Quote:
Originally Posted by abby15
TOTAL NEWBIES**
My husband and I (chrisy) just bought an Eddie Bauer for the two of us and our three golden retrievers. We live in northern Wisconsin and want to use in fall and spring with low temperatures as well as leave from here and drive south in midwinter. Our temps the last 2 years in January and February have had wind chills of 30+ below zero. We are keeping it in a heated garage. We have been given several recommendations when we drive south including 1)nothing will freeze
while you're driving secondary to the constant motion 2) keep the propane
heater going- though illegal in some states 3) keep it winterized until you get 2 days south of Wisconsin.
Problems with all of these: 1) can we use it as an "aluminum tent" while winterized with the potable antifreeze --or are we going to smell that/is it toxic ??
2)does constant motion really work when we will be stopping along the way before we get to warmer destinations or use the propane heater for the night??
We have been following the forums and know that there are many people
using this in cold weather and for skiing etc. We would really appreciate
input as to how this is accomplished.
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Chrisy,
We were "newbies" last year and departed from PA on 1/2/15 with day temp 28° and night time low 10-15°. The forum was very informative on how to travel in the winter heading to warmer weather regions. Since we were very adventurous heading to popular snowbird locations without advance reservations, we were able to take our time and stayed informed of weather conditions looking forward 48-72 hrs. in the due path of our planned journey. We did indeed use our Airstream as an "aluminum tent" and for 10 days! Our planned route, like many others was to get "out of dodge" (freezing weather) ASAP but safely. We did adjust our route as weather changed constantly. To avoid a huge ice storm...we decided to head south of route 10 as we did not want to be stuck in a interstate type campground for several days until ice storm thawed. So we kept going south and eventually de-winterized on our tenth day at a full hookup site in Big Bend National Park. We stayed 95% of our 93 nights in state, county and national parks. Enroute to warmer weather in southwest (AZ, CA, NV, UT) we found campgrounds with at least electric so we supplemented our house heater (propane) with a small thermostat controlled electric heater ( in addition to wool blankets and long thermal undies) and we survived 10 nights.
As we were still only beginning to understand our energy needs...we were very conservative with our house heater keeping the thermostat at 55-60°. Our refrigerator ran 24/7 since two days prior to departure. Only have unopened bottle of olive oil congeal but no other problems.
We used the trailer kitchen for all "simple" meals (warmed up homemade soups), instant Starbucks coffee, and disposable tableware. Campground showers were chilly but we survived.
The Allstays app was a tremendous help in securing campgrounds wherever we were...do not know how we would have managed without. Often we did not have adequate Verizon connection to access internet. We never arrived at a campground without an available site.
Highly recommend Allstays or similar app or reference.
Hindsight, we would have been way more comfortable setting our house heater at more comfortable temp to thaw us more quickly. Now we know two 30 lb. propane tanks last a long time and refill stations were plentiful in the southwest. There were one or two nights where we would have been better off had we just stayed at a convenient hotel. But we travel with a 19 yr. old blind poodle and she is easier to manage in our little Flying Cloud. We had a wonderful time with our first snowbird adventure....
This year we are trying Florida for a month in March and yes, we did make advance reservations! Enjoy your Airstream adventures with your three pups!
See you down the road,
FCloud9
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