Winter Truck Camping Staying Cozy and Warm Alone in the Woods

This weekend Toby and I are bringing you into the foothill of State Forest and I'm looking for something preferably on a lake. Something quiet and thankfully these roads, they ain't too bad. Well we gotta check this spot out. I've never seen this spot before. You wouldn't be able to recognize it in the summertime. I'm not sure if there's anything down here or not. It's tight to get in though. This would be a cool spot but I don't think I'm able to get back here. This would be a perfect spot for someone who's camping out of the back of their truck. We're going to use a tent. I do see some foot traffic. Someone's been here. It looks like maybe they were even here today. I wonder if that means the spot that I was thinking about going to is going to be taken. I guess we'll find out. Let's hit the road Toby. Check this out. We got it all to ourself. They even got a fire ring. Awesome. Come on Toby. I think this is gonna work. It feels cold out today. A lot colder than it actually is. Probably has to do with this damp air. I think I'm gonna get a coffee going right away. One of the nice things about having this camper is I can come in here and turn the furnace on. 23 degrees outside. Forecasting snow and looks like we're gonna have a full moon tonight. 78% humidity. That's probably why it feels cold. Get this generator going. Coffee always helps. She's a bit crispy. You can see I was driving through an ice storm this morning. Play nice now. Slowly work the choke off. I don't think we get cell phone service here. Might have to use the Garmin to let Mandy know where we ended up this weekend. Three bars. Mint. Good enough. Are you warming up buddy? Check out our view. Awesome. It's been cold this week here in Minnesota. High temperatures have been around seven or eight below zero. It gets down to 15 below zero at night. So we definitely should be making ice on the lakes. Weird thing is this lake doesn't look like anybody's been out here yet. I brought the spud bar just to make sure that it's safe to walk on. I'm thinking tomorrow morning we might see if we can catch some fish. So anything above two and a half inches is going to be safe to walk on. If it wasn't two and a half inches this bar would go straight through. I'm probably guessing it's closer to six inches out here. Maybe even eight. I've seen people put spear holes out here. Have to make sure we don't step in one of those. It is so peaceful out here. This is a pretty small lake. I've never caught a fish out of here. But that's not saying much. Maybe tomorrow will be a lucky day. I should probably bring some sucker minnows out here. I bet there'd be some northerns. Probably little snakes but that'd be fun to catch. There's a beaver dam over here. In my experience ice is always thinner around the beaver dams. It's right over here and it looks like the lake opens up back there. I have to look on google maps but it's kind of a channel in between. A lot of times the channels is where the thin ice is and that beaver dam. I don't know if I'm gonna go back there. I'll have to look and see what it was gonna see other people out here this weekend. With the fresh tire tracks and the snow the foot tracks are on that campsite. But it's been quiet. I haven't seen anybody. I love weekends like this. It's kind of drying up out here a little bit. That rain's going away anyways. I love. Are you cold? You want to go inside? Yeah you want to go inside? Let's go. Come on. then I'm going to use this carpet and upholstery cleaner to scrub them. I don't know why but it smells like ketchup in here and I don't know if it's the carpets or what. I don't remember last time I even had ketchup in here. Crazy. This whole camper needs a really good cleaning and I think tonight is the night for that. That step is dirty because of Toby. And I mean that's dirty but it's not ketchup. And that's where I spilled some coffee. We're going to start by using this Armourall Fresh FX. Let's see if we can't get this cleaned up a little bit. Just going to get a really good coating put on here and the only brush that I have is the one that comes on the cleaning product. Hopefully that'll work. I should probably just pull this carpet out of here. It's over 20 years old. This is the bad spot. We're gonna let that soak in. This is looking better. This is what you're seeing right here is just a shadow. Yeah it actually looks pretty good. Definitely looks better and that spot's gone so that's good. Well here's a pro tip. Striping your carpet that'll help hide some of the stains. It doesn't look too bad. The good news is I'm pretty positive I narrowed down the smell. It's coming from the pantry. Oh that's no good. Habanero pepper sauce must have froze. Well I found the source of our smell. Great. I think I'm just gonna pull everything out of here and start from the beginning. Oh boy. A lot of this stuff we'll be able to save but some of it's probably like four years old too so yuck. This is definitely not a bad thing. I can't believe how many spices I had in here. Well hopefully if nothing else someone will learn from my mistakes. Some of this stuff is just so old. I'm sure I'll have to clean out the bottom too. Well that looks better. Definitely smells better. Super simple for supper tonight. I'm just making some country sausage over the fire. It's getting late. That'll hit the spot. They're pre-cooked so they shouldn't take that long. I mentioned it's like 25 degrees out here. This is nice. It's too bad we have the clouds tonight. it's about 10 o'clock. I'm gonna have a little supper and then I'm going to bed. I'll see you guys in the morning. It's windy out this morning. Ice is covering everything. I think I'm gonna go out put a few holes down see if I can mark any fish. Toby and I have been out already this morning. He stretched his legs. I think I'm gonna put him back in the camper though. This mist is just gonna get him all wet. He'll get cold. I think I got everything. Toby will be fine. Got the heater on. He's laying in bed watching Kitchen Nightmares. Probably already sleeping. I couldn't find any catch data on this lake and I looked for a depth map too and couldn't find that either. I was out here last year though. Probably drilled 30 holes. This is Dead Sea. Maybe today will be different. It is just absolutely gorgeous though. This spot looks about as good as any. It's a lot thicker than I thought. A lot thicker. Let's see if we're marking anything. Probably seven and a half, eight feet. I think I'm gonna pop a few holes in this bay. I've always fished the larger portion of the lake. I've never been in the smaller bay. We'll see what that looks like. I will just pop the locator and a few of these holes. If we mark any fish that's where we'll set up. A lot of walking. It's about seven feet. Wow she's about five feet. Oh about four and a half feet. Yeah about four and a half, five feet. This whole bay is probably nothing but just weeds. Probably not the best place to go fishing. I'd probably have the same amount of luck catching a fish from inside the camper compared to here. Yeah five feet and then see all the noise up on top. That's just all weeds. This morning was good exercise if nothing else. mist for probably an hour and a half now. Moving this all around, drilling the holes, checking the I think I'm going to go inside the camper warm up with Toby because this mist is just not quitting. What a morning. The only thing that I'm going to catch today is going to be a cold. Toby I sure hope you made something for breakfast. Buddy you're lucky you weren't out there today. It was so cold. You got to go potty. Come on. Although it might not seem like it we got a lot accomplished this weekend. I mean we've found the source of our mystery smell. Carpet looks like the outfield at the target stadium and made it out on the lake. Might not have gotten any fish but it was still a good time. But the weekend's over. We got to get back to work tomorrow. We'll do this again next Tuesday. Until then be kind, be honest. We'll see you down the road. Let's go home Toby.