We are eagerly planning for our trip to CO in April. There’s a pile of supplies slowly accumulating as Amazon deliveries come in, and lists are being made for packing, meals, activities along the way, and camper readiness projects.

I will admit to being a bit of a pyromaniac, so I’m really looking forward to some good campfires on our trip. I have a box packed with newspaper and cardboard ready to go. Generally, you are not allowed to bring firewood along for the ride. Due to invasive pests, you are only allowed to burn local wood, and we usually scour the campground for downed branches for our fires. Sometimes it’s hard to find good, dry wood, and those fires are hard to start and keep going.

My experiment for this trip is to see if homemade fire starters will help promote awesome campfires. John has been busy building kitchen cabinets, so we have a supply of sawdust in the “cabinet shop” (aka the downstairs bathroom awaiting renovation). Armed with some soy candle wax and our next empty egg carton, I got to work – more fun than work.

The wax came in flake form, and I used an empty jam jar to melt it in a pan of hot water. There’s a lot of air in those flakes, so a full jar melts down to about half full.

I cut the top off my cardboard egg carton and filled each cavity with sawdust and wood shavings. Then I poured the melted wax in to fill the carton. This took several meltings of wax, and I used the full one-pound bag for a dozen fire starters. In between pourings, I mashed the shavings down with a wooden skewer and added more to fill the cavities. Once hardened, the carton was easy to slice into 12 pucks.

Hopefully, these will burn long enough and hot enough to get my campfire blazing. I’ll post photos from our trip!

We have enjoyed a few nights in our scamp this winter when we visit my dad in NH. Even though we are welcome to stay in his house, it’s fun to sleep in the camper. One morning it was 11^o outside, but we can keep the camper toasty warm with a little cube heater and a pile of blankets. A big upgrade this winter was an electric blanket. We turn it on after dinner and it warms the foam mattress topper so we can slip into a toasty bed.

We have 2 trips planned for April. The first one will be a short jaunt up to northern VT to view the total eclipse. This will be our “work out the kinks” trip before heading west to CO for 3 weeks. We will keep our fingers crossed that our winterizing was successful – flushing out the antifreeze from all of the lines and hoping for no leaks. We’ll do a thorough cleaning and airing out to freshen it up, and restock the kitchen.

When we purchased the camper, the only color choice we had was for the cushions – we chose blue. Everything else is white or beige with brown cabinet doors. This summer is my chance to brighten it up a bit and make it more cozy and homey.

First off – new curtains! I picked out some nice fabric and made them with a light fabric lining. The double layer should help with light filtering for sleep, and the light color (I hope) will help keeping cool in the summer sun (we opted out of adding an A/C unit, so everything we can do helps). I could have just sewn a tube along the top of each curtain, but I decided to add tabs instead to reduce bulk and make them slide easier. After sewing on 75 tabs, the curtains are ready to hang!

Another upgrade that was necessary for future trips is to change out our mattress. The bed consists of the dinette table dropped down and bench cushions spread out. Even with a foam topper, the factory cushions are too hard and sleeping more than 2 nights results in a very achy body. John reminded me that we would be on the road for 3 weeks, so we had to do something. We ordered a king sized foam mattress, bought an electric knife on marketplace, and went to work. It was much easier than I had expected – and fun. We removed the old cushion, traced around them on the new foam, and cut away. We leave the bed set up full time in our camper, and still have a small dinette that seats 2. We replaced those cushions, too, to make that a more comfortable spot to sit. The electric knife worked so well! The camper is still hours away in NH, so our eclipse trip will be the first test.

Foam cutting action reel-

https://youtu.be/Oob_aCpPOFo

Another big upgrade in the works is new cabinet doors. John will make a prototype to try out, and since we only have a few days between trips, the rest will be a late spring/summer project. Until then, we wish for no snow on the ground to hook up the camper and clear skies for eclipse day. We’ll post photos!