We took the "new" camper on her maiden voyage this week. We left Wednesday with high hopes and headed to Bear Creek Lake State Park in Cumberland, Virginia, which is (thankfully) only about 39 miles from home, for a five day camping trip.
Right now, it's 6:44 a.m. Friday morning, and I'm blogging from my bed. At home. We made it roughly 33 hours before we came home. And that's not counting the quick trip home late Wednesday afternoon to bring back the dog, or the midday Thursday trip into Buckingham to go by work.
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| Ollie was not having fun and was glad we brought him home. He takes up A LOT of room in a small camper. |
What we've learned: Bear Creek Lake State Park is TINY. The only place to swim is a fairly nasty looking lake. We did kayak in it but I couldn't see even a couple of inches into the water. It's very brown and murky.
They do have a nice archery instructor, and J thoroughly enjoyed her lesson.
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| The park ranger giving J a lesson. |
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| She's pretty good. This was with her longbow. |
And, most importantly: we learned that the air conditioner unit on the camper is NOT able to handle near-100 degree temperatures with 90% relative humidity.
It was so.freakin'.hot yesterday that I gave up and told Dave and J that I wanted to come home to sleep. We cleaned up after dinner, got in the truck, and hightailed it to the land of air conditioning and working internet. I was dripping sweat by the time I finished cooking dinner--with the doors and windows open, because by then the sun was down and it was cooling off outside, if not inside. There was no way I was going to sleep in the camper last night.
The rest of the week/weekend is supposed to be cooler. I'm contemplating pulling the window unit out of the bedroom window, taking it with me, and hoping I can find a window it will fit in. It would be nice to have some supplemental a/c for sure!
The other issue that we're finding with the camper is that the gray water holding tank is very small. We haven't taken an actual shower in there and I've been REALLY careful about not using too much water in the kitchen. I only dumped the water from the macaroni and hot dogs last night; all the water from dishes has been carefully dumped outside in the fire ring to prevent filling the tank. And yet, with only 1.5 days of a 5 day trip done, the gray water tank is showing 3/4 full!
I guess we're going to have to stick to camp grounds that offer full hook up sites from now on to make sure that we don't have to go dump the tanks halfway through our trips!
The plan is to head back out there today after Jordan wakes up. I'm going to measure the windows and see if we can fit a window unit in somewhere. There is a huge storm coming through today followed by what passes for a cold front in Virginia in August--temps should be in the high 80's instead of the high 90's--so hopefully our little rooftop unit can keep up. Otherwise, we'll be buying a window unit TODAY to finish the trip.
To be continued...
UPDATE 8/12/12
Well, color me stupid. The a/c is fine. It was just frozen up because I was running it too cold/too long.
We took our small bedroom window unit back with us Friday afternoon and put it in the camper. It started bringing the temperature down nicely right away, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Dinner was just about ready by then (I'd put meatballs in the crockpot--outside on the picnic table--earlier in the day), so we had our meatball subs and played some UNO. The poor rooftop unit was still trying to work, but thankfully it was cooler in there because of the window unit.
We settled in for bed later that evening and all was fine when suddently there was an odd noise like something falling over, followed by a shriek from J. "What was that?" she yelled, then "I'M WET!" I jumped up, turned on the light, and discovered a chunk of melting ice had landed on her. I looked slowly upwards and then shined a flashlight inside the a/c unit from the bottom. With the flashlight I could actually see the wall of ice. DUH! So I turned it off and put a basin under it to catch the water as it melted.
By morning it was working perfectly, and it continued to work just great the rest of the trip. We took the window unit out Saturday afternoon and stuck it in the truck to bring home. We had a lovely day Saturday, including another archery lesson for J. This time Dave went with her and got to play with a crossbow. Later that evening I started a nice fire out in the firepit and Dave barbecued chicken while I made au gratin potatoes inside the camper. We sat out until after dark, playing cards and making s'mores. It was a fun way to spend our last evening camping.
We packed up today, then headed for the archery range to shoot the last five target lanes. We all took turns. It was pretty fun, except I lost one of J's arrows. Argh.
Packing the camper out is a lot less work than tent camping, as I'd hoped/planned. All in all I would call the trip a general success and a true learning experience. I can't wait for Labor Day to head out to Pocahontas State Park for our next adventure!
Park rating:
C 1 (tiny campgrounds)
B 2
W 3 (boring lake)
H 8
R ? (Cumberland State Forest
O 0
S 10
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