A very Happy New Year to all who follow my web page. I hope you have many safe travels in 2018! Cheers to a brand new year of campfires and great memories!  🎉🎆🍻

Our first weekend of winter camping is over and wow, it was a cold one! The temperatures were the coldest we’ve camped in yet with our Durango.  We found it difficult to keep the fiver warm enough inside. We ran the furnace and fireplace heater along with a secondary electric heater off a separate 15 amp outlet on the post. We picked up an oil filled heater while out on Sunday and that did seem to make a difference. The extremely cold temps made it hard to keep the propane flowing properly especially as the tanks got lower. Our 100 watt trouble light in the propane compartment did nothing to keep the tanks from frosting up. We noticed a lot of drafts sitting at the back of the fiver where the large windows are. We’d never noticed this before when winter camping.  I can’t help but wonder how much of a difference the dual pane windows on our new fiver will make.

We can look forward to taking delivery of our new Durango on February 5th unless of course there are further delays.

One thing we noticed at Valens was power issues we’d never experienced until installing our new inline power EMS. The EMS cuts off power immediately due to a voltage drop or surge, or dirty power until the power situation is restored to normal, then it returns power to the fiver. It’s clearly doing the job it’s supposed to,  it just amazes us that on the same site, using the same things the last two years without the EMC, we didn’t even have a breaker pop. They must be pretty sensitive to voltage changes or dirty power. That’s a good thing!

Despite the very cold weather we had a fabulous weekend at Valens!  We were set up in no time after arriving on Saturday morning. It’s a lot easier now with this being our 4th year on Site #56. We know exactly where we want the fiver backed in and exactly how to use the electronic levellers without over extending them on the sloped pad. We opted not to use our fresh water system because of how short our stay was and the very cold temperatures. That of course contributed to a quicker set up. It took almost an hour for the inside of the fiver to warm up to a comfortable temperature, which was longer than usual.

We had a fire Saturday afternoon but went in late afternoon. Despite full winter gear and the warm fire, it was really cold! New Years eve we enjoyed an afternoon fire and dinner with our winter camping friends. It was so cold outside our mixed drinks turned to slushies! It was an awesome evening and we rang in 2018 together with our friends as we have the past three years! ☺🎉🎆🍻❤

So begins our fourth year of winter camping!  We’re so blessed and thankful to be doing this again at Valens. Peace and joy be with you all in 2018 and Happy Camping!               ❄♨⛄❤