Winter Truck Camping at -31°F | The Bitter Cold Nearly Ended This Trip

I've had people ask me why would anybody want to go camping on such a cold winter day. It's 15 below zero right now. Winds are at about 30 miles an hour. Weather is absolutely unforgiving out there. But the truth is there's something about conditions like this that make the forest feel even more peaceful. On these really cold nights the air is crisper and the sounds seem clear. The forest is quieter than any other place we could be right now. It's like everything unnecessary has just been stripped away. A hundred years ago men were out here logging these forests in way harsher conditions than what I'm going to be experiencing the next few days. In a way coming out here when it's really cold kind of makes me feel like I'm stepping a little bit closer to that time. A time when it was simpler. Far away from the world that we know today. We got about three and a half miles to go down this trail before it leads to a dispersed campsite. There's not going to be any logging activity back there. So fingers crossed we'll be able to drive in. This is going to be totally worth it. I left the furnace running in the truck. Hopefully it's a little warm in there. Good news it's a lot warmer than I thought it'd be. We'll just turn that up a little bit. Battery power is sitting at 98 percent. We should be good for the next two or three days. Ready to go in the camper? You stay here for a little bit and I'm going to go get stuff set up. Remember the last time it was like 20 below zero and our tanks froze up and they wouldn't vaporize anymore. So I'm going to try putting that blanket in there see if that helps. I parked so the truck's not going to be taking a lot of the wind tonight but we're still probably going to leave that slide closed. We've got a picnic table and a fire ring out here. We'll put that to use tomorrow. Tonight it's just too windy out here. It's going to be cold tomorrow like still 20 25 below zero but at least we're not going to have the wind. I keep cleaning my face up like every 30 seconds it doesn't even matter anymore. I'm just going to frost up regardless. I think I'm going to head inside the camper maybe get a pot of coffee going and just warm up for a little bit. I'll catch back up with you. Well let's check out where we're at. Negative 23 degrees outside 60 degrees in here. Not too bad. The furnace hasn't shut off since we got here so I'm going to leave the slide in again tonight. I was looking at the phone 60 below zero wind chills tonight. Thankfully tomorrow it's not going to be as windy so it's going to feel completely different and we'll be able to spend some time outside. I've noticed that I'm getting a lot of cold air under this range. I'm going to take a look at that. I think the flapper for the range is open and it's too high up so I can't reach it. We're going to fix it tonight. I think this will pop out. Yep I must have unplugged the light too. I'm going to stick this bag up in there that's full of tissues. I'll block that air inlet. That'll work. That made a huge difference. I don't feel any cold air coming out of there now. See if we can get this light to work. Probably need a new light. Done. Well I'll let you know how this all works out. I don't foresee us having any big problems as long as those propane tanks don't freeze up. I'll see you in the morning. Toby come lay on my feet see if you can warm them up a little bit. You see this stuff here? This is supposed to help your feet. It's going to make your paws stay warm. Let's give it a shot. Anything is going to be better than nothing right? We'll just make this quick for Toby this morning and then I got something that I want to show you. I think we'll probably also start the truck this morning and let it run for a little while. I filled up with number one diesel and plus I put an additive in there for extra lubricity and c-tain so it shouldn't have any problems running but 31 below last night it probably got down to 35 below. It's pretty cold on those diesels. How are the paws feeling Toby? Oh let's get you inside. Come on. I wish you would wear boots. It would make life a little bit easier out here. All right you get warm buddy I'll be back. Not too far from here there's a staging point for snowmobilers, ATVs and a trail that leads off to the forest. They also have a vault toilet there. Let me go check that out and see if it's something usable for people that come out here and go camping. People are definitely using it out here. It says hunter walking trail but it looks like it's been turned into a road. What is this? I could be totally wrong here. This is like some kind of ticket thing. I'm not sure. Mill copy. Oh they're turning this into a logging road. That's what's going on. Let's check it out. Oh you know what that means. More dispersed campsites. So if you've been following along for a while then you might remember we came out here like three years ago before I adopted Toby even and we talked a little bit about the legend of Bigfoot because there's so many stories in this area. We're close to Reamer Minnesota which is like the home of Bigfoot in Minnesota and we came down here. None of this was here back then though. That would be so cool if they cut out some campsites back here because there is a lake over here. Just couldn't access it before. Looking at the tracks you can see the logging trucks have been back here recently and if they can get those big trucks back here we can definitely get the camper back here. I think it's right around 20 below yet. A little chilly but inside the woods here we got no wind so that's nice. We're coming up on the area where they've been doing some work. Let's check this out. Trail forks off. One going down that way. There's a trail going this way and another trail going over this way. They've been doing a lot of work back here. You can kind of see the lake back there. This would be a perfect spot for a campsite. It'd be cool to find the guy who's running the equipment out here, slide him 100 bucks and say use a dozer to dig in a site for me quick. Let's go check out the facilities. Walking back I got the sun in my face. It feels good. Definitely doesn't look like anybody's using this but it looks open. Wow, not bad at all. All fully stocked, clean. Not too bad at all. If you're out here doing like some hot tent camping having something like that could really come in handy. Feels like my cheeks might be getting a little red here and here so we're probably gonna head back to the camper but I'm gonna start up that fire soon. Seems like once you get past about 12 o'clock that sun just starts setting really quick. We're gonna see if we can't capture some of that heat yet. Well let's take a look at how we're sitting inside. So it's 11 below outside, 57 degrees in here. I have not been able to bring that up over the last two days. 73 percent is where my batteries are at. The furnace is drying 75 watts and it's telling me that I've got about 65 hours left if we're just running the furnace and a couple of the other DC things in here. I think one of the main reasons why I haven't been able to get the temperature up in here is this camper's old. 23 years old and it's got a lot of gaps where it shouldn't have gaps. I've been having some issues with my back door. Let me show you what's going on there. You can see this gap all along the door that's letting in a lot of cold air. You might remember it was probably a year ago I started noticing some cracks in the phylon on that back wall. Things are shifting and moving back there and I'm a little afraid to dig in to find out what's wrong with it because that's going to be opening up a can of worms. It will be a never-ending project if I start tearing siding off this camper. Here's that crack. Now I did seal it up and you can see the generator compartment is starting to crack. There's some gaps in the door frame as well. It's all kinds of a mess. It's just got to last me like three or four more years. That's the plan anyways. I'm hoping that maybe I can get in here and just adjust this metal frame. That'll help close up that gap. Well, if nothing else, this cold weather makes the equipment show its age a little bit quicker. And speaking of that, I think we'll go out and start the truck in a little bit. If it gives me any issues, we might think about heading home a little earlier. But I plan on staying another night. We'll find out. I want to get the fire going soon. Then I was talking with Mandy. She's worried back at home because some of the trees are freezing, limbs snapping, falling across power lines. So the weather channel is saying be mindful of exploding trees. The trees don't explode. They just freeze and snap and the limbs are taking down power lines. Thankfully, it was about two months ago I installed that Opus Guardian 6000 for a power backup. I showed her how to use it. It's really simple. One, two, three steps as far as shutting off the main, turning on the breaker to back feed the panel. And if you're wondering what happened to the generator on the front of the truck, I put it at the house to recharge the power station. If the power does go out, I can get about, like I said, five, six, seven hours of power in my furnace. And then it takes two hours to completely recharge the power station off the generator. So it's kind of what I'm doing for a backup this winter. We'll see how that works. Maybe we should go out and try the truck. Wish me luck. Here we go. She started right away. I do have a check engine light on. I erased the codes before I came out here. You should probably see what that's all about. She's smoking like a freight train. I can definitely feel it's missing. I'll check out the code, see what that's all about. I feel real pressure. It's going to die. Dang it. Great. That is going to be gelled up fuel filter. Mint. I think I got some stuff back here. Yep. Oh, winter diesel rescue. It says it does 40 gallons of fuel. Dump it in and see what happens. Go do your thing. I've got an aftermarket fuel pump that recirculates the fuel. Probably just turn the key on, let it sit for a while. Let this stuff get through the system. Should have probably saved some to put in the fuel filter. We'll just give it like 10 minutes and see what happens. I've got two new batteries in the truck, so I don't think that the fuel pump is going to take those down too quick. Delete these codes in the meantime. Well, I can hear the fuel pump. It's not excessively loud and the filters don't sound like they're cavitating. Now, I know they look old, but I changed them about four months ago. I should have a spare set with me, but I don't, so we're just going to have to work with what we got. Oh, you got to be kidding me. It got up to high idle, but it just doesn't have the fuel pressure to keep her going. Oh, not what I wanted to deal with today. I thought the wind was supposed to die down too. I'm going to bring this inside, use it as a supplemental heat just for a little while, or maybe I should put it right underneath my fuel filters. I've done that before in the past. It's probably the best idea. Let's see what we can do here. Just keep going. Nope. This will take a little bit to warm up, but I think once we get this heater going, it'll warm up them filters and hopefully they're not waxed up too bad. I think it's going to go. It just keeps kicking off. I'll let you know if I finally get it. Okay, so we got it facing out of the wind and hopefully it'll warm up them filters soon. I might have to put a wind block in here. I finally found a use for solar panels at the campsites I visit. That'll help anyways. Maybe. Well, I had it going for about 40 minutes now. Let me show you what I did. I tented it up with some of that Reflectix down there. Wrap the filters. It should be getting good heat. Nothing left to do now but try and start it. If I can get this to start and run, I think that's the sign to say we better wrap this up. Yes, come on baby. Let's keep going. No sense in pushing our luck. It's looking smooth. So cold out here. I think we got what we came for. I wanted to show you just how peaceful these woods can be even at 30 below zero. We accomplished that this morning on our walk but the cold is starting to push back. I'm not going to take my chances. I'm going to get Toby home where it's nice and warm. What do you think buddy? Ready to go home? Yeah, let's get going. We'll do this again next week but I don't know that it's going to be much warmer. Until then, be kind, be honest, and we'll see you down the road.