Wow,
I can’t believe it has been two weeks since I posted! I’ve been sort of busy, but mostly I just
haven’t been in the mood. Well, snap out
of it, Elaine!!
The
second week of January was mostly taken up with helping out Eric while he was
hauling frac sand. Frac sand is what the
drillers use to open up spaces in the shale so the oil can flow out of it. It is not really sand, but tiny ceramic
beads, about the size of poppy seeds. They
come in two ton totes from China and cost about $6,000 a tote. He was shuttling loads from Sidney, MT to Watford
City (where we are staying), a 110 mile round trip, sometimes getting up at
3:30 am to fit in four trips in a day. This
meant getting up and making breakfast, back to bed (or off to the coffee house),
then meeting Eric with lunch or dinner and a visit while he waited to be
unloaded. Then the weather turned bitter
cold and slowed down everything.
This
brings me to what we’ve been doing pretty much the rest of the time—dealing with
the cold. It got down to 19 below zero, not
counting the wind chill, bottoming out at around 40 below. This causes diesel fuel to gel, gas lines to
crack, and plumbing to burst, generally wreaking havoc everywhere. Our equipment fared well, due to preparation,
but the camper needed lots of attention.
Our camper is designed for cold weather, but for something like fall
hunting camp, not this. The water pump
froze, as well as the black tank (sewage), and the gray water tank. A hair dryer and electric heater thawed out
the smaller black tank, thankfully, but the gray tank is still frozen. I wash dishes into a pan and fling the used
water out the door frontier style. There
are two forks and a spatula frozen into the ice outside (oops!) Miraculously, the water pump thawed with no
cracks, and Eric is working on the gray tank right now.
All
this week I was feeling crummy and thought I had Eric’s cold, but the violent
sneezing only happened at night.
Thinking allergies, I stripped the bed (more on that process another
time). The bottom of the mattress was
frozen to the wooden platform, and when I peeled it loose, I discovered spots
of black mold—lots of it. No wonder we
both felt terrible! The bedding was
washed with bleach. We elevated the
mattress and thawed, dried, and sprayed it down with bleach water then dried it
again. Voila! No more symptoms.
Great,
but how to prevent the moisture from re-occurring? One word: insulation. Now, ever since we parked this camper, we
have been insulating it. From foam board
skirting to bubble wrap on the windows, we have done something like thirty
separate projects to stay comfortable, making the camper look like a patchwork
of pink and blue foam board along with aluminized foam, foam sheeting and R-22
fiberglass all held in place with plastic sheeting and several rolls of duct
tape. Not exactly elegant, but quite
cozy with only one 1500 watt ceramic heater and limited use of the gas
furnace. The beauty of a tiny living
space!
I
will post much sooner next time, I promise!
Scroll
down for a photo of our humble little home plus “North Dakota Still Life with
Loader Tire”
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