Heading home at the end of our two-week escape to southwestern Colorado. We hiked about 38 miles through incredible Colorado scenery. I read at least three books, we photographed several sunsets over the reservoir and we finally got to visit the Rio Grande Southern Railroad Galloping Goose Museum in Dolores.
We loved the Mancos State Park campground. Shady, quiet and rustic – just the way campgrounds used to be back in “the day.” Shady, however, presented a problem. We never got enough sun to fully solar charge our trailer batteries. After 13 nights of camping and despite all our panel-moving efforts, the batteries’ state of charge was down over 20 percent.
Lesson learned. We will soon be replacing our anemic lead-acid batteries with top-of-the-line lithium batteries with far more reserve capacity. I used a lot of data bytes researching options on our “move the solar panels back into the sun” days in camp. Orders will be placed Monday.
In addition to experimenting the with using solar panels in shady campsites, we also did a refrigerator experiment on the way home.
One of the big controversies among trailer owners is whether to run the refrigerator on propane when traveling down the road. One school of thought says to turn the propane and refrigerator off. It will stay cool, they say. The other school says if it wasn’t safe to run them on propane while traveling, manufacturers wouldn’t make that the automatic option.
With Dianne packing the freezer full of ice cream and meat, we’ve always left the fridge on, running on propane while traveling. We have an automatic emergency cutoff installed on the gas line if something were to sever the propane hose, so we feel relatively safe doing that.
Coming back from Mancos, we turned the fridge off. The freezer was -3 and the refrigerator about 35 degrees when we left. When we reached our final campsite eight hours later, the fridge was an acceptable 42 degrees, but the freezer had warmed to 35. The beer was still cold, but any ice cream in the freezer would have turned into a melted mess.
Lesson learned. Since we normally travel with lots of frozen food, we’ll be traveling on propane in the future. No need to risk melting our dessert when camping.
“Happy wife. Happy life.” My wife insists that I passionately believe that old adage.
To make my wife the happiest cook in the campground (or at least at our site in the campground), I modified the pantry in our Flagstaff 21DS. This four-beer project began with removing the factory shelves from the pantry.
In their place I screwed in a pair of Rev-A-Shelf heavy duty pull-out wire shelf stacks (model 5WB2-0922CR-1 fit our trailer), about $100 each from Amazon. These shelves fully extend and are rated for 100 pounds, which makes them perfect for a pantry. The lower unit bolted into the pantry floor. Remounting one of the factory wooden shelves halfway up provided a base for the upper shelf stack.
The shelves were mounted flush against the refrigerator side of the pantry, which allows space on the other side for cutting boards, griddle and other vertical objects. A pair of removable webbing straps keep the shelves from moving when we’re on the road.
Wife loves the new shelves. Husband loves them, too, especially when he discovers that someone has moved his flask of Cognac to the very back of the top shelf.
Next came the spices. We’ve seen many, many ideas about where to put a spice rack in the trailer. The person I need to make happy did not want anything mounted on an outside wall (too hot) or exposed to a window (no sunlight). My solution was to put the spices into the pantry.
I bought some six-by-nine-inch bamboo stackable drawer organizers from Lowe’s (about $6 each). Using my wife’s best one-inch-wide emery board nail file (she was gone), I sanded inch-wide notches in the sides for elastic straps to go across. The boxes were then carefully screwed into the fat part of the pantry door. With Amazon providing spice bottles and labels, my wife filled the racks with her spicy favorites.
The one downside to this arrangement was that the pantry door handle kept the door from fully opening. We couldn’t extend the sliding shelves past the spice boxes. After considering various options, I solved that problem by simply grinding a bit off the door handle bases. It’s a bit more difficult to grip, but the family cook says that’s a small price to pay for having everything so handy.
She’s happy, which means I’m happy. She even brought me another beer.
Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to tote our bicycles on trailer trips. With our previous trailer, we ultimately decided the best way to carry the bikes was on the front of our tow vehicle. We mounted a Curt front receiver for our Xterra and slid on our Swagman bike rack. Worked fine.
Then we upgraded both the trailer and the tow vehicle. Neither Curt nor anybody else made front receivers for our new Nissan Titan.
At the dealer’s suggestion, we ordered our trailer with the optional Lippert Jack-It bike rack, which fits around the electric jack on the front frame. Unfortunately, to be able to open the truck tailgate with the trailer attached required mounting the jack sideways. That meant removing the Jack-It.
We considered and rejected a few other options such as carrying the bikes in the trailer or in/on the truck. The best option seemed to be a variation of what other folks have done and simply mounting a receiver on the trailer’s back bumper and sliding in the bike rack. Not only would this get our bikes to camp, but by then moving the rack to the back of the truck, I could take the bikes to nearby trailheads.
The bike rack conversion turned out to be a three-beer project. To beef up the bumper to carry the load, we installed a pair of Mount-N-Lock Safety Struts (around $85). These supposedly increase the weight capacity of the bumper to 400 pounds according to the folks at eTrailer. To our reinforced bumper we bolted on an Eaz Lift RV Bumper Hitch (around $48 from Amazon). The hitch, rack and bikes weighed 100.8 pounds.
Mounting the bikes close to the bumper required moving the spare tire to another location, removing 43.2 pounds from the bumper. To do that, we bought a BAL Retract-A-Spare (about $100 from Amazon), which allows the spare to be carried under the trailer. It works just like the spare tire carriers found on most trucks and SUVs. A cable fits through the spare and is raised and lowered with a turn of a removable crank.
For ground clearance purposes, I wanted to put the spare as close to the axles as possible. While I would have preferred a back-of-the-axles location, the sewer drain plumbing on one side and the grill’s propane orifice on the other necessitated a front-of-the-axles mount. Three beers later, the job was ready for testing.
We hooked up the trailer, mounted our bikes to the back and did a 250-mile drive down the pothole-infested piece of pavement known as Colorado’s Interstate 70. Eying the bikes through the observation (backup) camera, they traveled solidly with no sway, and the spare tire came through still tightly mounted to the undercarriage of the trailer.
All that called for yet another brew or two.
Gone are our old pair of 65-amp lead-acid batteries. In their place sits a new LiFeBlue 200-amp, low temperature lithium iron phosphate battery.
After considering several options (including the popular Battle Born brand), we chose the LiFeBlue, which comes with Bluetooth battery monitoring. With my iPhone or iPad, I can look up the voltage, the state of charge, how many recharging cycles it’s gone through, the status of each cell bank inside and more. This is in addition to what I get from my battery monitor.
Then there is size. This 200-amp LiFeBlue battery fits in a battery box made for two group 24 or two GC2 golf cart batteries, which is what we already owned. Although Battle Born makes a 100-amp GC2-size battery, the group 27s that Battle Born and others sell would not have fit.
Another reason we chose LiFeBlue is that they offer an optional low temperature lithium battery. Most lithium RV batteries cannot be recharged in subfreezing weather. If the battery is located inside the RV/trailer, that may not be an issue. Ours, unfortunately, must be mounted outside. Our low-temperature battery has a built-in heating unit that allows it to be recharged in cold conditions. It’s not often we’ve been camping in subfreezing conditions, but it has happened.
To prevent theft of the batteries, we bought a battery shackle (about $150 from batteryshackle.com). Thick steel and three padlocks pretty much ensure that any thief is going to have to work his tail off to abscond with this battery.
Our Battery Shackle is mounted upside down with the padlocks on the bottom. This gives us a flat area to strap on an empty jerry can or two we can use in camp for hauling water when we’re boonie camping.
To fully charge a lithium battery, one must install a power converter specifically designed for lithium batteries. There are several replacement units available to transform our stock WFCO 8955 converter into a lithium-ready converter. We chose the WFCO WF-8950L2-MBA, which required little more than undoing a few screws and disconnecting/reconnecting five wires.
We now have 200 amp-hours of battery power available for boonie camping. With lead-acid batteries, one is warned to never go below 50% of the available amp-hours. Lithium does not have that limitation. Plus, lithium batteries with the proper power converter/solar controller will charge up many times faster than lead-acid batteries. We’ll test that out on our next camping trip.
One fringe benefit of lithium is weight. Our two lead-acid batteries that came with the trailer weighed 78.4 pounds in total. The lithium replacement only weighs 55.4 pounds. That’s a weight savings of 23 pounds…
…which means we can carry 30 more 12-ounce beers onboard without increasing the trailer load.
We’ve made two big improvements and a pair of smaller ones to our front door.
The first improvement was to install a Camco screen door bar, which cost about $15 from Amazon. The handle provides an easy means to close screen door when the outer door is open. It’s a very common fix that should have come as standard equipment.
The one-beer installation required drilling a few holes and screwing the bar into the door frame.
The second big improvement, a two-beer project, was to replace the stock door window with a Thin Shade window. We’ve been camped in places where the morning sun has come blasting through the front window, blinding us as we’re trying to eat breakfast or work on our computers.
The Thin Shade window has a built-in blind that can be raised to block out all light from entering through the window. When not in use, it folds up into the window frame, totally out of sight.
There are two brands of Thin Shade windows commonly available. We went with the Lippert unit (about $100 on Amazon), which is the same brand as the original. The package included everything needed, including the clips one needs to remove the original window.
The AP Products brand unit is a few dollars cheaper, but one must contact the company to get the clips needed to remove the old window. While the Lippert replacement goes back on without screws, the AP shade uses screws. I like the clean look of the Lippert.
The Thin Shade comes with see-through tinted glass, which most people prefer. We happen to like the frosted glass for its privacy factor. Instead of using the tinted glass provided, we just reused the frosted original.
Two other two minor modifications were attempts to provide a means of keeping the door open on a breezy day in camp. The first was to install a door-holder clip (about $10 from Amazon). We used one of these on our old A-frame trailer with so-so results. On this trailer, the clip proved far too anemic to hold in even light winds.
The latest thing we’ve tried to hold the door open is a bungee cord. I simply replaced one of the door-clip screws with a small, screw-in eyebolt and did the same with one of the trim screws on the side of the trailer. With an eight-inch bungee strung between the two, the door should stay open.
When not in use, the bungee clips on the wire rack, which we installed when we removed the TV.
The very first improvement we made to our new Micro Lite trailer was to remove the television.
We go camping to be in nature. Instead of watching sitcom reruns, we’d rather sit by the fire, sip a glass of wine and gaze up at the stars. That’s why we rarely camp in RV parks, preferring instead to bunk down in state or national parks.
Removing the TV was an easy, one-beer job. The TV slid off its mount and eight screws later, the mounting bracket was off.
In place of the TV, we screwed in an adjustable, Rubbermaid FastTrack wire shelf bought at Lowes. We use it for hats and ballcaps in camp. The lower shelf holds coffee cups, wine glasses, a 12-volt clock, an indoor-outdoor thermometer and other odds-and-ends when we’re in camp.
Do we miss not having a TV? Never.
If we want to watch a video or stream something over the internet, we can do it on our laptops or iPads. And if it’s a sports event we want to see, we can always head for a sports bar or better yet, we’ll bring over a six-pack and watch it at your trailer.
As the chief, on-the-road dishwasher in the family, I wanted to have a decent faucet with a pull-down sprayer and a single handle for setting temperature and flow. We went with a WEWE kitchen faucet in brushed nickel finish, which cost about $80 at Amazon. On this model, the faucet handle can be mounted in front or to the side. I chose a front mount to keep the handle from hitting the blind.
Installing the faucet was a fun, two-beer project on our trailer (Micro Lite 21DS = Mini Lite 2104s). Access under the sink comes through a drawer opening. Installation required removing the old faucet, cutting a center hole in the counter top for the new one, tightening everything down and connecting the water lines.
Instead of cutting lines and installing new connectors, I simply used nipples to connect the factory water lines to the new faucet. As a result, it takes a bit longer for the hot water to cover the extra distance from the tank to faucet. A few nylon straps keep the lines from bouncing around. So far, no leaks!
One of the big reasons we wanted to upgrade from our little A-frame folding trailer to a Micro Lite was so we would have an actual bathroom with a toilet and separate shower. Here are some of the improvements we’ve made to that shower.
One of our first upgrades was to ditch the origial shower sprayer.
We replaced the stock spray head with an Oxygenics sprayer. We went cheap and installed the white standard model #26781, which cost about $40 from Amazon. It provides a much more pleasant spray and supposedly uses less water. Installation involves little more than unscrewing the old hose and screwing on the new.
If I had it to do over, I might opt for one of the more upscale Oxygenics sprayers, but this works fine.
The cheap plastic clip provided with the Oxygenics sprayer would not hold the shower head in the desired position, so we replaced it with a rotatable aluminum bracket, which cost about $10 from Amazon. With it, the shower head stays nicely in position.
The Oxygenics shower sprayer has an on/off push button for use when taking sailor showers. It’s designed to allow a minor flow when closed, supposedly so the water temperature stays constant. That’s not an issue when camping with full hookups, but when boonie camping, that constant dripping is wasted water doing nothing more than filling the gray water tank.
To cut down on water waste, we installed a KES chrome shutoff valve (about $11 from Amazon) on the shower line. Flip the lever to the left and no water flows through the pipe. Flip it all the way to the right and the flow is full. Anything in between moderates the flow to any desired pressure. We love this thing, and have never had an issue with water temperature not being constant.
After the first few camping trips in the new trailer, we found we were collecting hair in the shower drain.
To solve the problem, we picked up a package of cheap drain strainers, probably from the Dollar Store. We leave the plug in the drain while traveling. When we get to camp, the plug comes out and the strainer goes in. No more hair in the drain issues.
To provide a place to hang wet sox and dainties, the female half of the family wanted a retractable clothesline across the shower (about $15 from Amazon). It turns out this was pretty much a waste. Instead of pulling out the line, she has found it is more convenient to simply hang the wet items over the shower door.
Finally, we added some command hooks to the shower stall walls for hanging wash cloths, a back brush and a shower squeegee.
Photos are arranged in the order they appeared in the album, which I assume is roughly chronological order. Enjoy.
Welcome to this crazy world.Feeding in the hospital.More feeding in the hospital.Asleep in the arms of your step great-grandfather.Your great grandmother feeds you.Your father was obviously a bad influence, but they didn’t have craft beer back then.Mom spoon feeds you.Not happy being behind bars.Much happier here on the deep-pile, shag carpet.Must be Christmas.Fish and boats in the middle of the desert. Ready to walk.Those look like Kansas City Chiefs colors.Looks like teeth coming in.
The Island may be Named Unalaska, but this Home of Discovery’s“Deadliest Catch” Offers a Real Slice of Genuine Alaska
Local lore claims that in the 1970s, Playboy declared the Elbow Room on Alaska’s Unalaska Island to be one of the roughest, most notorious bars in America.
Flush with cash, Bering Sea fishermen arrived looking for alcohol and trouble. They guzzled drinks six at a time and got into more fist fights than NHL players in a hockey game. When they weren’t punching bellies, patrons slid on them.
“They would pour pitchers of beer on the floor. Everybody would strip off their shirts and slide across, seeing who could glide the farthest,” reports Rick Kniaziowski. “The town’s matured a lot since then.”
It certainly has. Known to airlines and Deadliest Catch viewers as Dutch Harbor, Unalaska is the most populated port in the Aleutian Islands. Bigger than Maui and Molokai combined, the 4,000-inhabitant isle offers business-class lodging and restaurants, an anthropological museum, nine city parks, three national historic landmarks, a national wildlife refuge and a national historic area.
Today, it sports more churches than bars, its schools rank among the state’s best, and the notorious Elbow Room, now closed, serves booze and blows no more. Located closer to Russia than Juneau, Unalaska’s remote allure hooks us off-the-beaten-track travelers.
“We’re kind of like the UnCola,” explains Mayor Shirley Marquardt. “We don’t have trees, bears, snow, moose and things like that. What we’ve got is a real working Alaskan town that’s kind of on the fringes in the middle of the Bering Sea.”
The island’s un-name comes from the native “Ounalashka” meaning “near the peninsula,” and the harbor’s Dutch moniker reflects a time when a ship from the Netherlands anchored there. While “Dutch Harbor” remains commonly used, the official name for both the island and its town is “Unalaska.”
“Calling us Dutch Harbor is kind of like calling Seattle Elliott Bay,” complains Rick. “It’s only the name of the body of water.”
Getting here takes a bit of effort. A few cruise ships call, and Alaska Marine Highway ferries serve the island twice monthly from April through September. For most of us, however, it’s a three-hour, turboprop flight from Anchorage that gets us here.
Landing in Unalaska is like dropping onto an aircraft carrier. Water borders the runway on three sides, and a sawed-off hill rims the fourth. A pilot error here results in either a splash or splat. The Elbow Room may be closed, but the airport bar, I discover, is going strong.
I stay at the Grand Aleutian, a 112-room, three-story hotel. Its restaurant, I’m assured, offers the best (and only) Sunday brunch in town, and its gift shop carries crafts from Unalaska’s sister city of Petropavlovsk. I may not be able to see Russia from here, but at least I can buy souvenirs from there.
The town wraps around Iliuliuk Bay with part on Unalaska Island proper and part spilling onto a subsidiary isle. Connecting the two halves is the officially designated “Bridge to the Other Side.”
Downtown Unalaska has a last outpost of civilization look to it. Most homes seem modest with trailers, prefabs and refurbished World War II cabanas capping the real estate mix. The town sports a public library, community center, aquatic center and a staffed visitor center run by the optimistically named Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“Just how many conventions do you have here at the tail-end of Alaska?” I ask Rick, who served as executive director.
“Well, we hosted a state school board meeting once,” he smiles.
The biggest land-based employer is UniSea, which runs a highly automated pollack processing plant. Fillet from the white fish becomes sandwiches while the rest is ground into surimi that is used in imitation crab and fish sticks.
“There’s a one-in-ten chance that if it’s Alaskan pollack, it came from this plant,” Don Graves tells me on a tour. “McDonalds uses our pollack in their fish sandwiches as does Burger King.”
In addition to the commercial catch, sport fishing lures anglers to Unalaska. A replica of a 459-pound Pacific halibut hangs inside City Hall. Celebrities who have baited hooks here include Jimmy Buffett, who once performed an impromptu concert at the Elbow Room, allegedly without margarita belly slides.
At the end of downtown, a block from that infamous bar, sits the Church of the Holy Ascension. Started in 1825, this Russian Orthodox facility remains one of the oldest cruciform-style churches in the United States. Its icon collection dates back to the 16th century.
“The icons on the back wall, a set of 12, are called calendar icons,” explains local resident Susan Lynch. “There are only three full sets from this era in the whole world, and we have one of them.”
When it comes to trees, Unalaska stands as bare as Howie Mandel’s noggin. Hoping to make their fur-trading effort more self sufficient, the Russians planted Sitka spruce seedlings here in 1805. Six original trees still stand, becoming one of the few arboreal entries gracing the list of National Historic Landmarks.
Not far from my hotel sits the Museum of the Aleutians. It presents a collection of finely woven baskets, a 1778 drawing of an Unangan woman done by crewmember of Captain James Cook and a waterproof parka called a kamleika made from sea lion esophagus tissue. There’s also a 1940’s vintage ski, a model of the Coast Guard’s USS Bear and numerous World War II artifacts. One item, a Japanese soldier’s good-luck flag, has been returned to the family of the man whose fortune was battle ended.
“His widow had been told he was killed in the South Pacific,” explains Bobbie Lekanoff, owner of The Extra Mile Tours. “The Japanese kept it a secret that they were fighting in the Aleutians.”
Aleutian World War II National Historic Area Visitor Center, Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, Alaska.
The Visitor Center of the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area displays information about the conflict and provides a mockup of a communications center with mannequins manning equipment. Bobbie reminds me that six months after Pearl Harbor, Japanese aircraft dropped their loads on Dutch Harbor.
“Right in front of us, you can see a dip in the ground that’s more green than everything else,” Bobbie points out. “That is a crater from where one of the bombs hit.”
Days after the attack, the Japanese invaded Kiska and Attu Islands further down the Aleutian chain. To stifle possible advances, allied forces stationed nearly 50,000 solders in Unalaska. Abandoned bunkers, pillboxes, ammo depots and gun mounts still surround town.
Bobbie’s tour mixes history with nature. By mid-July more than 160 species of flowering plants will carpet the mountains. Until then, bald eagles top the nature enthusiast’s interest list. With 878 spotted at a recent Christmas count, the national symbol can be seen perched everywhere around town. Bobbie monitors over 30 perennial nesting sites. The easiest nest to spot sits atop an unused construction crane in the middle of town.
“The first year they tried to build there, the sticks fell through,” she explains. “The following spring, a couple of local people climbed up and tied fishnet to the bottom. The eagles successfully completed their nest and have come back every year since.”
Another species that attracts birders to Unalaska is the rare whiskered auklet, whose range is limited to the Aleutians. To see them, I board a boat captained by wildlife biologist Tammy Peterson. We sail toward the Chelan Bank.
“The sea bottom comes up abruptly here, so there’s a big upwelling. It’s really nutrient rich, which means the bait fish are here along with whatever feeds on them,” she says. “It’s like a fast-food restaurant in the Bering Sea.”
We catch a pod of orcas breaching to the starboard and white-sided dolphins porpoising to the port. A short-tailed albatross glides overhead like a white, U2 spy plane. Tammy points out sooty shearwaters, tufted puffins and various species of gulls. Best of all, we spot numerous whiskered auklets. Our route back takes us past the airport.
“Nine years ago, my brother died,” Tammy reveals. “I got the phone call saying it was time, but I got stuck here for six days because of fog. He died before I could get off the island. That’s the drawback to living out here.”
Fortunately for me, the weather dawns fog-free my departure day. I head for the airport assured that not only will the plane will arrive and depart, but it will even be reasonably on-time. Unlike some fellow passengers, I don’t even feel a need to fortify myself at the bar.
