Winter Camping at The Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario

Mercator

This past weekend we joined the Southern Ontario TearJerks for a winter camping adventure with members from Ontario and Michigan attending.  There were some home built teardrop trailers as well as a LG 5-wide, a T@G and another T@B.  Although we were there for the coldest day of the year, so far -25 ° C (-13 ° F) we had a great time.  The organizer of the event had built a modified Viking tent that had a wood stove for heat.  Sometimes the temperatures inside the Viking Tent reached 25 ° C + (77 ° F).  It was such a success that there is talk of making it an annual event on the Ontario Family Day weekend (USA President's Day).  We would love to see other T@B owners join in the winter fun!

Our T@B has the Atwood furnace and was more that capable of keeping us warm day and night.  In the morning, however, the windows were covered in condensation (from our breathing) so we cranked up the heat and used the Fantastic Fan to exhaust the air.  This drew in the colder, dryer outside air and mixed it with the humid warm air and  we soon got rid of the condensation. Even at these cold temperatures the furnace only ran about 50% of the time.  I am not sure how the Alde system would perform in these temperatures - does anyone know? There are electric hookups at the sites and we tried our portable electric 1200 W heater, but preferred the propane as the electric heater took up floor space and was noisier.

It may be hard to see in the photos of the T@B, but there is snow on the roof which shows how well insulated these trailers are as the inside heat did not penetrate enough to the outside shell to melt the snow.






Feeding Chickadees


Lake Huron at Grand Bend


Modified Viking Tent - with wood stove inside

jkjenn

Ray and Vida, you are my kind of folks! Love it!

Mercator

I forgot to mention that at The Pinery there are heated washrooms, laundry rooms and showers (which have heated floors too.)

ChanW

Looks like a great time!

We enjoyed Ontario winter camping in 2014 at McGregor Point Prov. Park up on the Bruce Peninsula. 

That Lake Huron can look pretty darn desolate at that time of year, eh?

Temp got down to minus -5F at night, and the Alde worked great, no problem at all warning it up in the morning (we sleep with no heat). Getting up and out in my long johns to visit a tree in the middle of the night was a challenge, however!

We also loved the nice warm clean bathrooms...

jcfaber1

Chan, what do you think they have empty plastic coffee cans for?

John

 BTW if it wasn't so far away, we would love to join!

ChanW

Thanks for the tip John. No illustration necessary. B-)

firefly

hi there Ray and Vida love the picture of Lake Huron I didn't get much of a chance to visit the downtown core this event was a lot of fun and hope that next year more will attend this event 

Ratkity

Holy moses!! Them northern Tearjerkers (TJ) are "cray"!! Look at all dat white stuff on everything!! LOL

I'm a member of the Chesapeake Bay TJ Chapter - joined when I got captured by LG's Reverse Teardrop in early 2010 - TJs are diverse, fun, insane and the most wonderful people I've ever met (no matter what Chapter).  My insane Chapter has many gatherings combined with many other area TJ Chapters and I am fortunate to have been at several gatherings with the founder and original members of the TJs (hugs to Todd B!). 

You folks look like you had a blast - what a cool thing that Viking Tent was! Geesh! Thanks for sharing the pictures. I love seeing them all.

Mercator

boo said:

Mercator said:

I forgot to mention that at The Pinery there are heated washrooms, laundry rooms and showers (which have heated floors too.)

... 

To our surprise, all water pipes in the campground froze. 
I am curious as to how Pinery kept their water lines from freezing?.

The bathhouse and laundry are constructed to the Ontario Building Code - similar to a house.  The water and plumbing lines are all below the frost line or inside the heated structure.  Of course, all of the water lines elsewhere in the park were shut off and winterized.