Winter Camping at The Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario

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