Winter camping in Calistoga

We planned to take the BRV on an epic roadtrip around California the week of Thanksgiving.


Then we realized we had scheduled 200+ miles of driving most days and scaled that back to a trip south along the coast.


Then we realized we didn't really want to be traveling that whole time and scaled that back to a trip to Big Sur the weekend before Thanksgiving.


Then it rained all weekend.


So we decided we should at least take the van out for a night the weekend after Thanksgiving... and so we took a trip to Calistoga.

Calistoga has wine


And Calistoga has art


Calistoga has a really nice park and camp ground


But this year Calistoga does not have heat. It was below freezing at night, and not all that warm during the day. The BRV has a small trickle of heat when it's running, but no heater otherwise and so our fear of freezing led to the latest BRV gear purchase

A portable heater! This thing was very efficient at heating up the van (with a window cracked to supply air...probably unnecessary with all the holes in the van, but we wanted to be extra safe). We only needed to run it for an hour before bed and we were quite toasty through the night. It runs off of propane, a convenient use of the extra canisters we have leftover after the death of our really cheap camp stove since we invested in a fancy new Coleman stove that doesn't use those.


(note, stove stayed in the box for this trip, we had dinner in a toasty warm restaurant)

In addition to testing out the BRV in extreme cold (anything below 50 is extreme to me!) we inadvertently also tested it out in the rain. We were nice and dry in our bed, but there were a few leaks in the corners of the van. Fortunately Amber has everything so well packed up in plastic bins nothing got wet. Maybe some day I'll try to figure out where exactly the water is coming in and repair it. Or maybe we'll just stay home when we know it's going to rain.