A Snowy Farewell

Falling snow, delicate, ephemeral. A beautiful sendoff for my next adventures.

Greetings, after a long pause in entries. 

The time has come to leave beloved friends, family and my home church to begin my long and somewhat leisurely route back to Glacier National Park. The staff at the Crown of the Continent Research and Learning Center has invited me to expand my volunteer efforts through their “Citizen Science Ambassador VIP” program. YES!  I’ll participate at a greater level in the common loon surveys I assisted with last year. I also hope to work with the Park Service’s native plant nursery and restoration program.  My home for much of the winter of '25/'26. Thank you to my friend, Mark, for his hospitality in letting me use his driveway as my temporary home.

I send a huge “Thank You Brother!” to Mark for
letting me “surf” his driveway for most of this winter. It was a great blessing to have his support and company.

I had hoped wintering in Northern Virginia (NoVa) would be marked by the typical weather of our winters lately: little truly cold weather and virtually no snow.  HA!  True, January had some very warm temperatures, but that was followed by weeks of unusually cold temps, with lows often less than 10°F and highs unable to break out of the 20’s.  I occasionally checked the weather in West Glacier, Montana and found our temperatures to be significantly below theirs! Several snowfalls, including what many came to call the “Snowcrete” event, came and stayed much longer than usual.

Still, there is nothing more beautiful than snow falling. And this is what the Lord treated me with on my last day at home.

A Snowy Farewell

It was a good test for seeing if my Outdoors RV 22FQS would live up to its “4 Season” marketing. And I must say I was pleasantly surprised. For those interested in winter RV living, here are a few things I learned...

1. Heating via the propane furnace: 
   1. Quickly heats the entire interior and will keep the fresh, black and gray tanks from freezing. The furnace ventilation runs in the sealed underbelly where the tanks are also. Outdoors RV markets this as a 4 season feature and I have to say it worked. The only time I noticed any freezing in my fresh tank was when it was close to empty and I had the furnace off overnight in 10°F. I relied only on my space heater that night and the interior temp got down to about 51°F. Also, it keeps the flooring nice and warm for bare feet.
   2. The swing in indoor temperature is fairly noticeable, going from feeling much warmer than the thermostat setting (before the furnace shuts off) to several degrees cooler than the thermostat reading (before the furnace turns back on again).  I didn’t care for those swings.
   3. I prefer to heat with a space heater. The furnace is so loud it wakes me up when it starts. Tolerable when it only comes on a couple times a night. But in the coldest nights it cycled on about 8 to 10 times a night. Too reminiscent of repeatedly being awakened by hot flashes!
2. Heating with a space heater: 
   1. I started with a Comfort Glow 1500-Watt Portable Oscillating Ceramic Fan Heater that could be set to 750 watts, 1000 watts or 1500 watts that I bought at Camping World. It lasted about 8 months, in which it didn’t see any serious use until October. It died in early March, at which time I replaced it with a Dreo PTC Fan Heater.  The Dreo is quieter (hardly noticeable), can be set to maintain a certain temperature so it doesn’t run constantly if it doesn’t need to. So far so good.
   2. It is sufficient by itself to keep my RV warm when temperatures outside are roughly above the freezing mark. The extra insulation Outdoors RV puts in their ceiling, walls and underbelly kept it quite comfy.
   3. When in really cold temps, it seems that the space heater works well in tandem with the furnace to keep the RV at a more constant temperature.
3. When I heated only with propane during really cold temps (after the Comfort Glow broke), one 30lb propane tank lasted about 5 days. (Fridge was running on electricity, hot water heater on propane. My use of the stove and oven was normal.) 
4. Not surprisingly, when using the oven it was sufficient to heat the interior well.  But the thermostat did not seem to compensate for that heat. The furnace would come on even though it was plenty warm inside via the oven. I’ve read the thermostats that come with the Outdoors RV are not very good and that many people replace them. 
5. Using the white square insulating pad inserts for the Fantastic Fan vents in the ceiling really does help keep the warmth in.
6. On a sunny day, the skylights add warmth and decrease the need to use supplemental heat - true also in warm weather when the skylights can provide too much heat.
7. As I suspected the coolest part of the RV is the slide out dinette. I could feel cool air at my back while seated there. 
8. The Norcold refrigerator that came with the RV was billed as functioning to 0°F and I had no issues with it at all when the low was 5°F.
9. When I decamped from Pohick Bay Regional Park in December it was 25°F. At the dump station I did have a “Poopsickle” in my black/gray discharge pipe (my black tank usually leaks at least a little effluent into the discharge pipe even with the valve closed). I used a screwdriver and a long metal 1” diameter pipe to break it up. It had frozen to about 8” back from the opening. Other than the “Yuck” factor, it wasn’t difficult.

Hopefully, I will be posting more regularly through spring and summer. No doubt there will be some backtracking posts of last year’s events too.

Next Up: Bringing Henry Home

All photos and text are Copyright © Julia Flanagan unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.