This past weekend, we’ve made it to Coarsegold, California. We used Boondockers Welcome to park on a private cul-de-sac turnaround just outside of town. This is technically just a pit stop for us on our way to see Yosemite National Park, and the weather has been quite nice during the day, but it’s still dipping down into the mid 40s at night. Not a huge deal if you’re in a house, with proper insulation, but our camper is very drafty, and has very little insulation. We are definitely using the heater at night right now!

The problem? We’ve been struggling with our furnace. When we go 2-3 days in a row without shore power, our furnace usually kills our batteries and stops working in the middle of the night. This happens even when we drive and let the truck top off the battery while we’re on the road. It’s kind-of infuriating because the system that these furnaces run on need a pretty full battery to run, and if it ever dips even slightly below 12v, it will just kick off and stop. I wish we had lithium!

And then, this past Saturday, the furnace in our camper died. I assumed that it was, yet again, the battery. I had been aggressively charging the battery using my basic solar setup, but it seemed like it wasn’t enough.

Only, after doing a little troubleshooting, it became clear that it was not the batteries that were dead – it was the furnace. It completely stopped working, and we had no idea why. So, after a chilly night bundled up with blankets, we did a little research, determined that in our current position, replacing the furnace was not an option, and honestly it kinda sucks anyway. So, we opted to see if we could use a propane furnace that does not use electricity while boondocking.

We ended up purchasing a Mr. Buddy heater, but, in all the glory of COVID, had to spend our entire day driving around Fresno trying to find the actual adapter that would allow us to connect it our propane tank. We got back to the camper at dusk, only to find that the adapter I purchased absolutely would not work.

I was devastated, y’all.

It’s been a very busy, active past few weeks, spent the entire day driving around trying to find these parts, all with one goal in mind – have heat for when we sleep this evening, and that was clearly not happening. It was a low point for me since we’re just about to get to the really good part of this trip, and I did not want to have to rough the rest of this trip without a heater. Hell, I didn’t even want to spend that night without a heater.

My biggest concern at this point is Devin. He’s just a little dude who can’t quite communicate that he’s cold yet, so we always try to keep the camper comfortable mostly for him. I sleep better when I know my kids are comfortable. That’s gonna be hard to do without a heater.

So, we did all we could do. Bundled up, made the best of it, and went to sleep.

In the midst of all of this, our friendly Boondocker’s Welcome hosts rolled up in their golf cart to say hello, chat with us, and make sure we had everything we needed. I lamented a little bit about our problem. He gave me a side-long glance, smiled, and said “hop on the cart, let’s go for a ride.”

We drove around his property, looking in various places where he stores camping gear (unsurprisingly, they are avid long-time campers and boondockers) and he eventually pulls out a box containing a never-before used older Kozy-World Gas heater, and he said to me something like:

Someday, my family will have to deal with all of this stuff, and none of them care about camping. They’ll just throw all this out. I think you really need this, and I’d like to give it to you.

I was floored.

What are the odds that he would have the exact thing I needed sitting around in his shed?! Not only does this heater solve our immediate problem of not having a furnace, it also solves the problem of running our battery low while boondocking multiple days in a row. This bad boy uses absolutely no electricity – just propane, and wow does it get warm!

I took it graciously, thanked him, and went on to get the adapters needed to hook this thing up to the camper. By that evening, I had managed to connect the furnace, mount it on our wall, and fire it up.

I will never forget this man’s generosity, and willingness to help us. For us, this heater was the difference between a well-timed inconvenience, and some serious adjustments to how we approach the rest of this trip. In one act of kindness, he turned a problem into an upgrade – now our heater is way quieter, doesn’t blow dusty air everywhere, and it doesn’t use our battery when boondocking. These are huge wins, overall!

We finished up the weekend giving Maria a good solid cleaning.