So the mister, daughter, dogs and I traveled to the family redoubt on the Suwannee River for the holiday, reserving the use of a camper for ourselves, and guess what? We can’t get the fucking heat to work. And it’s like 40 degrees now with a low of 28!
Since it’s a camper, there’s no fireplace either, though there is a fire pit, beside which I’ve ensconced myself:
We have scads of relatives around here, but due to the influx of visitors plus Byzantine pet considerations, it appears we’ll have to farm the kiddo out, and the mister, the dogs and I will spend the night in an unheated camper. We’ve been in touch with various kin who are engineers, electricians and HVAC specialists, but to no avail thus far.
The mister and I have therefore deployed our alternate strategy, i.e., alcohol. (FSM bless and keep valued commenter Betsy, who passed along the homemade cider recipe keeping me tolerably warm and in good spirits now).
For tomorrow, we’re in charge of the turkey, which is currently brining in a cooler. If it doesn’t freeze, we should be okay. At least we have a nice view:
BGinCHI
This reads like either a thinly veiled allegory of Florida itself or a Cracker cry for help.
opiejeanne
Camping is my idea of hell. Camping without needed heating is one of the lower levels.
Gin & Tonic
@opiejeanne: I like camping. I like Thanksgiving. I view them as distinct events.
suzanne
@opiejeanne: WORD. Camping would be considered cruel and inhuman punishment if you made prisoners do it. I fail to understand why anyone would do it for “fun”. I like pooping in a toilet. My idea of a vacation involves pooping in a REALLY NICE toilet, not in a hole in the ground.
Elie
Happy Thanksgiving Betty and all juicers!
Frankly, I hate being cold, but I think you will end up ok… If you have something that could serve as a hot water bottle, you can heat up some water to make sleeping a little easier by warming the bed first or putting near your feet. My feet are always the worst!
aimai
Yikes! Just like our ancesterrrrrrs! Betty: the main thing is that you have internet connectivity. The girls and I are baking pies and making soup and various things. We will be thinking of you and trying not to shiver in sympathy.
Gin & Tonic
@suzanne: My idea of a vacation involves pooping in a REALLY NICE toilet, not in a hole in the ground
Haven’t traveled much, have you?
Gravenstone
If its only going to 28 F overnight, then you at least have no fear of your brined turkey freezing, Small consolation under the circumstances.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Cold sucks. That’s why we’ll all be in toasty Tela, Honduras over Christmas. Well, that, and I have friends there, and 6 year old daughter hasn’t been yet and I want to infect her with the Tela bug as early as I can.
NotMax
Luckily, you can go to one of the retailers open tomorrow and get an electric blanket and extra-long extension cord.
(ducks)
max
And it’s like 40 degrees now with a low of 28!
Oh. 28. BALMY.
For tomorrow, we’re in charge of the turkey, which is currently brining in a cooler. If it doesn’t freeze, we should be okay.
Bringeth the turkey inside that it might partake of the heat of thy movable domicile. For the air inside shal nott be very warm.
The mister and I have therefore deployed our alternate strategy, i.e., alcohol.
Well, if you have a good sleeping bag, you should be fine. (It was cold (like 18 or whatever) in the mountains of New Mexico, but I had an USArmy arctic sleeping bag, so the only problem was the condensation of my breath into spit which collected on the zipper.) If you leave some windows open, you can use an alcohol lamp or something. (Without heat and thus air flow you kind of need the air circulation or you could gas yourself even without a lamp.)
I just finished up the cranberry jelly and next, it’s on to the potatoes and stuffing.
max
[‘Being intelligent I am, of course, indoors for this.’]
NotMax
Why am I now picturing the Cracker couple, sound asleep, with a turkey nestled between them?
Poopyman
Three dog night?
Well, no, it’s not that cold, luckily for you two-doggers.
bd of mn
When my kid was in Boy Scouts we did a bit of winter camping, he has the “Zero Hero” patch (I was safely esconsed in a heated cabin for that, mostly because two other dads voluteered to be in the cold with the kids…)
Nowadays roughing it is being on the opposite end of the hotel floor from the ice machine…
jharp
Don’t mind sleeping in the cold like that. Actually like it.
But it is a real drag getting up in the night for a bathroom break.
WereBear
Turkey goes on fire being deep-fried, solves all your problems.
Comrade Jake
Remember folks that it’s actually less safe to wash the turkey – you just end up spreading the bacteria all over the kitchen.
Ferdzy
Oh dear.
When I was a kid we did the opposite of the (possibly mythical) ignorant American thing of showing up at the Canadian border with your skis in July, and that was (the ignorant Canadian thing of) going south to go camping in Maryland, in March. With an unheated, uninsulated van and some pretty cheap sleeping bags. Who knew it snowed in Maryland in March?! Well, we did, at least after that weekend.
I’m not sure I’ve warmed up from that yet.
Lee Rudolph
If it gets cold enough to freeze brine, you’re in bad trouble quite independent of the turkey’s fate.
dp
My word. Those who live above the 30th parallel have no idea how unhabituated to cold we are. Stay warm, and have a happy Thanksgiving!
OzarkHillbilly
Betty, I used to celebrate T-day in the hills and hollers of Shannon Co every year (once woke up with 4″ of snow), and the traditional T-day dinner was spaghetti and meatballs w/ salad and garlic bread. You’ll make it as long as you have enuf pickling sauce.
khead
Such a great post.
Happy Thanksgiving Betty. Best of luck in not killing your fellow man before serving them.
NotMax
In honor of Chanukah, the best Hava Nagila video ever.
SiubhanDuinne
I am worried about the chickens you left behind at home. Will they be okay?
/now I just know I’ll sleep badly tonight
OzarkHillbilly
@jharp: That’s what the empty gatorade bottle next to the sleeping bag is for.
Aji
Camper heating systems are crap. Even, apparently, the new ones. Don’t bother wasting $$ on it; just go out and buy two or three cheap space heaters. You have electrical hook-ups, yes? That’s what they’re there for. Trust me; this is the voice of very hard (to the tune of -40 temps) experience talking. The place will warm up just fine, and pretty fast, and you’ll save yourself untold money and agita.
ETA: Just get the lower-voltage space heaters so you don’t have to worry about blowing the circuits.
OzarkHillbilly
@aimai:
Hmmmmm…. One of the main reasons I head for the hills (and hollers) is to get away from connectivity…
Aji
@SiubhanDuinne: Chickens will survive the Apocalypse. Nothing, but nothing, fazes ours. If we were gone for a four-day weekend, I doubt they’d even notice (they have plenty of ready access to food even if we’re not there with the scratch).
shelly
Suwannee, how I love ya, how I love ya….My dear ol’ Suwanneeeee.
Can kind of relate. Half the town went off the electrical grid early this morning, probably due to the Northeaster that roared thru. But despite assurances from PSE&G that the electric would be back up by tonight, I had visions of cold cheese sandwiches for Thanksgiving. Around 6pm when we were all sitting around a lone candle shivering, up came the lights, and I was never happier!
Belafon
You’ve decided you want to die quicker?
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: True story. About a month ago pretty near my house, on the road I drive to get to work, there was a dead skunk just outside the perimeter white line. But no stink. He must have gotten hit and killed without breaking the stink sack, and I guess there’s no death-sphincter-release action. He lay there for probably two days until some moron ran over the carcass and released the stink.
Gin & Tonic
@shelly: It wasn’t a Nor’easter.
/pedant
shelly
@Gin & Tonic:
It;s what our local station kept calling it
JPL
Global warming is a lie cuz Atlanta might break a hundred year old record tomorrow. We are freezing here but not camping, so that is good.
Chat Noir
@suzanne: Win.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: I have traveled plenty, but “traveling” is not the same thing as “vacation”.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aji:
Oh, I know that. But Thanksgiving Weekend? That’s a whole nother thing.
Aji
@SiubhanDuinne: They’re probably grateful. I know if I were a bird, I’d regard the two-legged types suspiciously the whole weekend, especially once the turkey runs out.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL: The good thing is that the Pinot Grigio I am taking to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow can stay in the car overnight and I don’t run the risk of refrigerating it and then blithely driving off tomorrow without it. It won’t get cold enough to expand and pop the corks but it will be beautifully chilled.
ruemara
Nope. camping is wrong, and camping in the cold is wrong. In fact, calling it camping is wrong because it’s really “survival”.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aji:
“As God is my witness, I thought Australorps could fly.”
opiejeanne
@Gin & Tonic: I view them as distinct events too.
I used to like camping, or at least the idea of camping back when we did that sort of thing, both in a tent and in a little camper that we owned before the third kid made her appearance, but I’m 63 now and I like sleeping in a bed and having an indoor toilet. I don’t sleep well when I’m cold and dirty, and having to get up twice in the wee hours to pee makes camping not as much fun.
Denali
What made me crazy about camping in the Okeefenokee was not the cold, but the size of the alligators lurking nearby. There are no alligaters(yet) in upstate New York.
tybee
family used to do the reunion thing at fannin springs or manatee springs off the suwannee
WereBear
You must not have seen the movie, Lake Placid.
Yatsuno
Betty, dear, I luvvers u, but:
U. R. DOING. IT. RONG.
Go invade a Motel6. Like naow.
Betty Cracker
Fuck! My shoes were literally on fire! Out now. Anyhoo. Mass update: our chickens are fine because the low where they are is like 50-something. We have a neighbor standing by for a temperature apocalypse, but chances are the girls will spend a more comfortable night than their owners. They have a nice cozy hen house to retreat into…
A cousin supplied a space heater, so we’re unlikely to literally freeze to death, but no one can figure out WTF is wrong with the heater. It’s a mystery.
The stars are un-befucking-lievable! You can see the whole Milky Way. I’m kind of out in the boonies where I live, but until you get way the fuck out, you can’t really see the amazing display that’s right under your nose. Truly amazing.
PhoenixRising
The heater: is it propane? Either you have no spark or you have no fuel. Check DC power bank & tank gauge. If both are adequately full…
There is probably a check valve for your safety in the propane line, preventing the fuel from reaching the spark.
ETA: There is a place east of the Mississippi where the sky isn’t broken (i.e. the galaxy is visible)? More details on the geography please. I know how to troubleshoot the heater in my camper.
ixnay
Here we are reading all the Carl Hiaasen we can lay hands on. Blessings on ye, southern folk. Here in Maine, we got rain, of the ugly, not-quite-freezing variety. Mr. Ixnay, on his way home from piano-man gig, has found himself on the far side of a tractor-trailer jack-knifed across the road.
Oh, and if the sky is clear, we have wonderful Milky Way. Yes, east of the Big Muddy. Maine is, despite our horrid governor, the way life should be.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
I grew up in a house without electricity or running water. Wood heat. Northern Minnesota.
Fuck camping.
Jerzy Russian
@Betty Cracker:
You got that right.
danielx
@Betty Cracker:
That’s the upside on being on the back end of a cold front…no other time when the sky is so clear and the stars so bright. Although I don’t even want to think about camping and then dealing with a turkey next day……
@opiejeanne:
It has its moments, those primarily being views you can’t get any other way….although freezing your ass off is a high price to pay.
R-Jud
Hot water bottles! Two per person. Fill ’em up, shove ’em in your blankets about half an hour before you want to go to bed. Kick down towards your feet when you get in. We do this when we camp in Wales towards the end of the summer and it never fails.
Citizen_X
Fuck all you anti-camping wussies. Why subject yourself to such discomfort? Because it re-introduces you to the real world:
Like the lady said.
Betsy
Wow, Betty, I am sure glad that cider recipe was so helpful. And I will glow from your shout-out for days.
As Ben Franklin said, beer (cider, whatevs, right) is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. A warmer night ahead and a good short break on the Suwanee to you.
(I miss clear springs and fireplace-heated nights in Old Fla.)
opiejeanne
@Citizen_X: I have a little cabin in the mountains for that. It has a nice new water heater and a bathtub. The only inconvenience is having to go downstairs to pee in the middle of the night. That and it’s 1200 miles away from where we live now.
Heading there next week because living with nature here outside Seattle isn’t close enough to nature and we thought we’d like to see the stars and deal with bears and mice and chipmunks and whatever else has decided to try to break in while we’ve been gone.