thepartyhound
Member
For the last couple of years now I have used my vacation time during the November/December time of year. The summer months are our busy time of year at work and it is difficult to take a several week long vacation during that time.
I recently purchased a 1994 Viking pop-up truck camper that fits my 2013 Tacoma extended cab long bed pickup. I had been looking for a 4 wheel camper for this truck for some time, but my budget was a limiting factor as to how nice of a 4 wheel camper I was going to find. This camper has seen VERY little use. The interior was nearly brand new, the canvas side walls were in great shape, no leaks, and only very minor cosmetic issues. I got a great deal on it which left over a good deal of my budget to fix the camper up the way I wanted it. With the money I had left over I installed a car stereo deck that plays DVDs and connects to my phone with blue tooth, a 15" 12v flat screen LED tv, speakers, and a 12v power outlet. I knew that I would be camping in colder weather so I wanted to have something to do at the end of the short days in the evenings.
I did not fill the water tank prior to buying the camper and low and behold it leaked like a sieve from both the tank and the pump faucet. It appears that at some point water had been left in the tank and lines during freezing temps and ruptured the tank and pump. Stove, 3-way fridge, and furnace all worked great! I bought the new pump faucet that also has the electrical connections to run an electric pump. I pulled the cook top and then the water tank. After much searching I was able to find some glue that bonds to the material that the water tank is made of.and made repairs to the water tank (I was not having much luck finding a replacement tank). Then I ran some wires and installed the electric pump. Now I have the ability to enjoy the convenience of the electric pump and the fall back capability of the manual hand pump. I also installed some LED lights in place of the incandescent lights in the overhead fixtures in hopes of decreasing current draw as much as possible.
The camper came with wiring to either tie into the truck's electrical system or to have a battery sitting in the bed of the truck before sliding the camper in. I opted to set up my own self contained battery system. I chose a large cabinet that is up against the front of the camper on the floor, vented it, and installed 2 120A/h deep cycle batteries wired in parallel and changed the wiring configuration of the camper around to run off this bank. Then I tied into the charge circuit on the trailer wiring on my truck and wired a quick disconnect into it. I wired a male quick disconnect plug onto a cable and connected that to the battery...my truck will now charge the batteries while the engine is running. I also wired in this charger to my battery bank and ran a separate extension cord out of the same hole that my shore power cord goes out of. I opened up my power converter and unwired the big ol 8 gauge (completely unnecessary IMHO) and wired in a much longer length of 12 gauge extension cord that I cut the end off of. This is much less stiff and much easier to push in and pull out of the storage compartment for the power cable. So, now I have 2 extension cords coming out of that hole...one for shore power and one for the battery charger. In the bed of my Tacoma is a 120V power outlet running off a factory inverter. I run the cable for the charger to this outlet and now when I turn my inverter on from inside the cab of the truck the charger comes on and also charges the battery.
I left on the first day of my trip fairly late in the day...about 9:00PM. I decided to just get on the road even if I only made it a few hours that first night. That way I would wake up on the road and the trip had already began. It was in the high 30's or low 40s when I left. That first night I realized that the heater would come on and would run till it was downright hot in the camper, then it would stay off till it was pretty cold. The frequent off and on of the furnace was making sleep disrupted and difficult. I decided to go ahead and just get the buddy heater that I was considering. That day I bought the buddy heater, several small green tanks of propane, and a hose to connect the heater to a 5 gallon propane tank. Fortunately I had thought ahead that I may want to install the heater and route the hose to the outside of the camper to connect to a separate tank, so I brought a good selection of tools in a sturdy plastic tool box that doubles as a step to get into my camper and a cordless drill. Initially I was going to use a separate propane tank to run the buddy heater, but I couldn't find one to fit in the limited space between the camper and the side of the truck bed. What I ended up doing was a bit of a challenge and I had to buy about $40 worth of tools I didn't have to complete the project. I cut and removed a 3" piece from my propane line that feeds my stove. I put a threaded connector on and flared the ends where I had cut and installed a T-connector. Then I ran a short piece of copper tubing off the 3rd outlet of the T-connector and after using the required fitting parts, this became a 1/4" barbed hose connector. I cut the end off the Mr. Heater hose I had bought, slipped it over the 1/4" hose fitting, drilled a hole in the top of my counter near my sink and stove and ran this hose out through it. Now I can pull this hose up, connect it to my Mr. Heater, and run off my main propane tank. When I disconnect it I push the hose down through the hole and just the top of the connector sits there on the counter top ready to be pulled back up for it's next use. The only downside to this is that the propane is now running through 2 regulators; the one at the propane tank and the one built into the heater. The high setting is now equivalent to the old low output, which is fine because that is what I run the heater on anyhow.
After running this setup for about 3 or 4 nights with a window slightly cracked as well as the roof vent cracked open I began to wonder about carbon monoxide buildup. I bought a detector that has a digital readout of the CO levels. The first night using this it went off at about 3:00 AM! Yikes! I got the detector into fresh air and then opened the roof vent and window a little further. Alarm goes off again in 3 more hours! Long story short, after adjusting vents and monitoring the CO levels readout, it turns out that I had to have the roof vent open quite a ways as well as a lot of incoming ventilation to keep the CO levels at 0 PPM. With the heater running and the appropriate amount of ventilation it really does not heat up very well in there. So, I've either got to deal with a noisy (and power consuming) forced air furnace or a not-as-comfortable-temperature-as-I-would-like heater. I'm considering one of these heaters, but would like to talk to other folks that use them first.
Anyhow, enough about all of that stuff. My plans were to head down to Colorado and visit several different hot springs and spend my vacation in luxurious relaxation! My dog and I started off near Bozeman, MT, went to Billings to meet up with a buddy I haven't seen in some time and buy the parts I needed for the Mr. Heater, then went south out of Billings. I made it nearly to Belfry (and the Wyoming/Montana border) when I decided that I was really tired from my lack of sleep the night before. I pulled off at a rest area and napped on the couch in the back for a couple of hours without popping up the camper. When I got back up and going it was nearly dark.
I followed 120 south through Cody and on into Thermopolis. There are several hot springs to choose from in Thermopolis. By the time I got to Thermopolis it was about an hour before they closed their pools for the night. I opted to go for a quick plunge and sauna mostly because I was in need of a shower. Plus, I got in for a discounted price because they were closing soon. After my quick shower and soak, I got back on the road. I had intended to find somewhere closeby to sleep for the night. However, my nap earlier in the day had energized me and I love driving at night anyhow, so I left there at about 10 and started driving.
I hit Riverton, then Lander where I caught US 287. I followed 287 south-east for about 40 miles or so till I got to a small town called Jeffery City. I don't know what time it is at this point, but for the sake of my story here I'm going to say it was going on 1:00 AM and I'm probably pretty close. I looked at a map and decided that I could either follow 287 all the way to Rawlins @ I-80, then backtrack to the west to Hwy 789 or take a dirt road (Crooks Gap Rd if you care and zoom in on the map far enough) that would be a direct shot south and cut off about 80 miles in the process. I decided to drive a little ways down the dirt road.
My decision making process may have been slightly affected due to the late hour, but I started down the dirt road. It was really hard packed and nearly like driving on pavement. I was doing 45 for about the first 15 or 20 miles. Then the road got a little worse...and then a little worse...and worse yet...and then I was doing about 7MPH and that was too fast!
I drove on this road for about 3 hours or so and then pulled off to let my dog out of the back and have a snack. After he jumped out I climbed in and sliced some salami and cheese to eat with crackers. I was munching on that when I thought that I should poke my head out and check on Buddy. The heater was running inside the camper so I couldn't really hear anything outside. As soon as I poked my head out I heard coyotes...and LOTS of them...and CLOSE! I would guess they were 10-15 of them within a hundred yards of my truck. My dog is very friendly and loves other dogs, so my immediate fear was for him. If you didn't know, coyotes will lure dogs out and kill them. I called and I think that either the tone of my voice or the coyotes had scared him because he was there and loaded up immediately! A pack of coyotes, if they're hungry and desperate enough, will attack a human. My heart was racing as I got the camper closed up and got into the cab of my truck!
I continued on, now fully wide awake and any trace of weariness had left me! This dirt road was a total of about 70 miles from pavement to pavement with absolutely nothing in between...except a lot of coyotes and presumably antelope and jack-rabbits. I came out at I-80 at a small oil drilling town called Wamsutter. I found an empty lot in town where I would not be in the way of any kind of work activities in an hour when people started going to work! It was 7:00 am when I popped up the top of my camper and climbed into bed for a few hours of rest. That 70 miles took me 6 hours to drive! So much for a short cut!
I'll abbreviate the rest of the trip to avoid the need to hire a publisher for this story. I made it to my intended destination of Ridgway, CO later that day after a few hours of sleep. Just outside the town of Ridgway is Orvis Hot Springs, the single most wonderful hot springs that I have ever found in my travels! One of the things that is unique about this hot springs is that it is clothing optional. It's not for everyone, but on the other hand it doesn't take long before you hardly even notice that you or anyone else is naked. I don't think that I speak for myself when I say that it is a wonderful feeling of freedom to enjoy the hot springs in the nude! Besides the clothing optional aspect of this hot springs, the other thing that makes this place wonderful is the way that it is built. It is all built using natural stone around the pools of water and the walkways around the area. The bottom of the largest main pond is covered with many inches of gravel...that feels really good on the bottom of your feet! There is natural looking vegetation, shrubs, bushes, trees, and grass that grows right up to the edge of the pools. At night the lighting is taken care of by having lights on the ground at the base of some of the trees that point up towards the branches of the trees and then reflect a soft glow over the area. This serves very well to avoid over-saturating the area with light and disrupting the wonderful stargazing opportunities! On a cold night, with the steam rising up off of the several pools, this lighting also serves to produce an almost otherworldly or movie set like effect. It really is something very cool to experience and words do not do this place justice!
The sauna is one of my favorite features of this place. I am a huge fan of saunas and this is a pretty good one. I only wish that the "Lobster Pot" that is situated just outside of the sauna were instead a cold plunge and that perhaps the Lobster Pot were relocated elsewhere. That is the only thing that I can think of to make this place any better.
I stayed here for several days just relaxing and enjoying the wonderful water and sauna. I then decided to take off and head to another hot springs that I had heard about that was about 4 hours away. I visited this and several others in the area over the next week or so. I then heard a weather report that a significant snow storm was on the way. I really wanted to experience Orvis hot springs with a foot and a half of snow on the ground, so I made the decision to head back over that way.
The roads were horrible and I was going up and over Monarch pass, elevation 11,300 feet, in this storm! Fortunately I had really good studded snow tires on my truck along with the extra weight of my camper. I had no problems whatsoever! I made my way back to Orvis and finished out the remainder of my vacation there.
I got back just in time. Another cold weather system was on it's way through and I got home just as the first of it hit. I was having problems with my furnace through much of my trip and I still am. I made contact with an older guy that works at an RV repair shop in Delta, CO called Jims Outback RV. Make note of this part of the story if you are still reading, dear dedicated reader. These folks have an RV junkyard on their property and sell all sorts of different RV parts. The old guy that works there is something of an expert on just about every heater ever put in an RV of any kind. They were just plain nice folks that were a pleasure to do business with. The problem my furnace was having was very intermittent. It would work and then it wouldn't. It turned out that the ignitor was sparking in the middle of the electrodes instead of at the end where it was supposed to spark and thus was not igniting the propane. It's having a different issue now, but I guess I'll have to save that for the next book!
I recently purchased a 1994 Viking pop-up truck camper that fits my 2013 Tacoma extended cab long bed pickup. I had been looking for a 4 wheel camper for this truck for some time, but my budget was a limiting factor as to how nice of a 4 wheel camper I was going to find. This camper has seen VERY little use. The interior was nearly brand new, the canvas side walls were in great shape, no leaks, and only very minor cosmetic issues. I got a great deal on it which left over a good deal of my budget to fix the camper up the way I wanted it. With the money I had left over I installed a car stereo deck that plays DVDs and connects to my phone with blue tooth, a 15" 12v flat screen LED tv, speakers, and a 12v power outlet. I knew that I would be camping in colder weather so I wanted to have something to do at the end of the short days in the evenings.
I did not fill the water tank prior to buying the camper and low and behold it leaked like a sieve from both the tank and the pump faucet. It appears that at some point water had been left in the tank and lines during freezing temps and ruptured the tank and pump. Stove, 3-way fridge, and furnace all worked great! I bought the new pump faucet that also has the electrical connections to run an electric pump. I pulled the cook top and then the water tank. After much searching I was able to find some glue that bonds to the material that the water tank is made of.and made repairs to the water tank (I was not having much luck finding a replacement tank). Then I ran some wires and installed the electric pump. Now I have the ability to enjoy the convenience of the electric pump and the fall back capability of the manual hand pump. I also installed some LED lights in place of the incandescent lights in the overhead fixtures in hopes of decreasing current draw as much as possible.
The camper came with wiring to either tie into the truck's electrical system or to have a battery sitting in the bed of the truck before sliding the camper in. I opted to set up my own self contained battery system. I chose a large cabinet that is up against the front of the camper on the floor, vented it, and installed 2 120A/h deep cycle batteries wired in parallel and changed the wiring configuration of the camper around to run off this bank. Then I tied into the charge circuit on the trailer wiring on my truck and wired a quick disconnect into it. I wired a male quick disconnect plug onto a cable and connected that to the battery...my truck will now charge the batteries while the engine is running. I also wired in this charger to my battery bank and ran a separate extension cord out of the same hole that my shore power cord goes out of. I opened up my power converter and unwired the big ol 8 gauge (completely unnecessary IMHO) and wired in a much longer length of 12 gauge extension cord that I cut the end off of. This is much less stiff and much easier to push in and pull out of the storage compartment for the power cable. So, now I have 2 extension cords coming out of that hole...one for shore power and one for the battery charger. In the bed of my Tacoma is a 120V power outlet running off a factory inverter. I run the cable for the charger to this outlet and now when I turn my inverter on from inside the cab of the truck the charger comes on and also charges the battery.
I left on the first day of my trip fairly late in the day...about 9:00PM. I decided to just get on the road even if I only made it a few hours that first night. That way I would wake up on the road and the trip had already began. It was in the high 30's or low 40s when I left. That first night I realized that the heater would come on and would run till it was downright hot in the camper, then it would stay off till it was pretty cold. The frequent off and on of the furnace was making sleep disrupted and difficult. I decided to go ahead and just get the buddy heater that I was considering. That day I bought the buddy heater, several small green tanks of propane, and a hose to connect the heater to a 5 gallon propane tank. Fortunately I had thought ahead that I may want to install the heater and route the hose to the outside of the camper to connect to a separate tank, so I brought a good selection of tools in a sturdy plastic tool box that doubles as a step to get into my camper and a cordless drill. Initially I was going to use a separate propane tank to run the buddy heater, but I couldn't find one to fit in the limited space between the camper and the side of the truck bed. What I ended up doing was a bit of a challenge and I had to buy about $40 worth of tools I didn't have to complete the project. I cut and removed a 3" piece from my propane line that feeds my stove. I put a threaded connector on and flared the ends where I had cut and installed a T-connector. Then I ran a short piece of copper tubing off the 3rd outlet of the T-connector and after using the required fitting parts, this became a 1/4" barbed hose connector. I cut the end off the Mr. Heater hose I had bought, slipped it over the 1/4" hose fitting, drilled a hole in the top of my counter near my sink and stove and ran this hose out through it. Now I can pull this hose up, connect it to my Mr. Heater, and run off my main propane tank. When I disconnect it I push the hose down through the hole and just the top of the connector sits there on the counter top ready to be pulled back up for it's next use. The only downside to this is that the propane is now running through 2 regulators; the one at the propane tank and the one built into the heater. The high setting is now equivalent to the old low output, which is fine because that is what I run the heater on anyhow.
After running this setup for about 3 or 4 nights with a window slightly cracked as well as the roof vent cracked open I began to wonder about carbon monoxide buildup. I bought a detector that has a digital readout of the CO levels. The first night using this it went off at about 3:00 AM! Yikes! I got the detector into fresh air and then opened the roof vent and window a little further. Alarm goes off again in 3 more hours! Long story short, after adjusting vents and monitoring the CO levels readout, it turns out that I had to have the roof vent open quite a ways as well as a lot of incoming ventilation to keep the CO levels at 0 PPM. With the heater running and the appropriate amount of ventilation it really does not heat up very well in there. So, I've either got to deal with a noisy (and power consuming) forced air furnace or a not-as-comfortable-temperature-as-I-would-like heater. I'm considering one of these heaters, but would like to talk to other folks that use them first.
Anyhow, enough about all of that stuff. My plans were to head down to Colorado and visit several different hot springs and spend my vacation in luxurious relaxation! My dog and I started off near Bozeman, MT, went to Billings to meet up with a buddy I haven't seen in some time and buy the parts I needed for the Mr. Heater, then went south out of Billings. I made it nearly to Belfry (and the Wyoming/Montana border) when I decided that I was really tired from my lack of sleep the night before. I pulled off at a rest area and napped on the couch in the back for a couple of hours without popping up the camper. When I got back up and going it was nearly dark.
I followed 120 south through Cody and on into Thermopolis. There are several hot springs to choose from in Thermopolis. By the time I got to Thermopolis it was about an hour before they closed their pools for the night. I opted to go for a quick plunge and sauna mostly because I was in need of a shower. Plus, I got in for a discounted price because they were closing soon. After my quick shower and soak, I got back on the road. I had intended to find somewhere closeby to sleep for the night. However, my nap earlier in the day had energized me and I love driving at night anyhow, so I left there at about 10 and started driving.
I hit Riverton, then Lander where I caught US 287. I followed 287 south-east for about 40 miles or so till I got to a small town called Jeffery City. I don't know what time it is at this point, but for the sake of my story here I'm going to say it was going on 1:00 AM and I'm probably pretty close. I looked at a map and decided that I could either follow 287 all the way to Rawlins @ I-80, then backtrack to the west to Hwy 789 or take a dirt road (Crooks Gap Rd if you care and zoom in on the map far enough) that would be a direct shot south and cut off about 80 miles in the process. I decided to drive a little ways down the dirt road.
My decision making process may have been slightly affected due to the late hour, but I started down the dirt road. It was really hard packed and nearly like driving on pavement. I was doing 45 for about the first 15 or 20 miles. Then the road got a little worse...and then a little worse...and worse yet...and then I was doing about 7MPH and that was too fast!
I drove on this road for about 3 hours or so and then pulled off to let my dog out of the back and have a snack. After he jumped out I climbed in and sliced some salami and cheese to eat with crackers. I was munching on that when I thought that I should poke my head out and check on Buddy. The heater was running inside the camper so I couldn't really hear anything outside. As soon as I poked my head out I heard coyotes...and LOTS of them...and CLOSE! I would guess they were 10-15 of them within a hundred yards of my truck. My dog is very friendly and loves other dogs, so my immediate fear was for him. If you didn't know, coyotes will lure dogs out and kill them. I called and I think that either the tone of my voice or the coyotes had scared him because he was there and loaded up immediately! A pack of coyotes, if they're hungry and desperate enough, will attack a human. My heart was racing as I got the camper closed up and got into the cab of my truck!
I continued on, now fully wide awake and any trace of weariness had left me! This dirt road was a total of about 70 miles from pavement to pavement with absolutely nothing in between...except a lot of coyotes and presumably antelope and jack-rabbits. I came out at I-80 at a small oil drilling town called Wamsutter. I found an empty lot in town where I would not be in the way of any kind of work activities in an hour when people started going to work! It was 7:00 am when I popped up the top of my camper and climbed into bed for a few hours of rest. That 70 miles took me 6 hours to drive! So much for a short cut!
I'll abbreviate the rest of the trip to avoid the need to hire a publisher for this story. I made it to my intended destination of Ridgway, CO later that day after a few hours of sleep. Just outside the town of Ridgway is Orvis Hot Springs, the single most wonderful hot springs that I have ever found in my travels! One of the things that is unique about this hot springs is that it is clothing optional. It's not for everyone, but on the other hand it doesn't take long before you hardly even notice that you or anyone else is naked. I don't think that I speak for myself when I say that it is a wonderful feeling of freedom to enjoy the hot springs in the nude! Besides the clothing optional aspect of this hot springs, the other thing that makes this place wonderful is the way that it is built. It is all built using natural stone around the pools of water and the walkways around the area. The bottom of the largest main pond is covered with many inches of gravel...that feels really good on the bottom of your feet! There is natural looking vegetation, shrubs, bushes, trees, and grass that grows right up to the edge of the pools. At night the lighting is taken care of by having lights on the ground at the base of some of the trees that point up towards the branches of the trees and then reflect a soft glow over the area. This serves very well to avoid over-saturating the area with light and disrupting the wonderful stargazing opportunities! On a cold night, with the steam rising up off of the several pools, this lighting also serves to produce an almost otherworldly or movie set like effect. It really is something very cool to experience and words do not do this place justice!
The sauna is one of my favorite features of this place. I am a huge fan of saunas and this is a pretty good one. I only wish that the "Lobster Pot" that is situated just outside of the sauna were instead a cold plunge and that perhaps the Lobster Pot were relocated elsewhere. That is the only thing that I can think of to make this place any better.
I stayed here for several days just relaxing and enjoying the wonderful water and sauna. I then decided to take off and head to another hot springs that I had heard about that was about 4 hours away. I visited this and several others in the area over the next week or so. I then heard a weather report that a significant snow storm was on the way. I really wanted to experience Orvis hot springs with a foot and a half of snow on the ground, so I made the decision to head back over that way.
The roads were horrible and I was going up and over Monarch pass, elevation 11,300 feet, in this storm! Fortunately I had really good studded snow tires on my truck along with the extra weight of my camper. I had no problems whatsoever! I made my way back to Orvis and finished out the remainder of my vacation there.
I got back just in time. Another cold weather system was on it's way through and I got home just as the first of it hit. I was having problems with my furnace through much of my trip and I still am. I made contact with an older guy that works at an RV repair shop in Delta, CO called Jims Outback RV. Make note of this part of the story if you are still reading, dear dedicated reader. These folks have an RV junkyard on their property and sell all sorts of different RV parts. The old guy that works there is something of an expert on just about every heater ever put in an RV of any kind. They were just plain nice folks that were a pleasure to do business with. The problem my furnace was having was very intermittent. It would work and then it wouldn't. It turned out that the ignitor was sparking in the middle of the electrodes instead of at the end where it was supposed to spark and thus was not igniting the propane. It's having a different issue now, but I guess I'll have to save that for the next book!
