Winter Camping (-25 Forecast) / Lets Try to Stay Warm

Its winter in Minnesota and that means a huge possibility of frigid cold weather that allows us who live here to have bragging rights as the coldest place in the nation. Yeah it may get colder on any given night somewhere else but day in and day out when taken in its entirety its colder nowhere else like here. So what does one do when the forecast comes along for overnight lows down to -23 to -27? For many here this involves a prolonged date with the recliner and remote control. I enlisted my wife and youngest for a night out in the camper. Yee haw. 

We got a late start getting out of the house (good thing I plowed a clean strip to the door) and that meant a grumpy and tired six year old. I tried to take a few pictures "for the record" and she wouldn't have any of it. 

 She initially said she wanted to sleep in her bed but when Mom said she wanted to sleep in the camper Kassie was all in. 

I turned on our two space heaters earlier in the day and had been running them at full throttle in an attempt to keep the camper decently warm. The temp earlier in the day had been in the mid single digits and the space heaters were keeping up pretty good. I have been using to Optimus 1500 watt space heaters that were given to us for free from the gas company a few years back when our furnace went kapputz and we thought there might be a problem with the gas. The gas man said we needed to call a furnace repair tech as the gas was working just fine. Before he left he handed me two free electric space heaters. This was in January and I thought holy cow what am I going to do with them? Like they can heat my house. Thats another story. 

So back to bedtime. I put my daughter down and helped tuck her in. The camper was plenty warm. She had stuffed animals and a sleeping bag that made it thru nights in Yellowstone in 2010 when we had temps below 30 and woke up to snow. All of this in a popup with no furnace. Miserable nights. Nights you close your eyes and pray for a quick night. 

So with my daughter in bed I went and checked the weather station. It was cold outside. Coldest temperature we've seen for an overnight. This is our third night camping at home in the new camper. We sold our Roo 233s in October and purchased our Outback 250URS a couple of weeks later. 

 The plan is to spend many nights outside in the camper this winter. We never did that with our Roo. You couldnt really. I mean you could but with it being a hybrid (mixture of hardside and tent ends) I've never heard of anyone camping in one when temps get below zero. The one obstacle that has been an issue with the other nights so far has been the dreaded middle of the night bathroom break. You have to get out of bed, put shoes on, grab the house keys, walk to the house and use the bathroom. Then when you are finished get back to the camper and try to fall asleep. Bleh. 

We have a toilet in the camper but its not usable because we have already winterized for the season. What that means is we've drained all the water from the lines and filled them with antifreeze. For all purposes the toilet is closed until spring. So a couple of weeks ago I got online and purchased a portable toilet by Camco. It works great. I was concerned that it might not be big enough for me to sit on and actually get everything to work and land in the toilet. Smooth. Fantastic. Works great. Thats all I'll say. 

After tucking Kassie in I checked on Julie. She was in bed with her hat and winter coat on. Hmmm. Hey are you planning on sleeping like that? Uhh. Yeah I'm cold she said. But thats normal. It's 70 inside the house and.....yeah. She's cold. 

So the vitals looked great. It was -7 outside and a very comfortable 64 inside the camper. This was with the two electric space heaters running only. My plan for the night was to run the two space heaters along with one or both of my buddy heaters. Buddy heaters run on propane and need ventilation in an enclosed area like an RV. Buddy heaters come in handy when you are camping off the grid with no hook ups. We use them most nights when we camp in the mountains at high elevation where overnight low temps regularly dip down into the 40's and close to freezing in the middle of the summer. We've slept easily 40 nights with a buddy heater on. They have safety features such at tip over shut off and CO2 detectors. The camper has CO2 detectors as well. 

When I turned in the camper felt really comfortable from our zero rated sleeping bag. The inside temp was in the 60's. I knew the buddy heaters would run out of propane somewhere early in the hours of the morning. When that happened the temperature would drop and the RV furnace would kick in when the temp dropped to 55 and hold us there until we woke up. Julie got up and used the potty at 3:30am and everything was working as planned. Sometime after that I heard the furnace kick on and knew the buddy heaters were out of propane. I quickly fell back asleep unaware of the time. I was awakened awhile later with very cold cheeks. I instantly knew something was awry. I woke up and headed over to the weather station and saw the inside temp of 39 degrees. I went and checked the furnace and it was on. I turned it off and restarted it. It instantly turned on and I waited for the click of the burner letting me know that we had ignition. It never came. I did feel a lot of cold air. 

I figured that we ran out of propane. Seemed most obvious. To veryify that I went over and lit the burners on the stove. If they failed to light I knew we were out of propane. They lit. Hmmm. The plot thickens. As I began to ponder all of this I looked across to the bunks and noticed Kassie was up. Dad its REALLY cold in here. Yeah it is honey. But it'll be warm in a few minutes. I then looked across the other way and noticed Julie was awake. What happened? Its SO cold in here. The furnace. The furnace wouldnt ignite. 

So there is all weather testing Minnesota style. Later in the day when I got the camper nice and warm I was able to get the furnace heating again. Not sure what that was about. Was it too cold? Did it need more power and I was using up too much with the space heaters? If that were the case why would the blower work? Questions that need answers. Answers that can only come with more testing. 

So I have concluded that I need better space heaters. The bottom of the barrel freebies arent going to cut it. I have two new ones on order. They are old school and weigh about as much as a gold bar. I'll write more about that later. I'm excited to get out there again with the new space heaters. I'm hoping for some really cold temps. My weather station said the low was -17 below. I'm pretty sure that it got considerably colder than that. The stat outside the camper is just actually on the camper and thats giving me a false reading no doubt a few degrees higher than it actually is outside. I'll fix that too. Until next time keep it real!

Avenue of the Pines Scenic Byway

CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST
DEER RIVER - MINNESOTA

Driving Up North in Minnesota brings you into a forest known past and present for its cathedral of pines. Minnesota Highway 46 heads NW out of Deer River northward into the Chippewa National Forest and takes you on a wonderful drive thru some of the most dense areas of pine covered woods left in Minnesota. The Avenue of the Pines Scenic Byway begins in Deer River and runs 46 miles thru the national forest ending in Northome. I have selected three miles of the "pineiest" section of road and recorded it. Most of the byway is not like this but rather a mix of hardwoods, birch and other trees. This short section is by far my favorite. You can find this section a couple of miles north of the Cut Foot Sioux Visitor Information Center. This is the view heading north.  As always pictures and video never do justice to the splendor and majesty one comes in contact with when you actually drive thru here. At least my attempts at capturing it never have!

Wyoming Cattle Drive

BIGHORN MOUNTAINS

LOVELL - WYOMING

I am looking back thru old pictures and chronicling campgrounds for National Forest Camper. I stumbled on some pictures and a video and realized that I had to do something with it. For that website I am putting together blog entries for all of my previous visits to recreation sites in our national forests focusing on the campgrounds. This cattle drive is not a campground and its not even technically in the Bighorn National Forest so I didnt think it really fit into that website although maybe it should. So what we learned from a cowboy on
a horse is that these cattle are headed up US 14A near Lovell WY and going to spend the next couple of months grazing on leased federal land in the Bighorn National Forest. These ranchers drive their cattle up that mountain every single summer and drive them back on down before they get snowed in. What an amazing sight!

Here is the video that my daughter (then 8) captured early on. Its less than 3 minutes and I wish it were of the whole time from beginning to end. Oh well. Keep learning that more is better. 

This cattle drive originates near a town called Lovell Wyoming. Love this town. A town I visit when camping in the northern section of the Bighorn Mountains. It sits in the Bighorn Basin just south of the Bighorn Canyon Recreation Area, at the base of the Bighorn Mountains and an hour to the west is Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone NP. On this trip this town provided free showers in a truck stop just west of town and a place to do some laundry. We'd been on the road for many days at this point and needed both. The truck stop has since began charging for showers. What a shame. Employees thought so too. It turns out that the owner has since sold out to someone else who doesnt feel as strongly as he does that showers for the truck drivers (and anyone else) who frequent his business should be given showers free of charge with towels included. They were clean too. Fantastic. I digress. Cattle Drive. I need to talk about the cows. I'll do another post again sometime about Lovell. I probably have pictures of the truck stop too. 

So after leaving the town of Lovell we were headed back up US 14A to Shell Creek Campground where we were staying. The pictures might now show this but it was late in the day and the sun would be going down soon. Add to that the hour and a half drive still had ahead of us it was important we get hustlin down the road.

A few miles out of town and just shy of the Big Horn river we started to see something on the road ahead. As we got closer we realized there were cattle on the road. Not just one or two but many more than we could ever count. We had no idea what was going on but it sure looked exciting. People on horses and lots of cows. Lots and lots of cows and all of them being very vocal about their unhappiness with the situation. Turns out they were being driven up the mountain to greener pastures and better eatin. Driving thru the Bighorn Mountains you are guaranteed to see lots of cattle as the land is great for cattle grazing. Turns out that many ranchers down in the basin lease land from the forest service up there as its a great place to do that. Not all ranchers do as we saw farms with cattle who looked like they were setup for the summer and would not be hiking up the mountain. 

Along the way we opened our windows and took in the event. It was loud and there were lots of obstacles to steer clear of. Mainly the cows. What we quickly realized was that there were so many cattle on the road that if we didnt get to the bridge across the Bighorn River before the lead mass we might be stuck for awhile. In fact it might be a long while or at least thats what someone on a horse told me. So I made hay for the bridge and veered in and out of the cows dodging their massive bodies that were barrelling down the road towards the river. I didnt hit a one. But I needed to keep up the pace as the race was on and I didnt want to have a long wait for the cattle mass to cross ahead of me. After it was all over I realized that not getting across ahead of the cows might have been a night to remember. Sure I would have had a long drive in the dark back to the campground but who knows what might have happened had I been forced to slow down. 

Sure enough my lead foot and swift maneuvers got me there first. Well not exactly first but the crowd was in my rear and that meant I would have room to get across ahead of the crowd. There were so many cattle though and I noticed a large mass of them ahead of me. What I remember most was the noise. I never would have imagined they would be so noisy. 

I wish I would have had more pictures than I do. I'm glad I have what I have. On this trip we only had one camera and that meant we were shooting video or taking pictures. One or the other. We took one video and after we turned the video off we took these pictures. The video is not that hot. Its pre-1080p for sure and looks a lot older than it actually is. 

It didnt take me long to realize that the whole experience of being part of this was coming to an end way too quickly. As we came to our last group of stock I wanted to go back and do it all over again. I tend to do that. I move very fast and sometimes realize before I'm even finished with something that I wish I could go back for a redo and this time really take it slow and make it last. I've always thought about going back with the intention of doing this again but who does one talk to see when they will be moving their cattle up the mountain. If you know who to talk to please let me know. 

Red Cliff Bridge

WHITE RIVER NATIONAL FOREST
RED CLIFF, COLORADO

The Red Cliff Bridge lies on Highway 24 between Leadville and I-70 in Colorado. The bridge was built in 1940 and its now on the National Register of Historic Places and that helped garner up some help paying the tab when $3.6 million in renovations happened in 2004. What that means is all of us (USA) pay for repairs like this where as renovations to the streets where we live are paid almost entirely with local dollars. Bleh. Enough with the civics and onto the bridge itself. 

Valley Of The Naked Dolls

SAN ISABEL NATIONAL FOREST

TWIN LAKES, COLORADO

I've seen some weird things in my life but this might just be the weirdest. We were in the middle of a three night stay at Twin Peaks Campground in Colorado. Twin Peaks campground is off of CO-82 just west of the Twin Lakes Reservoir on the road to Independence Pass and further on Aspen. On one of our day trips we decided to go up over

Middle Fork Campground (Video)

BIGHORN NATIONAL FOREST
BUFFALO, WYOMING

Short video of our stay at Middle Fork Campground last summer. Emphasis on the creek for good reason! Enjoy.