Coldest Camping Trip Yet

Last weekend, we decided to take the camper out for one last hoorah before putting it up for the winter. We picked Devil's Den. It's close and it's our favorite.

We even allowed Braden to invite a friend to come with us for the weekend. Poor thing has been desperate for friends since we moved...

All day Friday, I cooked and packed, getting everything ready so that maybe I could relax a bit while we were there; knowing that I mostly just had to heat up the food. With the exception of breakfast, of course. In our family, there is a law against not cooking bacon outside for breakfast...it's just wrong not to. So, with the exception of breakfast, I had all the other meals and snacks almost prepared. Only warming necessary.

When Jason got to the house with the camper, he went to plug it in so the refrigerator could start working, and something in the electrical panel below the refrigerator started making cracking noises and smoking. There was no power. The short version of the story is that Jason knew the boys would be devastated to come home from school and find out that the highly anticipated trip was off. So, he called a local RV mechanic and found out how we could make this work. After replacing a blown fuse and realizing that was not going to fix the problem, upon the advice of the professional, he cut the wire causing the problem, therefore disabling the power supply to the camper. Then he went and bought a trickle charger, which we were told we could plug in at the campsite, hook the battery to it, and live off of the battery power for the weekend.

We finally get all loaded and on the road- almost 2 hours behind schedule. It was dark when we got there. It's freezing cold. Temperature already in the 20's.

After getting all set up, we realized that the power situation was not rectified. There was no power in the outlets in the camper and the microwave didn't work. (So much for my heat and serve meals plan...) We had to run an extension cord from the outside into the camper to plug in the electric space heater and the tv.

All was well until sometime after we had gone to bed. The furnace started making very strange noises, and then quit working, so we had no heat. Only the little space heater we brought. It was VERY cold! It had gotten down to 24 degrees that night!

Then, later in the night, I realized that we had forgotten to leave faucets running so the water hose wouldn't freeze. I woke up Jason to check it and sure enough, frozen water hose.... lovely. Now I couldn't even go to the potty...

Here is what the hose connection on the outside of the camper looked like the next morning...

Luckily, my husband is an official wilderness man and is very resourceful, he had an extra hose that we could use.

Despite this and the fact that we forgot to check the status of our propane bottles for our outdoor cooker and therefore ran out before the weekend was up, we ended up having a GREAT time.

Jason fixed the furnace problem. He had both propane tanks filled up before we left town, but apparently the guy messed up on one of them, because it was empty! That's why the furnace wasn't working. Jas switched to the other tank and it worked like a charm the rest of the weekend. We were toasty warm!

On Saturday we hiked alot, made a campfire and made smores. On Sunday, we biked a bit and even had another fire in the morning.

We all came home in desperate need for baths, as it was too cold and none of us wanted to shower while we were gone... and it was SO nice to get home. Except for the 9 loads of laundry I had to do when we got back... But, as I always say, I mostly work myself to death to do fun stuff like this to make fond memories for my kids. If it were just me, I'd probably just lay around the house and not create so much work for myself!

Here's some pics of the weekend!