Allegany State Park

We did something different for us this year, we went camping in the spring! In past years this has been too busy a time for camping due to so much happening with our kids in school. With both kids both kids now in college we have more flexibility for timing for this type of thing. I got the Shasta out of the garage in mid April to get it ready fo rather season and to get a NY safety inspection sticker so that we’d be legal on the road. I know a lot of people in NY don’t keep these stickers up-to-date every year, but with a trailer that gets noticed as much as ours I try to always make sure everything is valid. 

It had been unseasonably warm, but then a week before our trip we were treated to a blanket of snow in the last week of April. We’ve done some fall camping when there were flurries in the air, but I think this is the first time in the 15 years since we restored the Shasta that it’s actually been out in the snow like this. Luckily things cleared up fast and the roads didn’t get salted our area, road salt was my biggest concern as it can make an impact on a vehicle with only one trip. 

Another fist for us was camping at NY’s Allegheny State Park. It’s only a few hours drive from home, but for whatever reason we had never camped there with the Shasta before. We camped mid-week and even though the reservation system showed about 50% of the sites as booked, we found that only 10% or less were actually occupied which was fantastic. We camped with some friends who rented a modern trailer that was a just a bit longer than ours. They are thinking about getting a camper and are torn between the luxuries of a new rig and the lure of vintage. They had a great time, but we’ll have to see what they end up with! 

It was a great trip that reminded us to visit places that are closer to home, we did a lot of hiking as well as driving around to check out the area. Besides the NY state park, there are several places to camp in nearby Pennsylvania. We checked a few places out and found several good camping spots in the Allegheny National Forest and Kinzua Dam area to keep in mind for quick trips once the Avion is on the road.

Propane lines and Heater!

 

I recently Installed new propane lines and a Camco Olympic Wave Heater in the Avion C-10 truck camper. For this work I used 3/8” copper refrigeration tubing with flare connectors. With a little practice I found that making the flares using a hand-held flare tool was pretty easy. It’s an interesting process compared to running the PEX water lines, I tried to use as few connections as possible and used a very simple spring style tubing bender to keep the copper from collapsing when going around corners. It’s takes some tubing wrangling and pre-planning to get the propane line to go where you want, but it’s very satisfying when a segment is done. I used soapy water to test for leaks and found that only one connection needed to be tightened a bit more. I also included two gas shut-off valves one for the left side line and one for the right, these are both accessible from the outside of the camper just inside the fridge rear access door. Our Avion C-10 was built with a propane cabinet that is sized to hold one common 20lb propane tank, and I also installed a new dual-stage propane regulator which I mounted to the wall in the cabinet. I'm glad that it uses a standard tank because when we are on a longer road trips we could easily make use of Blue Rhino or other tank exchanges if needed instead of looking for a place to refill. After looking at a few different options for heaters we decided to use an Olympic Wave 3 propane heater. The Wave 3 is a small catalectic heater similar to the popular Mr. Buddy heaters but made for use in an RV, for us it seems like a good choice to extend the camping season into the fall which is our favorite time of the year to camp here in the northeastern US. Inspired by another Avion C-10 owner I mounted the Wave 3 to the inside of a cabinet door where it stores when not in use. The cabinet I’m using for this is the one that is mostly taken up by the hot water heater, the Wave 3 fits perfectly into the shallow space that is left over. To use the Wave we simply open the cabinet door and will secure it in the open position with a hook. When the door is open it is out-of-the-way being flat against the bathroom wall and the heater faces the dinette and sleeping area.  We also made a cover for the heater to keep dust out of the elements when not in use during most of our camping season, from what I've read a cover can help then maintain their performance. Having the propane system and heater up and running has been great over the last couple of months as I’ve been able to use it to keep the Avion warm while continuing to work on the camper during the winter months.

Avion: Custom Black & Grey Tanks

 

Finally got the new Black Tank and Grey Tank for our Avion C-10! 

These have been a long time coming, I started designing them over a year ago and explored a lot of options on paper and with 3D mock-ups built from foamcore board. I ended up having my drawings quoted at several custom fabricators, the quotes I got back varied greatly. I ended up having them built at Triple M Plastics in Maine, they not only had one the best quotes but also gave me the most confidence that they would be built the way I wanted. The build quality of the tanks I received was amazing and they were spot on to my drawings. The Black Tank is similar to the original, but about 2” taller which is good because it’s pretty small being at about 7 gallons. I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but I think if you were to use a "short" Dometic toilet the black tank could be another 4” taller which would increase the capacity by another 3 or 4 gallons, if had already bought a “tall” toilet but maybe an opportunity here for someone reading this.

Our Avion did not originally have a Grey Tank, the sink drain lines were connected to the main dump valve below the gate so grey water would just run onto the ground, into a bucket, or to campsites waste connection if you were attached at a site with a full-hook ups. I designed a Grey Tank that hangs from the floor inside the grey fiberglass fairing under the bathroom. This tank is small even by truck camper standards also at about 7 gallons, but it allows us to use the sinks when traveling and easily dump the grey water separately from the black tank. The tricky part of a grey tank in this location is that it needs to be below the trap for the shower drain. I used a HepvO trap to save height over a conventional trap, and because it uses a rubber valve it also keeps odors from coming up through the shower drain. I cut-out the bottom two layers of flooring in the area just above the trap to gain an additional inch of height in the capacity of the grey tank. We are rebuilding bathroom to allow it to still function as wet bath which will be a nice feature to have when boondocking, but if you want a larger grey tank eliminating the wet bath might be something to consider.  

in Hot Water!

 

The new water heater is now installed securely, plumbed to the new PEX water lines, and connected to both 12v and 120v power. Some of the propane propane lines are only roughed in at this point, but theoretically we have hot water when plugged into shore power now. The new Dometic/Atwood heater fit very well into the old hole, I only needed to make a custom shaped sill piece for the bottom edge for a clean installation. I'm really glad to have that ugly patch gone and the giant hole left behind finally closed up! I had planned on getting a propane only model, but they are no longer in production and I could not find an old stock one for a price that made sense. Taping into the 120v AC line was pretty easy because there was an existing 120v outlet in the wall just above the heaters location. At some point I'll spray paint new door silver so it looks more like it belongs. 

Avion Fridge Vent Cap & Cabinet prep

 

We purchased a new Dometic 3-way refrigerator and I did a bunch of work to prep the cabinet and repair the roof vent. I rebuilt the back-side of the interior cabinet that’s above the fridge to have a proper ventilation shaft that matches the specs for the new Dometic fridge, this will help the fridge performance as the old shaft was quite a bit oversize per the new specs. As a bonus the cabinet over the fridge is now almost 4” deeper giving us more storage space, it can even fit a box a cereal. For the roof-top vent I decided to use an Airstream part instead of the boxy style that was standard on Avions.  Our original vent cap had a major impact with something long ago and had an old repair to make it functional, but it was looking very rough and not tight to the weather. I’ve notice in photos of other Avion truck campers that a lot of the vent caps seem to have had this issue, something to keep in mind when we are on the road. The vintage Airstream style cap is more rounded on the ends and looks like it will tend to deflect things that it runs into instead of grabbing and tearing. As part of the repair I ended up also rebuilding part the collar that extends up between the roof and cap and added a bug screen before installing the cap.

Camping with different vibes during the pandemic....

 

Over the years the we’ve found that different campgrounds have very different vibes. This year we didn’t do any summer camping other than the "Not a Rally" due to the COVID pandemic, but by the time Fall came around we decided to take the Shasta out for another quick trip within New York state. First we headed to Watkins Glen, one of our favorite places and an area that we used to live in so it’s sort of like camping and going back home. We like this state park because many of the sites have some space between them and when you are there it is a bit like hiding in the woods. Being mid-week and early October we found the campground very sparsely populated despite the reservation system showing that it all the sites we booked. I wondered if the campground had artificially booked sites to keep population down, but after a few days folks showed up to claim pretty much every site. Overall we were impressed with how people respected the pandemic guidelines and generally kept to themselves. We hiked from our campsite to the gorge rim trail and found it fairly busy because the park was routing foot traffic to follow a one-way loop returning via the rim. Seeing this we decided to further upstream where it’s always less populated and we’re rewarded with a great hike into some areas of the park that we had not explored before including a small lake above the falls past the railroad trestle. We also spent some time hiking a few other less known trails near the village of Watkins Glen and Montour Falls and made quick stops on a couple favorite wineries. A highlight of our time in here was visiting a vintage camper friend who had just completed a full restoration a a Spartan Manor, it was great to see him and check out his amazing work before it headed out to its new owners. 

Before heading home we decided to keep camping for a few extra days and to visit family in the Syracuse area. We booked a campsite at Green Lakes State Park and headed north. When I made the reservation it was slim pickings with just two sites available, after we were there for about 2 minutes I realized that I should have probably chosen the other site. We had not been to Green Lakes before but knew that it was a popular place with a generally more “social open space” vibe than the “camping in the woods” vibe we typically enjoy. Our site was conveniently located a few feet from a large kids playground and also pretty close the bathroom house. When we first pulled up it almost didn’t look like a campsite but after checking it out we were indeed in the right place. When times are normal this is the type of site we would typically avoid but during the pandemic it was shocking, especially after having been in the woods for a week. Once we were acclimated we enjoyed visits from one of our daughters and our sister in-law and did some hiking in the park and along the old Erie Canal. The park has a couple of amazing lakes with unusual mineral deposits that make it look really green, it’s super super cool and unexpected in this area. So tend while this campground was definitely not our “vibe” we had a good time and it was great to see family and see something new.

Avion Tie-Down Points & Pigtail

 

Once again the blog is lagging far behind our progress on the Avion truck camper. I'll try to get a few updates posted, the mild winter and pandemic have been good for getting stuff done. 

I finally got around finishing the installation of the Tie Down points where the camper gets attached to the truck. I ended up using stainless steel U-bolts that are used on the bows of boats, they went in pretty easily except for one where I didn’t leave myself much access to back side by the water heater, it was a pain but eventually I was able to get the backing plate and nuts on.  It feels good to have this and the jack brackets both finally complete. 

I also installed a new pigtail wire connection to the truck along with inline fuses. I bought a long pigtail because on many trucks the 7-pin socket in the bed is on the drivers side, but on the Avion the pigtail is on the passenger side front corner. Once we get a truck we will install socket in the same corner as the camper but I wanted flexibility to be able to use a different truck if ever needed. I also added a bunch of inline fuses for pigtail leads that power the running lights, brake lights, turn signals, and reverse lights. Early on with our Shasta we had an electrical short in one of the running light wires that resulted in the tow vehicle needing a new control module only a year after it was installed, putting inline fuses on these lines is simple protection for the electronics in the truck. I put the connections for the pigtail and the fuses and in a new electrical box inside the wall that I can now access by removing a switch plate in case I ever need to get at them to troubleshoot.