Isn’t it fun the way mother nature and good old New England weather can dash all of your plans? Well, that happened to us, but with a just fine outcome. My plan was to head to my dad’s in NH (where the Scamp has spent the winter) on Friday and spend the nice April weekend cleaning it out, flushing the antifreeze out of the lines and getting her all set for lots of upcoming camping. Nice April weekend, you say? Not the case. A big storm was heading straight to dad’s – 19” of snow forecast for Wednesday-Friday. OK, we’ll head up Wed. morning and pull the camper out to a spot that will be easy to clear and to make an easy get-away on Sunday.

We warmed up the Scamp with our little electric heater and went to bed with just a dusting of snow on the ground Wednesday night. We woke up to a very cold camper and the heater wouldn’t turn on – no power. At least 8” of heavy, wet snow had fallen overnight and trees and powerlines were down all over. I grew up with power outages from storms – we’ll be fine in a few hours. A few hours later, the house is now getting cold, and we’re all a lot older and less tolerant of these things. We were rescued by a friend who brought us a generator, so we had heat in the house. No lights or water (other than bottled water we brought for camping), but heat and a gas stove to cook on. Three wool blankets, a quilt, and down comforter kept us warm in the camper overnight.