Boondocking at Sand Mine Road, near Overton, Nevada. April 13 – 16
Sand Mine Road and Poverty Flats are two BLM dispersed camping areas a few miles south of the town of Overton, Nevada.. They are east of Valley of Fire State Park and sit on opposite sides of a very deep ravine. The ravine has rough dirt roads in it that are popular for OHVs and four wheel drive vehicles. The Sand Mine Road area seems to be less used, at least on this Easter weekend. I can see three other campers within about a mile’s radius from us on the Sand Mine Road side. However, over on Poverty Flats, I’d say there are 15 or 20 RVs within our view, and we saw maybe ten more RVs camped on the west side of the main road when we came by.
There is a small, easy to miss, brown sign at the side of Hwy 169 that identifies Sand Mine road and recommends 4-wheel drive vehicles. It is an unpaved road, not heavily used or washboarded, and we had no trouble bringing our travel trailer over it. Viewing this area on Google Maps, I could see that the road goes a long way inland and up into the mountains, and that there are many wheel tracks from previous visitors making camping spots that go a very long way along the road, so I was not too concerned about driving far enough off the highway to get away from road noise. And indeed we came upon a very nice spot with a stone fire ring that is right at the edge of the bluff of the ravine, and just past the power lines that cross the area. It is flat and has a great view down into the ravine. We were the only ones here when we arrived about 1 pm on Thursday. Later that day, three other RVs arrived: one passed us and went about a mile farther down the road, a fifth-wheel took a turn-off and went up to the top of a rise before you get to the power lines, and a motor home came a shorter way into the area and is not visible to us past the rise.
The weather forecast called for high winds on Thursday afternoon, and the winds were picking up even as we left home. By evening the trailer was rocking and the wind whistling around the windows, but by morning there was just a slight, pleasant breeze. Temps in the mid-eighties during the day and comfortable sleeping weather overnight. Forecast calls for the winds to return on Sunday. A bit cooler and more breezy on Saturday morning.
On Saturday morning the indoor reading was 12.2 . I decided to detach the batteries from each other and power the camper from one and connect the 13 watt panel to the othe to see if it would charge without any draw on it. After hooking it up, the charge controller still read solid green, just like on Friday.