Winter Camping

New Years Eve brought us to Lake Wenatchee to cross country ski in the van with the Price Clan. Its nice when you have another couple with a toddler nearly the same age who is as eager to do something nearly as stupid as you are. 

Don't get me wrong, Lake Wenatchee is a post card. It is a beautiful alpine lake with nice scenic groomed trails criss crossing through the state park and adjacent golf course. It's a winter paradise and we all skied on cloud nine towing the toddlers in trailers. The effort was welcomed as we were all feeling the post holiday paunch. 

The problem was the highest temperature we saw all weekend was around 14 degrees. Diapers turn into frozen shit bricks and wipes freeze in place way before that. Toddlers look like Midget Michelin Men suited up for arctic exploration. And where do you put the child so they stay warm at night?  

A day before we departed, Brandon solved all the problems and announced " We shall build a cot and hang her from the ceiling"...... 

Annabelle modeling her cot which hangs between the front seats 

With propane heaters running all night and our child suspended from the ceiling, Annabelle slept in the van, warm and peacefully. To celebrate we all got lit in the warming hut and welcomed in the new year. 

With a little Ying comes a little Yang. The next day the van wouldn't start. Team Rouse is used to these events and almost expects some sort of damsel-ing event at any given moment. Instead of immediately thinking "we're fucked" we've trained  ourselves  to ask, "what ingredients do we need for self rescue this time"? 

There was a small leak in fuel line- so instead of fuel there was air in the fuel lines and the cold had coagulated the diesel into a jelly. Armed with a team of friendly Park Rangers who came bearing gifts of  generators, heat guns, and battery pack chargers- Brandon and Brennan started doing man things really hard. In the end, they ended up sticking the plunger to a coffee press into the fuel tank and used it as a funnel to blow the fuel and air through the lines, just like MacGyver would do. A few zip ties later our van was "put back together" and rumbling to life. 

It takes a village to keep the Rouses Rolling.