1/8/12

Dry camping

What should I talk about after our first week?  Looking back on the past 6 days, I guess I should mention the very long cold nights we encountered while camping without electric hookups at Catalina State Park.  It was so pleasant during the day with temps being around 75 and cloudless blue skies.  But when the sun goes down it is a matter of minutes before the cooling starts.  We were always in the trailer for the night by 6:30.  That first night I thought we could get through the night without any heat.  At 1 AM we woke freezing and I fired up the catalytic heater (for the first time while camping).  We were kind of scared of it at first but by Friday morning it was our new best friend!

The next morning I expected the sun to rise early and bring an end to the cold.  Wrong, it was 8:25 before the first rays got over the mountains.

We hiked that day (Wednesday) and I have already posted those pictures.  That night I was so irritated that my laptop's battery was depleted and I could not tinker with the photos that I had shot that day.

Thursday we rode our bikes around the campground and took inventory of egg campers there.  We saw one 1995 Casita from Colorado, one 2007 Scamp from Alaska and one Escape.  Then we rode our bikes to Best Buy (not too far) and I bought an inverter that was supposed to be able to power up my laptop.  It didn't.  But it did work on the MiFi that was also depleted.  I decided that we needed to keep it as we plan to do a lot of dry camping.

Friday morning my husband took a very bad fall over a rock next to the dumpster.  He fell on his cheekbone messing up his face quite nicely.  Luckily there was a former EMT camped across the street who decided that nothing was broken.  I cooked and broke camp that morning.

We have been in Scottsdale for the past two nights enjoying the marvels of electricity.  Our plans are to head east tomorrow toward the Tonto National Forest.  There's no internet coverage there with my Virgin Mobile MiFi so I am not sure how long I can handle being offline.

Here's picture of our current home.


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  1. Fiddler Sheryl1/14/12, 9:35 AM

    It looks warmer over there than here in Georgia right now, but you're right about the cool down. Once I drove through Arizona in the summer and slept in the car overnight. I thought I'd freeze to death, and it was smack in the middle of August. Blasted hot during the day, but down to 30's at night. In spite of it all, hope you're having fun!
    You can teach a class for us in the spring on what to plan on for dry camping.
    You should be able to buy an inverter that has a regular power outlet on it. You could run the invertner from your truck cigarette outlet, and plug the laptop into it to charge the battery.

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