Winter Truck Camping / Peace, Chaos, and a Cozy Shelter to Ride out the Storm.

Well in this week's video Toby and I are bringing you up to Cascade River State Park on Minnesota's north shore. It's 20 degrees out which means it's 43 degrees warmer than it was the last time we were in the camper. This is gonna be nice. This park keeps six or eight campgrounds plowed out during the winter months and getting in here is quite easy. During the summer months though finding a spot almost impossible. The weather channel is saying these warm temperatures are going to be sticking around all day today. So I hope to get down check out the falls. Tomorrow it's another story they're saying 60 to 70 mile an hour wind gusts possibility of 8 to 11 inches of snow. That I'm not looking forward to. First we got to swing into the office pick up a map and then we'll go check out this campground. Definitely gonna need one of these. I saw online that there's gonna be one other camper here today. Tomorrow we're gonna have the whole park to ourselves. Given how beautiful this place is it's absolutely incredible. Here's gonna be the first one. Picnic table, fire ring. You can see no one's even driven in there yet. Site number 36. This one will work. Let's get the camper backed up. Perfect. Check it out. Electricity. Who says winter camping has to be tough? If that snow and wind comes tomorrow we even have a shelter. This is gonna be all right. I'll be using the electric heater as much as possible this weekend. 30 amp. This way we won't have any of those propane issues that we had last week. Someone had asked and I just use a little thousand watt electric heater. It does a good job of keeping the floor warm and dry over here by the door. I saw this lid off of a bin in the garage the other day and I thought that might work perfect to catch the snow and water before I make it into the camper. I'll let you know how it works. I'd really like to get this shoveled out and start a fire tonight. The clouds have already moved in and I'm wondering if that snow isn't gonna start today. Well let's check out the weather. 27 degrees. Absolutely beautiful. There's this high wind watch. 30 mile per hour wind. 60 mile per hour gusts. Significant threat to life or property. Damaging winds could blow down trees and power lines. Widespread power outages are possible. Well let's first get this campsite dug out and then we'll go down to the river. The whole reason I brought you here is because I wanted to show you these waterfalls. It's so cool. Yeah are you are you ready to go? Oh you're ready to go. I knew you're ready to go. The parking lot completely empty. Cascade River Trail. One of the things that makes this state park so special is just how fast the Cascade River falls out of the Sawtooth Mountains down into Lake Superior and it's that rushing water that has carved the rocks making some of the most spectacular waterfalls. It might look quiet today. Locked underneath all of that ice. Some really powerful water. In a really short distance there's a 900 foot drop in elevation from the hills down to Lake Superior and even though a lot of this water is trapped under ice right now walking along the trails all you hear is a constant thunder of the water. If you're able to come here in the spring during the snowmelt season you can see just how powerful this river is but in the winter it's almost like it's trying to hold a little secret. But make no mistake there's some powerful water moving under there. I'm actually starting to work up a sweat out here. This one looks cool too. I've had people ask me why the water looks so dirty up here at the North Shore and it's called tannins. It's basically just organic matter that's decaying and making the water brown. It has nothing to do with the water being dirty. And then this is where it all ends up. Lake Superior. It is insanely dark out here. You can't see nothing. The good news is no wind yet. We're gonna take advantage of that. Get a little fire going. Weather is still perfect. I think it's right around 25 degrees. Actually feels like camping when you make a campfire. I think it'll be a good night for Toby to come out. Well here's the plan. I'm gonna stay another night because there's no way that I'm gonna drive home in that storm tomorrow. I checked out the shelter building. It's got a wood stove in there so we'll be able to get out of the wind. We'll get out of the snow. Start a fire and maybe even cook supper over the wood stove. Tonight we're just gonna enjoy this fire. It is so quiet out here. You like that fire too? Yeah. We'll see in the morning. Gonna be ready to go for a walk. Just gonna let Toby stretch his legs out a little bit this morning. Believe it or not I'm actually glad that this is rain and not snow. Otherwise it could get messy. The problem is if it freezes later today this is all gonna be ice. That's gonna make things a little tricky. Nice. Open and clean. We're gonna head over and see if the water is running. I got an empty jug I want to fill up and last time I was here probably about three years ago 20 below zero and the water was still running out of the pipes. We're gonna check it out today. Look at that. I'll be making soup for supper. So we needed the extra water. That'll make it taste even better. I was looking on the weather channel and we've got about an hour and the temperature is gonna drop around 20 degrees and then the snow is gonna start. Are you good and dry buddy? You want some breakfast? Come on. There you go. Well the snow and wind has finally found us. We'll definitely be using that shelter tonight. Well that wind is really picking up out there. Thankfully it was raining for a good part of the morning. Otherwise we may have got that 8 to 11 inches of snow. I'm thinking now we'll probably wake up tomorrow morning and have three or four inches on the ground. In a little bit we'll head over that building start the fire. I'm sure it's gonna take a couple hours to warm up. It's like whiteout conditions. That wind is really blowing. Let's find a light switch. It's got to be here somewhere. Check this out. How cool would it be to have something like this out in the middle of the woods? I guess for tonight we do. This right here is what I'm looking forward to. Let's get this cleaned out. We'll open up the air all the way and start with some little pieces. Use our trusty old fast fire. That'll get the chimney nice and hot. Just add a few more pieces in there. This wood is nice and dry. It shouldn't have any problem taking off. We're gonna leave the door open just to crack at first and pretty soon it'll end up sounding like a train rolling through here. That's when we know we can add in more wood and shut the door. It'll get nice and warm. Close that damper off and really get some heat going. This will get the chill out of the air and then I'll go grab Toby and we can get started on supper. Let's go. Don't worry about all the dead animals hanging on the wall Toby. They're our friends. Well there's supper for tonight and for a dried soup it's really good. I've got eight cups of water boiling on top of the stove and it looks like it's ready. We'll just whisk this in and it takes about 15 minutes. Creamy potato soup with sawtooth mountain spring water. It doesn't get better than that. Toby since it's so close to Christmas I got you a gift. Actually you gotta thank Kaya for this one. Check this out buddy. That's you. How awesome is that? That looks like it's almost done. I like Bear Creek soups. I think they taste really good. It's probably not something you'd want to eat a lot of just because you can tell it's full of sodium. When someone asked me the other day they said your fridge always looks so empty. I hope you have some backup food or you know just like a contingency plan if you ever get stuck somewhere. This is the kind of stuff that I have in the cupboard. It stays there for a year or more. I bought this soup probably last year and I thought we should probably get it used up. It's good. I like it. Their chicken noodle, creamy cheesy potato, they're both good. The supper was good and it's gonna stick to my ribs. The potato soup actually reminds me of a sausage gravy. I think you could put it over biscuits and it would taste good. We're gonna turn the lights off in here and just chill out for a little while. We'll see you in the morning. This was a nice break getting out of the camper and stretching our legs a little bit. I'd like to find shelters like this more often. Well we didn't get that snow that they're talking about but we definitely got the ice and out of the way out of the campground there's a hill that goes up at a curve makes things a little bit tricky but thankfully the maintenance department has been through putting down some sand on the road already this morning. Toby and I are gonna get heading out. We want to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year's. We won't see you again until next week and Christmas is coming up in a couple of days. If you're out there traveling make sure you stay safe. We'll do this again next week. Until then, be kind, be honest, and we'll see you down the road.