So we hung the curtains the day before our fateful trip! That morning we arose early- preparing to make our way all the way up to Palmer- in the middle of winter in the freezing cold!
As we left, The Ohana handled the road wonderfully!
We made our way up the Peninsula- pretty stoked that for the first time headed North during the winter, we were not in a hurry! Here is a gallery of us crossing the Kenai River up in Cooper’s Landing:
Whew! We cannot wait to get the edge of that camper cleaned up and treated properly! But alas, not till spring…
So we ventured forth! We stopped in Girdwood to give The Ohana’s previous owner an update / tour- and he showed us his new rig. It turned out super nice! Still… The Toyhome junkie in me couldn’t help but love what we had that much more. 😉
After a nice visit we were headed to Palmer to meet with our friend Josh Krull. We arrived safely, and had a wonderful time talking with Josh and his family, and playing some games into the night. He hooked us up with a copy of Captain Sonar as a Christmas present!!!! And also for our travels and time he gave me a copy of Aeon’s End Legacy with the reset pack- a game I had always wanted to try!!! Many Thanks Josh!
When it was finally for us to go to bed- we opted not to plug in and give our wonderful Kalcifer (The Kimberly Wood Stove) a try for the night. Please don’t be mistaken- we had full bathroom access to Josh’s place so this was in no way roughing it. We were lucky to get to try out winter camping in such a safe situation.
Laura wants me to emphasize something here; IT WAS COLD! Kalcifer fought us to stay lit or put out much heat. Though as beautiful as the wood stove was- it wasn’t sufficiently heating the RV. 😢 Laura asked if I could supplement some of the lack of heat with the propane stove. I opened up the gas and attempted to get it to light… After some back and forth we shortly discovered we had no propane in the tank! Bummer. Regardless we decided to snuggle up for the night. Here is a photo I took that night before closing the bed curtain and drifting off to sleep.
We stayed warm though- but that was simply to our awesome 9 inch thick memory foam bed, our blankets, and each other. It was -10 degrees that night. The next morning, though disappointed with the output of the wood stove, I chocked it up to needing more testing. Maybe I needed to open the flu wider next time or feed it more fuel… 🤷 The next night we would try again.
I can tell you one thing though- that morning I was determined to get us some propane! We headed to the closest gas station and traded in our tank. It was outdated so we purchased a new one with the proper OPD valve. After that we were headed to Home Depot to pick up the pieces we needed to adapt the gas line with a new valve that would connect to the new tank. Twenty dollars later, and about ten minutes of hand numbing work in the freezing cold we were set up with our new tank!
We spent that next day in Palmer, and during our return from the great HD we met one of Josh’s friends. They told me about a few good future ideas for The Ohana which I wrote down. It was then that Josh took a few photos of us with The Ohana.
We had another wonderful night hanging out with Josh and his family! After another evening of gaming we went back to the motorhome to give it another shot. I was not able to get the fire to burn hotter or more efficiently… 🤔 And even though we had gotten the propane going the automatic ignition for the furnace was not igniting the gas; perhaps the line needed properly purged of air first? In the end we decided to call it, knowing it would need addressed in the future, and slept through another cold night…
The next day we were headed home with no troubles along our journey! The only thing to note is when we arrived back- one of the ATV mirrors I had installed was cracked.
I hadn’t noticed it before on the trip, and I had no idea why. I notified Amazon and they okayed me to return them. I decided I was going to swap the mirrors off of Serenity and put them on the Ohana. I also theorized that the mirror had been perhaps cracked from a rock flying up and hitting the camper body, bouncing off and hitting the mirror. With that, I decided I would need to install mudflaps to prevent rocks from bouncing back, because there was no way I wanted the awesome mirrors from Serenity to get broken… So that was our next goal- mudflaps. Also a lot of the magnet catches on the screen door I had installed, some doubled up with super glue, failed being involved with moving operations in the cold. They would have to be repaired in the spring / summer.
The winter remained cold though- and so we pretty much halted work on the RV. We took the prior weeks as a lesson; sure it is hard not to be working on it but with the cold comes a lot of painful moments and less than satisfactory outcomes. When you equate it like that; it just wasn’t worth it.
In the end we had a great trip- but The Ohana needed a lot more work to be a reliable camping rig in the winter. See You All Next Time!
Geoff Murphy 5/11/2020