In 2016, my wife Ariele and I moved into a 22-foot Airstream Bambi Sport and pointed it at the rest of the country. Over the next two years we covered more than 70,000 miles, working remotely from wherever we could find a signal. We moved fast, usually 200 to 300 miles a week, and boondocking was what made that pace possible. Pulling off somewhere quiet for the night beat hunting for a campground every time we wanted to keep going.
Somewhere in those two years, I fell for it. I love that boondocking keeps you on your toes, and I love the reward on the other side of that: figuring out how to live self-sufficiently, free to move the moment you feel like it. One trip stands out. We drove from Austin to Seattle over three weeks and boondocked every single night, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive. Do it long enough and it stops being a project and becomes a habit, just how you live.
We learned most of it the hard way. The first time we boondocked, we ran our batteries down far too fast. That is the whole lesson, really: understand your rig and learn to stretch what you have, power, water, waste, all of it. The more you know, the more conserving becomes second nature. Water and waste turned out to be our biggest constraints, not electricity. We kept two-gallon jugs ready to top off the fresh tank at any spigot we found, and showered at Planet Fitness locations along the route. We loved boondocking out West most of all, Colorado and Utah especially, where there is so much public land you could comfortably full-time.
I have been a bit of a vagabond as long as I can remember. I couch-surfed my way through college to stay out of debt, spent years working on my feet in hospitality, and for the last 15 years I have worked in tech, in customer education — I built HubSpot Academy’s Content Marketing Certification, which has trained tens of thousands of marketers, and wrote a book on content marketing along the way — where I found out how much I love to teach. Remote work is also what finally made the lifestyle real, letting me chase internet connections across the country instead of staying put.
These days we are in western North Carolina with two young kids. The goal is to get back out there with them, part-time or full, before too long. We would rather they experience the country firsthand than read about it in a textbook.
This site is where my two passions meet: teaching and boondocking. But it was never meant to be just about me. There are thousands of people out there living this, each solving it their own way, and I am as curious about their setups as I am about sharing ours. That is how we all get better, comparing notes and bringing in other perspectives. Everything here starts from real trips, real gear, and real numbers.
If the name looks new, it is. For years we shared the road as Wild We Wander; boondocking.ai is where that turned into a resource — same family, same trips, just focused on the part people kept asking us about. You can still follow the adventures over on Instagram.
What we ran
- Rig: 22′ Airstream Bambi Sport
- Batteries: two 6V (golf-cart style), wired for 12V
- Solar: a foldable, portable panel — no rooftop array
- Power station: EcoFlow Delta
- Charging: topped up through the truck’s 12V outlet and while driving
A light, travel-heavy setup, not a big rooftop install. Because we covered so many miles, charging on the move kept everything powered without a permanent system. Different than most, but for how we traveled, it worked.
By the numbers
How we create content
Here is how every page on this site gets made, so you know what stands behind the numbers.
- We start from what real boondockers search and ask, and only write a piece if it earns a place in a topic.
- Every page leads with a direct, plain answer up top, before the detail.
- We write from experience: our own trips, our own gear, real numbers. Where we haven’t done something ourselves, we say so.
- Every claim cashes out in a number, a date, a place, or a cited source.
- Where a question is really a sizing question, we point you to the right calculator instead of hand-waving.
- We edit for honesty: every recommendation matches what we’d tell a friend, even with no money on the table.
- We date every page and update it when the facts or the gear change, correcting errors openly.
Our standards
- Named author on every piece, never an anonymous “team.”
- First-hand evidence — photos, coordinates, real readings — not stock claims.
- No display ads and no sponsored content dressed up as editorial.
- Independent recommendations: if something is mediocre, we’ll say so.