Tag Archives: camper setup

Camping, Off-Roading, Fishing

The Beast Gets Some Upgrades

Hunter S. Thompson had a line in his book Generation of Swine that went “the days dragged by like dead animals.” I can’t think of a better way to describe these last few weeks. I’m not a fan of December to begin with, and this one has been clipped by the curveball that is COVID-19 to make it even more wretched than usual. The Beast has been having mechanical issues and I’ve been too low on funds to do anything about it on top of everything else.

It hasn’t been all bad however. One of the reasons I’m broke is that I spent all of my money on a badly needed propane heating solution for my camper. I did my reasearch and found that a Camco Olympian Wave 3 catalytic heater was exactly what I needed. They aren’t cheap at a couple hundred bucks apiece, but these heaters are the most economical way to heat a small space like my camper shell. The problem was finding one when I finally had the money to purchase it. They were sold out everywhere, and prices were over 300 dollars for the ones that were available on Amazon and Ebay.

I finally located one from an RV company in Tennessee and placed my order. Of course, I had to throw down on a hose and connecting equiptment, leg stands for portable use, a heater cover (the catalytic pad is sensitive to dust so you have to keep it covered when not in use) and a carbon monoxide detector. My friend Cole hooked me up with a 20 lb tank so that saved me some bucks. All in all it cost me around 350 dollars, but it was a great investment. Now I have the ability to cold camp anywhere I wish and stay warm. I’m going on almost 3 weeks using it an average of 5 hours a night and I’ve still got plenty of gas. I’m loving this little heater!

My new heater, weather station and CO detector with my aluminum collapsible table working as a heat deflector.

My heater emits passive radiant heat, so I have to put it right next to me to stay warm. It only warms what’s right in front of it. Since the only place to put it was right next to my cot, I repurposed my portable aluminum table to act as a buffer between the heat and flammable materials behind it. I also got a new weather station to replace the one I lost in the fire. I just love to know what the temperature and humidity is at all times, so getting a replacement weather station really makes me feel like my life is stabilizing somewhat.

This a different model of LaCrosse weather station than the one I had before. This one is more of an alarm clock than a weather station. One huge thing that really stood out to me was that this model comes with a nice Bluetooth speaker, so now I don’t have to watch movies and shows with just the sound from my phone’s internal speaker. This is only a small thing, but it has really made a world of difference in how I enjoy my entertainment.

Another thing I got for my camping rig was another string of remote control lights. I already had one strand up, but it was only long enough to stretch across half of the space I needed it to. It was also in only one color, I wanted to have a whole bunch of different colored lights if I was in the mood for that. Having good lighting is a huge part of making my space comfortable, so it is important that I get it the way that I want it. The lights were only 20 bucks, and I got 100 on a 33 foot string which wrapped all the way around easily.

Two of the light modes of my new light string.

They also have really crazy strobe light modes as well. If I’m feeling like getting wild I can just sync up both strings and let ‘er rip! It’s nice to be able to have fun with free power from my solar array.

As the year draws down to a close, the seas have become less favorable for fishing due to the predominant swell from the northwest. The fish stocks are pretty depleted by this time of the year as well. Despite this, I decided to go out and fish with my good buddy Beartits a couple of weeks ago. Beartits works as a fishing guide in Alaska in the summers, and inspired me to get a job in the same field. We’ve been friends for a while but I’ve never gone fishing with him.

It’s a mystery why he calls himself Beartits (his real name is Barrett) but one time he punched a bear that stole a fish from him. Maybe that’s where the name originates, I don’t know. Anyways, we went out on a sunny but cold morning. The fish weren’t really biting, but he got a nice ling cod and I caught my personal best canary rock cod. Canaries were illegal to keep until recently, so it’s nice to be able to keep these beauties. I think they are by far the most beautiful and tasty of the rock cod family. It was really large for these local waters, this fish was more the size of the ones you catch down in Big Sur.

We had these plus a handful of small rock cod. More than enough for some fish tacos!

I hope everyone reading this had the best Christmas possible in these trying times. Let’s hope the next year brings a return to normalcy so we can all get on with our lives. Summer seems such a long time away, I sure hope that this virus can get squashed so I can get on up to Alaska. Stay safe out there ya’ll!

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Camping, Off-Roading

I Dig My Rig

For this post I’d like to go into my camping rig. I’ve been camping and exploring in my truck (that I have affectionately named The Beast) for as long as I have owned it, going on 6 years now. We have had many off-road adventures and been to some truly epic places.

Over the years I would upgrade a little here, and a little there. Every time I went out I constantly thought of things I could use to inprove my overall camping experience. It wasn’t until last December when I had to move into my truck that I seriously got about making some major living improvements. My situation was pretty bleak so I needed to make quality of life adjustments right away.

First I did my best to plug the cracks to stop the wind from blowing through. Next I installed curtains for privacy and shade and installed a cargo net to keep my gear off the floor. The first week I absolutely froze, it was horrible. I realized I needed a heavy sleeping bag so I got a nice model from Coleman rated down to 4 degrees below 0. That bag was heaven-sent, it made sleeping outside in the 30’s tolerable.

At the time, I was sleeping on air mattresses that would constantly leak and grow mold in the damp environment, so the next big improvement I made was to get a metal cot frame and 7 inches of memory foam on top. This was a huge upgrade for me and well worth the money. It’s a twin XL frame which is long enough for my body. My ankles hang off a normal twin. It also allowed me to stow my four bins of camping & off-road equipment underneath my bed. This freed up a ton of room. I have two bins dedicated to my kitchen supplies, of which I added a lot of stuff to. I got collapsable bins for dishwashing purposes, I really like how they just open up and then collapse so neatly.

Back when I was in Louisiana last year, I had bought a power box for my trolling motor battery. It came with fuses and two 12 volt plugs built in, so I brought it with me here to California to use as my secondary power supply. I would just recharge it every 3-4 days with a battery charger. This grew tedious, so I installed a 100 watt solar system.

It’s been great fun to play around with. Not wanting to drill holes in my roof, I installed my solar panel with 3M heavy duty mounting tape. It is supposed to be like a metal weld in strength, but I attached metal zip-ties from it to my roof rack for peace of mind. My old trolling motor wet lead-acid battery wasn’t up to snuff so I bought a top of the line 300 dollar AGM sealed lead acid 100 amp hour battery that should be good for 5-10 years. I also got this Bluetooth module for my solar controller so I can monitor my system in real-time. It also graphs my daily usage so I can see if things are running optimally at a glance.

A closer look at my 12 volt system with 500 watt inverter.

With my setup I can charge my devices, run my weather station, my two mini-swamp coolers, and my LED lights. Utimately I want to get a 12 volt refrigerator to save me from the tyranny of constantly having to resupply my ice chest with ice on the trail. I had placed two orders on Ebay for a cheaper model of cooler that fell through with not enough time left to order another for my trip. It’s a bummer, but when I get back from Alaska I will get a good quality model that will be a better investment than the cheaper model would have been.

The only things left to do is to get some kind of reservoir and water pump installed for water, a water purification system, an electric shower, and a cell-phone booster. After this, I think I’ll be set. As far as off-road gear goes I just got this nice 150 dollar air compressor which is a necessity for off-road travel. My last one was a cheap 35 dollar piece of junk. I do want to get some traction mats and a hi-lift jack for getting out of sticky situations. A winch would be nice, but you can get a kit for the hi-jack that basically does the same thing.

My truck needed a lot of work done after a time of not being financially able to take care of needed repairs. I fixed the brakes first, and then replaced the left ball socket & left tie rod. I then got a new set of All-Terrain light truck tires and replaced the linkages on my sway bar. It’s good to be rolling with a truck at 100%. The Beast & I are rip-roaring ready to go out into the wilderness for sure!

The Beast ready to roll.

So that about wraps it up. It’s been the greatest thing to slowly build up my rig from miserable to somewhat baller! I made a truck bed into my own little bedroom. I can’t wait to get out and get off-road with my new setup. It gets really hot and really cold with barely any in-between, but I have really come to enjoy sleeping out in it. I can’t wait to sleep on a real bed when I am up in Alaska though. It’s been a year and a half since I have slept in a real bed and my back could really use a break!

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