Using a tow vehicle as a windbreak while boondocking

A few years ago we were in the desert near Amboy, CA. Big ass 5th wheel toy hauler, pointed South. Front end jacked up pretty high to level it. That evening the winds came up out of the west, really hard and gusts well over 60 mph. Wife slept through it, I didn't. I could feel one of the landing gear starting to lift on some of those gusts and then the trailer coming back down on it. Late at night, pitch black otherwise I would have hooked up and moved.

When we were out in the same area in May (unseasonably cool), I parked headed west. Stayed hooked up to the truck and dropped the jacks. When the wind picked up out of the west, barely felt it.

When we go off roading near Cal City, I typically park the 5th wheel perpendicular to the wind - leave the truck hooked up, but at close to 90 degrees to the fifth wheel. Don't feel the trailer move much and blocks the wind pretty well outside. Downside is the wind will swirl around the trailer and draw the smoke from the fire which is downwind, back towards us near the trailer. I built a simple wind block so the water heater doesn't blow out as it is always on the windward side of the trailer when I park like this.

huachuca, how do you piece together the parts of the sun shades?? They are riveted, not bolted together, so it is hard to re-assemble them.

The reason I ask is that we live near the beach and the dumpsters are often full of damaged shades -- it would be great to rehab them instead of sending them to the landfill!

We do the same thing camping on the beach or SP. Just went through some mighty gusts.

Having tent camped at Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores on the NC Outer Banks for over fifty years, I've seen some pretty good storms roll through. I've used my vehicle as a windbreak, filled coolers with sand and placed them inside the tent to hold it down and flipped picnic tables over to reduce their profile and tied my guy lines to their skyward pointing legs.

Its interesting to check out the campground dumpsters the day after one of these hits. I've got a couple of functional EZ-Ups pieced together from wind damaged units that were discarded. And several of the NPS staff who work there have told me they haven't bought any new camping gear in years.

Whenever we suffer through one of these, I'm reminded of Lyndon Johnson's comment on the Viet Nam war as I approached draft age in the mid sixties (paraphrased as I'm sure this isn't exactly accurate) "Being President right now is a lot like being a jackass in a west Texas hailstorm. I can't run. I can't hide. And I can't make it stop."

Many years ago we were in a pop-up when a tornado passed. No where to go. Pop-up did just fine (believe it or not), I think ... because we were in a thick grove of trees that broke most of the wind. Fortunate, the tornado did not sit down in the grove of trees. It was a near miss, but, as my dad use to say, "An inch is as good as mile. It didn't hit!"

Tent camping in Iceland tied the guy rope to the bumper of the truck to keep it from blowing away

Tiger, that's the advantage of a Class C or a truck camper over a trailer -- once we have gotten the trailer into position and stabilized, it would be a lot of work to undo everything and then point the nose in a different direction!

So before we actually park, we always spend a few minutes trying to thing about where the trailer should be situated in the campsite: What's the best view? Will there be big rocks near the doorway? Will we have room for the awning? But this is the first time I ever wished we'd been able to predict the direction of the wind!

Were you near Lone Pine, Tuttle Creek and the Alabama Hills? Can really blow thereabouts.

Back in my tenting camping days, we'd park cross-wind, then pile cargo boxes under the van's side door. Kids slept inside and we slept outside on the ground pretty well sheltered from the wind.

Now in the Tiger, I point the hood into the wind even if that means I have to park crosswise in the campsite. This works way better than letting the wind hit the sides.

I have done that for years when boondocking also.