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The age old question for winter camping is … do I sleep in a heated tent or my truck?

Winter Camping

Truck Cap

  • Resistant to heavy snow, ice, wind
  • Doesn’t need to be dried out like the tent if it gets wet/snow covered
  • No set up or take down time for the tent
  • Truck cap can leak a bit in heavy rain
  • Usually plenty warm once I’m under the covers
  • Have access to the main power board so I can easily switch on and off lights
  • I won’t bring the heater near the truck due to the fire risk. If I burn up a tent or sleeping bag, it’s not the end of the world, I have a hunting knife to cut the tent in an emergency.

Heated tent

  • Even in quite cold weather, with wind, rain and temperatures in single digits, the heater can make it toasty in a few minutes inside — warm enough to strip down and sit above the covers, although at that point I usually turn down the heat
  • Usually drier then the truck cap as the heat in the tent keeps the water evaporating off the top and sides of the tent, although sometimes snow can melt and pool in part of the tent
  • Gets cold relatively quickly when the heater is turned off
  • Can be drafty on a windy night, even with the heater on as wind blows under the fly
  • Colder then the truck cap when I wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning, at least until I can spark up the heater
  • If I want electricity in the tent, I have to run a power wire from the truck to the tent

The heated tent is definitely more comfortable in the winter then truck cap. But it’s a real pain if I have to take the tent home, wet and dry it out. Even setting up a tent for one night is a lot more work then the truck cap. For multi-day camping trips in the winter though, the tent is the winner.

January 7, 2019 Evening

Good evening! Made it through a Monday. Next Monday is Coldest Week of the Year 🌬. Good time for my heat to quit working in my apartment, that is this week. Right now, it’s mostly cloudy and 18 degrees in Albany. There is a north breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. Hasn’t been much in the way of warmth today, but it will change tomorrow. Things will start to thaw out at 9 am tomorrow. 🌡️ Maybe then once the heat is fixed, it will have a chance to heat back up, although things are working okay up in my bedroom with the electric heat. Getting fixed today. Which is good, it’s winter!

I wanted to get my flu shot today, 💉 but they had run out of vaccine at CVS. I am thinking I will try to stop somewhere else this evening, maybe Hannaford or one of the pharmacies I pass on my way out the Guilderland Town Hall for the IDA Board Meeting over the proposed apartment complex in Albany Pine Bush.🌲 Yeah, I should have done this months ago, but I always bad and better late then never. I also need to get gas for my truck.⛽ Happy Monday.

The local bus home is slow with the rush hour traffic, 🚗🚙🚚🚛🚒🚌but that’s to be expected. I only am going to Delaware Park and Ride so that will hopefully give me enough time to get gas and the flu shot before the public hearing. 🍖🍛 Then after the hearing I’ll stop and get some groceries.

Tonight will snow, mainly after 2am. Cloudy 🌨, with a low of 23 degrees at 8pm. Eight degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 8th. Maximum wind chill around 19 at 6pm; South wind 7 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. .In 2018, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 16 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1878.

Tomorrow will start out quite icy. Freezing rain and sleet likely before 7am, then freezing rain likely between 7am and 10am, then a chance of rain showers after 10am. I don’t care, Big Red gets to sleep into tomorrow. The bus will get me to work. 🚌 Then cloudy, with a high near 42. ☁ South wind 8 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph. Assuming the wind doesn’t blow everything away,🌪 it actually might thaw things out inside, although I’m sure the electric heat will make my bedroom toasty tonight and the power company rich. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Little or no ice accumulation expected. New sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

This morning, I had some trouble getting the truck out of park in the cold, 🅿 as there is a speed sensor that somewhat malfunctions at below 40 degrees and is really bad below 25 degrees. Eventually it always clears and I am able to proceed, but it’s annoying. Usually after 10 minutes of driving, or two restarts of the truck, everything clears out and my cruise control and park lever works fine. I don’t drive it enough in the cold for it to be a problem, and honestly if it’s only happening a few times a year it’s not worth the money to get it fixed properly, at least until the problem gets worse. At least with the solar it cranks over easily. The accessory battery fully charged adds to the cold cranking amps rather than detracting from it before I permanently mounted the panel.

If you ask me my opinion, I wish winter would be over now but I am sure we still have three months left. ❄ I don’t know how I make it through the cold each year, especially when I think about it mid-summer but I do. Give me a hot and humid day in the summer over the cold. The cold doesn’t bother me as much as the cold rust belt winters in New York. And the beat goes on, on, and on, or so does Cher sing on the radio. 🎤

At least with my lighting system I built, I have nice soothing colors at night 💡and I feel like when I am home and awake I can afford to keep the heat at comfortable temperature for sitting up and reading a good book. 📚 I sometimes put a pretty downloaded movie on my laptop with the Bluetooth headphones but I find it hard to keep my interest, as I find staring at a screen really boring. I do kind of like listening to YouTube videos like those about off grid living, homesteading, farming and electronics but watching them I find really boring.

That said with work and everything else lately I’ve just been so busy. 💤Plus lately I find myself going to bed increasingly early as I’m tired and I preform so much better when I’m not sleep deprived. That said many mornings I awake pretty early, although many times I’ll lay under the covers until the alarm rings. I hate winter, I look forward to having the fresh air from the windows open again.

As previously noted, next Monday Starts Coldest Week of the Year 🌬 when the sun will be setting at 4:46 pm with dusk at 5:17 pm. On that day in 2018, it was cold but sunny and temperatures between 16 and 3 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 30 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1932. Well, back before my time.

Research Ponds

January

The month of January is the coldest month of the year, if the thermometer is to be believed. It’s not the grayest or snowiest month of the year, or even the most harshest month of the year (a time reserved for February). While the days are slowly getting longer in January, the growth in daylight is small compared to months to come.

Cold on Snake Mountain.

We will go out skiing and snowshoeing, spending time riding snowmobiles and enjoying nature’s gift of the snow. It won’t always be perfect weather, but like every season we must make the most of it. It’s winter, and it only lasts for about half of the year in New York State.

Moving Down the Hill

There will be days where we will go outside, and the mercury won’t even reach 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind is whipping down from the North. There will be days and weeks when the roads are covered with ice and snow. People will struggle to find parking spots in the city, as parking spots are replaced with ice covered patches and snow banks. Driving will only be nice this time of year, because the insides of cars will be toasty. It’s going to be very winter-like out there for the next month.

Southern Adirondacks

At the same time, there will be the much needed winter thaw. We might finally for a few days loose all of the snow, and it get up into the balmy 40 degrees range. Winter doesn’t always mean that it’s going to be supercold, and indeed, we must certainly will see a brief mud season during January for a couple of days when the sun makes us think of a false spring.

Stream Down

January is when we get over the Christmas Season high. The lights on the trees are taken off, the Christmas trees are dumped into the brush pile to be chipped sometime when spring comes in another five months. The colorful wrapping the presents have come in are now charred down to nothing but ash. New Years Eve celebrations are just a memory, as we wake up hung over on this first day of the year.

Snow Covered Woods

We will all promise ourselves to do better this year then last year. Whether or not we will live up to it in the new year, is a totally different thing. Maybe we will do good for this month of January, then fall down in subsequent months. Regardless, in many ways, January is a month of great hope that we can change and overcome our human fallacies. A benchmark, that is pretty meaningless, but one we must find ourselves embracing every year.