.” Now, people are gun shy. Anyone not local parked after dark gets the stink eye. Right or wrong, when things happen, it hurts everyone down the line.

 

[travelaround]

I live in a rural area where it is normal to see people boondocking in the forest, or stopped to sleep at the side of the highway in a turnout. But if someone I didn't know came into my neighborhood and parked for the night in front of my homesite, I'd want to know why. I probably wouldn't call the deputy unless my driveway was blocked, but I might stay up half the night watching. There's something about a van that looks like someone might be using it to take things.

 

[LERCA]

I spent my entire childhood weekends varnishing the decks on my father’s various sailboats with only about three actual trips and once being caught in a terrifyingly bad storm where I thought we’d end up in the Solomons with no water.. I associate boats with dock fees (equal to mortgage) and huge amounts of work and upkeep.
That said my fantasy is to live on a houseboat somewhere.