All Froze Up

Yep, major DUOH! But I have an excuse…honest.

Normally, we keep a very close eye on the weather and temperatures.  We’re in a monthly site here at our South Carolina “home”, which has a reasonable price, plus electric.  Trying to be a little bit (okay, a lot) frugal, we try to keep the electric cost down to help the budget some.  This creates a bit of a quandary, to use less electricity means a greater reliance on the propane.

Being all set up in our site, to avoid having to break camp periodically to refill the Journey’s onboard propane tank, I’ve been running a small propane tank “teed” into the propane line.  With some careful use, I can get three to four days out of a tank before it needs to be refilled.  About 20 minutes to get it refilled, start to finish is worth it rather that moving the Journey.

Now with the winter weather that sometimes even hits South Carolina, I went ahead and insulated my fresh water hose that feeds into the Journey.

I insulated the hose up into the wet bay, I didn’t worry about the last foot and a half, I just looped it and attached it to the fresh water inlet.  Not to worry, with the furnace running, warm air is ducted into the basement compartment to keep the water system from freezing if the temps drop really low.

A pleasant distraction to my weather eye was an overnight stay with our grandsons Andrew and Owie.  We had a pizza and movie night with them, showing the movie The Wizard of OZ, which they had never seen.  It’s been years since Marti and I had seen it so it was a great movie choice.

After the movie, with the boys full of pizza, we put them to bed on the two pull out couches in our living room.  Because it doesn’t get the greatest heat from the furnace due to the ducting set up, we decided to use the heat pump (which can really toast your buns )to keep them warm as they slept.

Except the heat pump does not send warm air to the basement water compartment.  And, the heat pump doesn’t work well at temps below 40F degrees.

Of course, the overnight temp dropped into the low 20s.  Of course.

An early morning tapping on my shoulder by my bonnie bride woke me up.  “There’s no water and the toilet won’t flush”.  Uh oh.

I got up and checked, she was right, as she always is…no water.

Thankfully, in one of my rare moments of brilliance, I had filled the on board water tank just in case a water emergency should occur.  We’ve had two instances in campgrounds where their water system became contaminated or failed.  Being a big fan of showers, I always top off the water tank when we arrive at a campsite.

A flick of the onboard water pump switch and I was a hero.  Water abounded.  (Phew!)

So dawned a cold, cold day.  But did that slow down the mighty Geocachers?   Nope, bundled up, we headed out for a nearby park that had a puzzle to solve to find the geocache.

Hey, how come their water didn’t freeze?

There were certain math problems that had to be solved, first based on numbers found on the park sign.

Andrew used his math talents to come up with the coordinates to find the next clue.

As we wandered around looking for the next clue, Owie started running laps around the little park, he loves to run and it was a great way for him to keep warm.

We found the next clues on a plaque in the ground.

More math problems to solve to get the GPS coordinates.

With the coordinates in hand we went to find the cache.  We looked and looked and looked…and came up empty.  We finally gave up and grabbed some lunch, then headed back to the Journey.

But would Marti give up?  Not a chance, she used some more exotic technology – Google Earth! (Is that cheating?)

Armed with an exact picture of where the cache was hidden, we got ready to head back to the park.  Owie, though, decided he had enough geocaching for one day so he and I stayed behind and went to the campground playground, while Marti and Andrew headed back to the quest.

It warmed up quite a bit so Owie did what little boys do, some swinging,

and digging in the sand.  He’ll be well practiced in digging should we have to shovel for a cache someday.

Marti and Andrew came back victorious.  They found the cache.  Another notch on the hand held GPS unit.  :c)

Oh yeah, as the day warmed up, the hose thawed out with no damage.

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