Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

Dicks.

 

X100

 

Cab Mounted Fire Extinguisher
November 2017

I've been running "naked" as it were for awhile now. The truck really needs an extinguisher - probably two really - and a way to mount it. Waffling over what to get has delayed this way too long. So I finally got around to doing the research to figure out what made the most sense. This took more effort than it really should have so I'll share some information I've collected to help others decide.

Storage Temperature

Many people are concerned about keeping an extinguisher in a vehicle that can get quite hot in the summer when they see pretty much every fire extinguisher in existence is rated only to 120F. This rating is misunderstood - it is the temperature at which the extinguisher will still perform as an extinguisher. More accurately it is just upper limit for which UL can even test the performance of an extinguisher - it might work fine at higher temperatures. This however is different than the storage temperature of the extinguisher. All UL listed extinguishers are tested to a temperature of 175F for a period of days to ensure they will still perform after exposure to high storage temperatures. So go ahead and store an extinguisher in your vehicle.

UL Class Ratings

Most know that Class A fires are typical burning solids like paper, wood and trash. Not all extinguishers are good at extinguishing Class A fires. I certainly didn't understand just what the numerical ratings meant though. An extinguisher rated 1A must be able to extinguish an 8x8 foot wood panel (essentially a giant pallet) set ablaze with liquid fuel and sawdust and left burning for a few minutes so the fire has really taken hold. That's a huge fire! So for camp/vehicle purposes anything beyond 1A is probably overkill. For reference a 1.25 gallon water extinguisher is rated 1A and 2.5 gallons is rated 2A. Furthermore 1A is the lowest possible rating for Class A performance so to determine if an extinguisher can handle smaller Class A fires or just has no performance at all against Class A fires it is helpful to look at larger capacity extinguishers that use the same agent. If say a 10 lb extinguisher is rated 1A then you could expect 2.5 lb of the same agent to handle a modest Class A fire even though it carries no rating. If on the other hand a 30 lb extinguisher still has no Class A rating then you should expect that agent to not be effective on Class A fires.

Again we all know Class B fires are for liquid fuels. Here the number in front of the B represents how large pan of burning hexane (similar flammability to gasoline) can be extinguished. The 1B rating represents a 2.5 sq ft pan and scales linearly (so 10B is a 25 sq ft pan). For reference the footprint of a DCSB Tacoma is about 100 sq ft. These tests are "fuel in depth" meaning that there are many inches of fuel in the pan that is burning. If the entire pan is not entirely extinguished any remaining flame no matter how small will reignite the entire pan. Class B fires tend to be "all or nothing" extinguishing events. Note that the tests go by a series of round numbers - 1B, 2B, 5B, 10B, 20B, 30B, 40B, 60B... There is no 15B rating or test. So two extinguishers rated 10B could actually be quite different - one equivalent to 10B and the other equivalent to 19B. Do take a moment to watch some Class B tests online, I never appreciated just how fast the recommended "sweeping" motion is when using an extinguisher on a fuel fire.

Class C does not carry a numerical rating, rather it just means the extinguisher is safe to use on an electrical fire without harming the operator. This is a quite stringent rating involving discharging the extinguisher into an air gap between 35,000V plates/wires without arcing occurring. Obviously it would be nice to have a C rated extinguisher for your vehicle but the reality is for a 12V system this is probably not a critical rating if an extinguishing agent has some other very favorable properties.

Extinguishing Agents

ABC Dry Chemical (Monoammonium Phosphate) is the ubiquitous dry chemical extinguisher sold everywhere. It is a yellow powder. Most older dry chemicals of the past did not carry an A rating and were BC only (details below). This ABC dry chemical does have an A rating because under extreme heat it essentially melts and coats surfaces cutting off oxygen. It does not perform well on "deep seated" A fires though as it can only coat a surface and not get at deeper embers. So for example it will not extinguish a fire in a leaf pile that a little water would put out with ease. This chemical is quite acidic when exposed to water and it does a good job of acquiring water from the atmosphere. As a result it is extremely corrosive to metals - especially steel. Furthermore when used in a fire it is nearly impossible to clean because as stated it melts onto hot surfaces. A 2.5lb extinguisher carries a 1A:10B:C rating.

BC Dry Chemical (Sodium Bicarbonate) is one of the "original" dry chemicals of many years past. It is quite effective on liquid fuel fires - about equivalently so to the ABC dry chemical. It is a weak base and so is far less corrosive than the ABC dry chemical is. Also it does not melt onto surfaces and so post fire you can actually clean it up reasonably well. A 2.5lb extinguisher carries a 10B:C rating, even the largest extinguishers carry no A rating.

Purple K (Potassium Bicarbonate) is an improved BC dry chemical discovered by trial and error at the NRL many decades ago. It is considered almost twice as effective as the two previously mentioned dry chems on fuel fires but that isn't always reflected in the end ratings - things like grain size and other additives play a significant roll in the effectiveness as well. It is a weak base and also can be cleaned up after a fire. It is used extensively on flight lines to combat aviation fuel fires. A 2.5lb extinguisher carries a 10B:C rating, even the largest extinguishers carry no A rating.

Halon 1211 is only allowed for aviation use by law. It is very bad for the ozone and is tightly controlled. It leaves no residue and evaporates away on its own as clean up. Safe for aluminum aircraft components, electronics and so forth. A 2.5lb extinguisher carries a 5B:C rating - so half as effective as the dry chems for fuel fires. Large units (9 lbs) do begin to carry an A rating so it is somewhat effective against A fires.

Halotron is the replacement for Halon 1211 and is ozone friendly. You can buy it for any use. It is unfortunately only about half as effective as the old Halon. A 2.5lb extinguisher carries only a 2B:C rating - so five times less effective than a dry chem. Again at large capacities (11 lbs) it does begin to carry an A rating so it is somewhat effective against A fires.

Which agent to use?

So we can immediately see some trade-offs:

• ABC Dry Chem does it all but if fired into the engine compartment or passenger cabin may result in a total write off of the vehicle due to extreme corrosion and difficult to impossible clean up. It is right on par with the other dry chems for fuel fires but getting that A rating means dealing with severe corrosion problems if used. It is banned from flight lines over concern that discharge even near an aircraft will result in totaling the air frame if the powder gets into seems in the aluminum skin.
  
• The two BC Dry Chem options will do almost nothing on an A fire but are not the corrosion nightmare that the ABC is. They are however mildly corrosive, hardly at all to steel but to a degree to aluminum and magnesium. They can however be cleaned up with a vacuum cleaner or brush and would also respond to flushing with water.
• Purple K doesn't always show the expected increase in effectiveness over its sodium cousin likely because of the round number ratings/tests. The 2.5lb extinguishers both carry a 10B rating while for the 5lb extinguisher the sodium is still only 10B while the Purple K is 30B. Looking at larger capacities it seems we should consider the 2.5lb Purple K to be about 50% more effective than the 2.5lb sodium (so consider the 2.5lb Purple K to be 15B:C).
  
• Halotron will not harm anything when used but is vastly less effective on fuel fires than the dry chem extinguishers. A factor of 5 is a huge difference and so your corrosion free vehicle will likely burn to the ground if there is any fuel spill involved in the fire.

In the end I decided on a 2.5lb Purple K extinguisher for the cab. In the event of an accident I'm most likely to encounter a fuel fire potentially with a non-trivial area of liquid fuel on the ground. I'd like the biggest bang for the pound to be able to extract passengers. I could also use the extinguisher on the next most likely fire source in the cabin or engine compartment - an electrical short circuit or burning insulation - without writing off the whole vehicle due to corrosion from an ABC dry chem. These BC dry chem extinguishers do extinguish a flame front regardless of the source and they do have minimal smothering and heat removal properties so they can tackle a single burning wire even if inefficient at doing so.

I'm still undecided for sure on what to put in the Flip-Pac itself to deal with a fire in camp. I'm inclined to go with a 2.5lb ABC extinguisher to deal with any significant Class A fire. Water based extinguishers are impractically heavy not to mention issues with freezing.

Oh, and what of Cold Fire? Well I can't find out squat about it other than it is a "UL Approved" wetting agent. What is a wetting agent? Dish soap is a wetting agent - it reduces the surface tension of water so that it will soak into things more effectively without running off. People have put dish soap in water extinguishers for years. Cold Fire is the same concept but somehow "better". How much better? Well this seems impossible to tell because Cold Fire offers nothing other than some written claims and some videos of their extinguishers. I can't find a single Cold Fire extinguisher that actually carries a UL rating (e.g. 1A:10B). Note that water on its own carries no B rating at all (a 2.5 gallon - meaning 17 lbs! - water extinguisher carries a 2A rating with no B at all). Cold Fire claims it is effective on B fires and from some videos it probably is. But then why is no extinguisher on the market with Cold Fire in it have any rating at all??? That bugs me - so I gave Cold Fire a pass. Sounds like it could be great. Some one should UL test it...

That said Cold Fire and a few other agents are available in small aerosol like cans meant to tackle a stove top fire or trash can fire with minimal clean up hassles. Using an ABC dry chem on such a fire would be overkill and would create quite a mess. One of these "can" extinguishers does seem like a good addition to the Flip Pac or potentially to the cab to use on very small fires that might occur and are caught early but I still think I'd want a "real" ABC extinguisher in the Flip Pac for bigger problems. I'll be separately researching which "can" extinguisher to get but this appears to be a hassle since they all make claims with zero testing or ratings to back them up.

Manufacturer

Once I had selected Purple K that limited the manufacturers. In the end I chose Amerex who make some very high quality extinguishers that come with vehicle mounting brackets. You may have seen the sexy looking H3R extinguishers advertised for vehicles. They are just rebranded Amerex extinguishers. Inexplicably H3R only sells Halotron and ABC though! Strange given the conclusions above that BC or Purple K dry chem is probably what you really want around a vehicle...

Mounting

Looking around TW it seemed like a 2.5lb would fit in front of the driver seat nicely, the Amerex 2.5lb Purple K with a vehicle bracket is model B410T. I like the fact that it gives immediate access since time really is of the essence for a fuel fire. Clearly anyone that is a little bit handy and has a bit of time on their hands can fabricate a way to mount an extinguisher bracket there. In the end though I just ponied up for the "Bracketeer" which is a "universal" mount. It is quite pricey for what it is (~$60) but in my case where truck mods now cut into vacation time it worked out well since I knew it would fit and gave lots of flexibility in configuration so I could get things arranged how I wanted. It can be mounted to either the seat rails or the seat mounting bolts. In the Tacoma they recommend using the seat bolts and I can see why - it allows the seat to move further forward if you use the bolts. I was careful to check I could still remove the floor mats once mounted (I do need to take the extinguisher itself out to do this, but the bracket remains in place).

​

I certainly hope I never need to use thing thing! I'm pretty happy with the mounting. Usually I'm driving with the seat all the way back but being able to slide the seat forward for the occasional time my wife drives or to provide access behind the seat when packing things is really useful. I don't notice it down there when driving. I can release and remove the extinguisher while sitting. One shoe does occasionally give it a gentle whack when getting into the truck.

As you have read there are an enormous number of trade-offs involved in something as seeming simple as "put an extinguisher in the truck". By no means do I consider my solution the only "correct" one but I hope all the details will make easier for others to understand what the trade-offs actually are. I would recommend however that if you like the idea of Halotron being non-corrosive that you are aware of how dramatically less effective it is than a dry chem on a fuel fire and consider having a Purple K along as well.

 

That would be a cast iron bitch to clean. Good luck.

 

I found blowing out the truck with compressed air tends to get a lot of small particles out of the truck successfully without too much effort. You may want to try that before resorting to cleaning with liquid cleaners. I have a high flow nozzle on my home compressor that pushes a lot of air and I'm really happy with it.

$18 Flexzilla X1 Blow Gun with Xtreme-Flo Safety Nozzle, ZillaGreen - AG1502FZ

https://www.amazon.com/Flexzilla-Bl...qid=1510424726&sr=8-5&keywords=air+blower+gun

 

Double doh! Any idea what made it let loose? The FA110 is part of the big Kiddie recall - but that recall is for failing to discharge. You seem to have the opposite problem!

Were you in the vehicle when it discharged or did you just discover it after the fact?

Since it discharged without heat around then at least you should be able to get it all cleaned up with some effort. It is discharging the ABC into heat that is the real disaster since then it is almost impossible to clean up once melted onto hot surfaces. Most people seem to recommend trying to clean up the powder as much as possible dry. Vacuum and compressed air.

One of the reasons I went with an Amerex was the metal valve. I am hoping that it is more likely to not fail but honestly I have no way of knowing if that would really be true.

Hope the cleaning goes well! Sucky way to spend a weekend.

 

Don’t throw it away just yet.

Register it online for recall replacement.

They’ll send you a replacement, probably with a metal valve.

Then use the replacement for your outdoor patio/grill area

Then get the Purple K for your truck.

Hurry, because once everyone sees Ken’s post, the quantity of Amerex Purple K extinguishers in the country will drastically go down.

 

Cooking Indoors

One of the nice things about the Flip-Pac is the ridiculous amount of space inside when open. This makes it easier to hunker down "indoors" when conditions outside are becoming undesirable. I like cooking on the tailgate normally but in windy or buggy conditions that is less fun and retreating into the Flip-Pac to cook a meal is nice.

One is always concerned about safety when cooking in a vehicle or tent. As far as CO goes that is non-issue given how much ventilation the Flip-Pac has. The real concern is of course fire. I cooked with white gas for decades but liquid fuels indoors can be a real fire hazard. Way too easy for leaks and spills to create a large fire that spreads rapidly. With this new truck I switched to propane finally. The other potential problem is combustibles like fabric contacting hot metal and igniting. To protect against that a heat shield and thoughtful placement go a long way to keeping things safe. Lastly never having the stove between people and the exit ensures safe evacuation should the worst occur somehow.

The Flip-Pac for the short bed has what amounts to a shelf just before the mattress. This has proved to be nearly the perfect place to setup the stove as it is well away from the tent sides, high above the raised floor in the bed where I restrict my daughter to when I'm cooking, and it is right above the cooler which makes a perfect bench to sit on while cooking.

I'm blown away by some of the culinary delicacies that people manage to make while camping - not to mention the associated food prep. For us though camping food is usually extremely simple stuff which allows me to use a single burner setup with a frying pan. Hot dogs, quesadillas, grilled cheese are the kinds of things we do. No spill risks, little prep, little clean up. This simplicity keeps things easy when cooking inside. If I was to do more fancy dishes that involved sauteing, boiling pots of water or lots of cutting of ingredients I think I'd restrict such meals to fair weather days with tailgate cooking.

I use a single burner Coleman stove that has a very wide flat base that is impossible to tip over. The bottom of it is already insulated and heat shielded but I still place it on top of an Action Packer lid as an extra measure of safety and to promote easy clean up of any splatters. Surrounding the stove is a folding heat shield that takes almost zero space in my kitchen bag. Again when cooking in this location no one is permitted in the mattress area of the Flip-Pac. There is plenty of space on the raised floor below for my wife and daughter when we cook inside and that's a much safer place to be.

​

 

Yeti Cooler
and Cooler vs. Fridge

Really late writing up something on the cooler which has been in the truck pretty much since day one! And on a related topic the oft debated cooler vs. fridge question:

Pro Fridge

• Keeps things cold indefinitely
• Can actually make warm things cold efficiently
• Good temperature control
• No water getting into everything
• Doesn't require heavy ice
• Saves on ice costs over time

Con Fridge

• Can breakdown
• Requires quite a bit of power
  • Possibly requires second camp battery
  • Possibly requires solar panel if multiple days w/o moving
• Rather heavy starting weight (50 lbs for ARB 50 qt)
• Can require cascade of related mods that get quite heavy
  • 31M camp battery - 61 lbs
  • Solar panel, controller - 7 lbs
  • Cooler slide - 29 lbs
• Restricted choices for location in vehicle
  
• Fairly expensive

Pro Cooler

• Never breaks down
• Relatively cheap (with range of price points)
• Relatively light (23 lbs for Yeti 45 qt)
  
• Locate wherever you want
• No power requirements
• No related mods required

Con Cooler

• Majority of space actually occupied by ice
• Starting weight of ice significant (budget ~20 lbs)
• Finite duration of cooling capacity
• Cooling warm items drastically reduces lifetime of ice
  • Effectively means even more capacity required to store pre-cooled items or more ice
• Difficult to control temperature
• Melted ice water can be a hassle

Which for Diet Taco?

There definitely isn't a single "right" answer to the cooler vs. fridge question as it depends on the person, types of trips and what other mods already exist.

An easy "winning" situation for a fridge is a person that already has a camp battery and/or solar for other reasons and likes to drink a lot of cold canned or bottled beverages. The ability to bring a bunch of warm cans with you and cool them as you need to is something only a fridge can do. Also you can if you want go with a much, much smaller capacity fridge than a cooler both because you don't need ice but also because you don't need to store everything cold the whole trip. So if you want six cold beers or sodas a day then you should seriously consider a fridge. Also if you already have a camp battery to drive lots of lights or something then the relative cost in weight for a fridge solution is down to just the fridge itself which is pretty comparable to a cooler full of ice (50 lbs for ARB 50 qt vs. 43 lbs for a 45 qt Yeti with lots of ice in it). If you camp a lot then you'll also find over time the fridge can save money because you aren't constantly purchasing ice. I've yet to find a person who has purchased a fridge and regretted it!

My use case is quite a bit different though. I run a "dark" camp usually with just a two LED lights running off the truck battery in the Flip-Pac and headlamps being used everywhere else. So for me the weight comparison is 43 lbs for a cooler+ice solution vs 118 lbs for fridge+battery+solar. Throw in a cooler slide for easier use and it could be 147 lbs! I think in my build though I'd avoid the slide, but hard to imagine not having the battery and panel.

I don't drink beer or soda when camping - nor does my family. I mostly have mixed drinks (like Kool-Aid) which only require me to reach in and grab an few ice cubes to cool on demand. My daughter likes some juice pouches (and I find them nice on day hikes) so those might end up in the cooler. Most of my cooling needs are down to keeping food stuffs cold and that doesn't require much space. As a result I can pack my cooler mostly full of ice and it will last through a multi-day trip easily.

So for Diet Taco the choice was pretty solidly for a cooler. That said I'm probably a somewhat odd use case and I suspect lots of people would prefer the fridge.

Which Cooler?

There are a bunch of options for coolers. Of course Yeti has been around for a long time and produce some nice products but at somewhat ridiculous prices. There are plenty of Yeti like alternatives at much lower prices. When it was time to purchase mine though I had a 20% coupon to use from REI and for the particular cooler I was looking at the price delta wasn't super high. It turned out that the 45 qt Yeti was the absolute perfect dimensions to fit next to an Action Packer in the front of the bed and so I went ahead and paid a bit of premium over the other less expensive options on the market just because the dang thing was the perfect size.

Keep in mind there are variety of other much less expensive coolers out there that can actually keep things cold for many days with proper management and little bit of supplementing the insulation. I used a Igloo bought at Walmart for years and years in my old truck. It happened to be unusually well thought out for an Igloo but I could never find an equivalent replacement years later.

Making the most out of a cooler

People's experience with coolers is often vastly different depending on how they prepare them, stock them and use them. If you really want to get the maximum duration out of a cooler keep these things in mind:

• Chill the cooler before your trip - put in some "sacrificial" ice to get the interior cool before putting in your camp ice and food/drinks.
• Only put pre-cooled items into the cooler - you waste enormous amounts of heat energy in your ice by cooling down warm items
• Minimize opening the cooler during the trip - grab all your food items for dinner at once rather than constantly opening and closing the cooler
• Minimize air exchange when opening - consider adding an insulating layer above your ice so when you open the cooler only a small amount of cooled air is being exchanged with warm air
• Keep the cooler out of the sun - solar load is very significant at 1kW/m2 or around 300W on an average sized cooler sitting in the sun. For the same reason get a white cooler or cover it with a white towel if in the sun - a white cooler will only absorb about 30W of that 300W shining on it while a camo green one could easily absorb 150W.
  
• Use a mixture of dry ice and water ice to extend cooling capacity

I have a significant problem with my cooler use in that I don't live with the truck or the cooler which makes it impossible to pre-cool the thing. Also I'm often buying warm juice pouches at the store which the ice has to cool down. Two big no-nos!

I offset that problem by using more dry ice. My typical load for the cooler is about 5 lbs dry ice and about 15 lbs water ice. Cooling down the cooler and the drinks will result in additional early sublimation of some of the dry ice so I can always just add in an extra pound or two of dry ice in exchange for water ice if I've got a particularly warm cooler or a lot of drinks to cool initially.

Dry Ice is your very best friend!

One of the reasons to use something like a Yeti is that it is a dry ice compatible cooler. Dry ice really makes a cooler last for a long trip. The heat of sublimation for dry ice is 1.7x that of the heat of fusion for water ice by mass. Additionally the density of dry ice is about 1.7x that of water ice. Put together that means by volume dry ice has nearly three times the cooling capacity of water ice. Dry ice also starts a lot colder than water ice when purchased which is a slight advantage to dry ice but in reality the vast majority of cooling potential is in the latent heat of sublimation and fusion.

Now I also strongly recommend using water ice in conjunction with dry ice because dry ice is just way too cold for most practical use. You'll freeze everything solid in the cooler with too much dry ice. If you put dry ice at the bottom of the cooler and cover it with water ice though you'll get some insulation from the water ice but also you'll rapidly sublimate a lot of the dry ice and store that cooling potential in the water ice which will cool well below its freezing point.

When I put 5 lbs of dry ice with 15 lbs of water ice in my cooler that's equivalent to hauling around 30 lbs of water ice. At the end of a five day drip in mild temperatures only on the last day will the dry ice have entirely sublimated and the water ice just begun to melt. So using some dry ice also solves the sloshing water in the cooler problem.

In theory a die hard person could take this to an extreme and just fill a Yeti almost entirely with dry ice while keeping food stuffs in a much smaller cooler that uses gel packs. Each day just swap the gel packs into the Yeti. Need ice or a cool drink? Toss it in the Yeti with the dry ice for a bit. A Yeti full of 25 lbs of dry ice (it could certainly fit more than that) would be like carrying 75 lbs of water ice into the wilderness (and in fact you could make about 75 lbs of water ice with that much dry ice).

Keeping your cool - but not too cool

The main issue with dry ice is making sure it doesn't just all sublimate on the first day and freeze the crap out of everything in the cooler. With that in mind I've supplemented my Yeti a bit to make it use dry ice efficiently. Again I don't actually put much in the way of food or drinks in the cooler so the first step was to restrict my food and drinks to the very top of the cooler. I did that by adding a second tray to the top (another advantage of the 45qt size is it fits two trays perfectly). I also added a mid cooler partition so I could better separate and insulate the dry ice.

Starting point empty
​

Next I needed a way to keep the dry ice as far away from the food as possible and make sure it slowly sublimates (i.e. doesn't cool other things too quickly). That was best achieved with some internal insulation and the partition in the middle helps achieve that. The insulator of choice is Reflectix which is like heavy duty silvered bubble wrap. The right side of the partition holds dry ice at the bottom with some water ice on top of that. The sides of the cooler get an extra layer of Reflectix but most importantly both sides of the partition get a layer, a layer sits on top of the ice and another small layer sits on the bottom of the basket. Thus everything else in the cooler is separated from the dry ice by at least two layers of Reflectix. The left partition is filled with more water ice and as mentioned water ice sits on top of the dry ice on the right which means besides the Reflectix there is also quite a bit of water ice and trapped air providing further insulation. The photo below is actually at the end of a four day trip, by this point the dry ice had all sublimated but there is almost no melt water in the cooler.

Reflectix insulation and ice (post 4 day trip)
​

Food and drinks primarily ride in the baskets but depending on the length of the trip I might also put some drinks in the left hand ice compartment. Again depending on the length of the trip, temperatures and amount of drinks brought the proportion of dry ice can be increased or decreased. At high proportions of dry ice it can be challenging to keep things from freezing. Again this photo is at the end of a four day trip so this is just my leftovers occupying the baskets. Repackaging food out of puffy half-empty containers from the store can allow you to pack a surprising amount into the baskets.

Food and drinks on top
​

I've done quite a number of trips so far in this configuration. Early on while I was developing the system I used a wireless outdoor thermometer to monitor the cooler temperature. I also conducted experiments chilling water and drinks as the trip progressed using more dry ice. To date I've found keeping the water to dry ice ratio at 2:1 or above and using the Reflectix as shown seems to keep a fairly stable temperature though the trip because the water ice acts both as an insulator and moderator as the dry ice sublimates.

Fortunately dry ice is available at every Albertson's grocery store in Las Vegas where all my trips start so this is easy to setup when I provision. Dry ice is not inexpensive however so over time I'm actually probably paying a premium to use a cooler instead of a fridge! On the other hand I never worry about my cooler breaking or my ice failing to get cold. With a truck stored away from home that I need to drop in and have ready to camp within a few hours the cooler gives me a bit more peace of mind even though there are obvious conveniences to a fridge.

 

Great homework and writeup. I have no idea where you find the time. Is that the B410T?

 

My kid is a bit older and I didn't just move houses!

Yep, should have put that in the original post! (EDIT: Just added it to the original post for future readers) For Amerex extinguishers if it ends in a "T" then that means it comes with a vehicle mount bracket (has the retaining strap). Without the "T" is just a vertical hanging wall mount meant for buildings. I think most of the 2.5lb extinguishers from Amerex come both in a "T" and non-"T" version so make sure you are getting the "T". They also optionally have another mount that has dual straps that you can buy separately. Their PDF catalog available online is really good and has a table of all the various mounts and which mounts come with what part numbers.

 

I switched to a fridge several years ago, and for us, it was a game changer. But, I never went down the dry ice path. I did use block ice - it kept things cold for a long time, but took up a lot of space in the cooler.

However, since you store your truck in Las Vegas, I think your plan of a cooler is the better solution.

Nice writeup.

 

I've been spending some time recently trying to decide how to spend my christmas money. I really want a fridge just for the expo points but I think simpler is better.

Also I'm Vegas if you need something trying to get out for a trip.

 

I've heard a lot of people say that. If I was able to live with the truck and do a lot more trips that might tip the balance for me to be in the fridge camp too!

Thanks!

 

Mojave National Preserve - Part 1
November 2017

This trip had little advanced planning besides booking some plane tickets awhile ago when they were cheap. Weather is variable enough this time of year I decided to wait until pretty close in to finalize where I'd go. Forecast for Baker was mid to high 70s and DV would be full of 49ers so Mojave National Preserve became the plan. Given past experience with starting a lot of these trips already tired I decided to leave the itinerary relatively flexible with just a few loose goals and I only planned out the first night's camp spot. This would be one of my solo-trips without the rest of family.

Adventure started at 4AM Monday in Maryland when I got up to drive to the airport for an early flight. Landed in Las Vegas by 8:30AM. Spent a little extra time at the storage facility making sure nothing critical to the trip had been stolen from the truck in the break-in referenced earlier. Picked up the extinguisher I'd ordered the previous week from Grainger, got provisioned, had lunch at In and Out before hitting the road south out of town. Briefly stopped in Baker to top off the gas where I discovered a new station with what for Baker is a pretty nice food court including a Yogurtland (which my wife and daughter love but to which I'm indifferent).

Headed just a little further south to Rasor Rd. where the off road portion of the trip would begin. Aired down and checked out the BLM information kiosk near the start of the road. Noted that as I recalled there is no crossing of the railroad tracks at Crucero despite Google Maps claiming there is. BLM specifically highlights this on their map at the kiosk. Also noted that no glass food or beverage containers are allowed anywhere in the OHV area. Give that most OHV areas can be identified from a distance just by the twinkle of broken glass this seems like a wise if draconian policy on the BLM's part.

From there it was a short drive to my chosen camp site. I'd planned my site to take a particular composition of the moon rising over some terrain in the distance. Needed the right angle and a slightly elevated position. The forecast was for just a little wind dying off over the night so an exposed camp would be fine. I had found a small hill in aerial photography that appeared to have many sites around and even on it right on the sight line I wanted for the photo. I circled it once with the truck and indeed it was clearly a pretty heavily used spot with fire rings tucked all around the hill - presumably giving decent shelter from the frequent winds. Today being a Monday it was all deserted. I drove up on the rough road that climbed the ridge where I knew from the aerial photos there were a few parking spots and turnouts.

Climbing to Camp
​

I discovered what looks good on an aerial photo can actually be pretty awful in ground truth. Where the photo above was taken (cell phone, sorry for low quality) I ended up getting trapped in a tighter than expected turn. It really wasn't much of an obstacle but there were large rocks in just the wrong places. I made things worse because just behind the truck was a potential camp spot but the angles were entirely wrong for getting backed into it. Between first trying to get lined up for the spot and then abandoning that because I saw a better spot further up the road I ended up with the truck all out of alignment with any sensible line.

I got out and gave everything a very good look over before coming up with a multi-point shimmy plan to get myself on a better line. This involved at one point backing the driver side front wheel over a modest rock obstacle I had previously descended over - so no big deal. While negotiating that I saw the front mud flap being bent by the rock and had just a few moments to think, "now what bad thing does that remind me of?" before hearing the tinkling of washers falling on rocks. I had ripped the mud flap off the truck by pinching it between the rock and the wheel. Doh! Not an auspicious start to the trip.

I chuckled at my own stupidity and got out to assess the damage. The RokBlokz mudflap which is advertised to never tear had in fact not been torn! They are very thick and are held between large fender washers when attached to the truck. Instead the large screws that hold them onto the truck had pulled out of the plastic body panel inserts. The washers were slightly bent into a mild taco shape but otherwise everything was just fine. Looks like the plastic inserts are the weakest point in the chain and being cheap and easily replaced that seems like a well thought out design. Or perhaps I just got lucky this time. Anyway, I collected all my mudflap parts, threw them in the back seat and proceeded on my way after a few more shimmies.

I finally got to my perch of a campsite. It could really only be called a campsite for something like a Flip-Pac or FWC as it was nothing other than a slightly less rocky patch I could pull the truck into. It was also good that it was there as the road past that point was a bit much for something as long as a Tacoma so my site also worked as a spot to make a three point turn to return the way I came come morning.

It now having been a good 14 hours since I got out of my bed I took a bit of a rest as I waited for sunset. There was a relatively narrow band of clouds going right over MNP and really no place else. Unfortunately they were also thick enough that I expected to get no nice cloud illumination at sunset. That is more or less how it played out but a little color showed up on the southern horizon. And the desert is just damn pretty at twilight no matter what the sky conditions so I still climbed further up the hill to take some photos.

Camp near Rasor Road
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I'm always amazed just how happy I get sitting pretty much anywhere in the desert away from everything. Sunset is always the time this strikes me the most and so despite it being a bit of an exhausting day I was now very glad I'd gone to the effort and was looking forward to the next few days.

I wasn't that hungry and so I had a cold snack of a dinner while reading a book and waiting for moon rise. I was expecting that the same clouds that had muted my sunset would linger to interfere with my intended moon shot. Indeed they did, but in the end that might have been for the better.

My original intent was for a clear sky shot of the nearly full moon rising behind some terrain but now I'm pretty sure that is not a practical composition. A completely full moon is a boring thing because of flat lighting. A slightly gibbous moon has much better surface texture due to slightly off axis lighting. Problem is shooting a gibbous moon rising in the dark is like trying to shoot into the sun - way too much back light on the terrain. Ideally I'd want some fill light from a recently set sun but that would only happen for a full moon with its flat boring appearance. Going to the other side of the full moon phase the gibbous moon would already be well above the horizon before sunset.

In this case though there were those clouds out to the east and the moon was rising behind them occasionally obscured and occasionally shining through. I discovered that as I had worried when the moon was visible it was like trying to shoot into the sun once I exposed enough to illuminate the terrain. However since the cloud cover was broken there were times in which the moon was obscured from my position but still throwing light on some of the terrain in the distance. This was giving a completely different effect than I had originally conceived but did seem like it might give a workable photo. In the end it came out pretty nice.

Mojave Moonrise
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And then I finally went to sleep.

In the morning I installed the fire extinguisher as written up earlier. Then I made the decent from my perch. I manged to screw up again at the same spot as the day before. I carefully planned a line which worked out great until I had to do a last jog around a rock on the upslope side and my passenger front wheel slid off of the downslope side. This was a scary feeling but I knew from having walked it there was no real risk of sliding down the hill, just the risk of getting the wheel stuck. I actually made minor contact with the LCA skid on that side as well. In the end after careful examination I determined I would probably have plenty of traction to just climb the wheel out and back onto the edge of the road and fortunately that worked out fine. The rest of the way down the short ridge I stopped much more frequently to get out and "self spot" any tight spots.

Now at the bottom I took a moment to reflect on how such a benign seeming little road had probably put the truck at more risk of body damage or severely stuck situations than anything else I'd been through in a long time. I also decided that in both cases of nearly getting stuck what had happened was being overly careful of avoiding body damage resulted in bad things happening on the opposite side of the truck. Seems like sliders might solve this problem...

I took a moment to see if I could reattach the mudflap and indeed two of the plastic inserts still retained the screws just fine. The third one in the middle wasn't very secure so I kept that screw, spacer and washers in the truck rather than risk losing them. The other two screws seemed plenty secure until I could replace all the inserts.

Now the plan was to continue down Rasor road following the very edge of MNP and the OHV area to get to the UP tracks at Crucero. For this part of the drive I'd be following the route of the old Tonopah and Tidewater railroad. Where it meets the UP at Crucero I'd evaluate if the tracks could be crossed (was pretty sure the answer was no having been there about a decade earlier) and if not make a detour over to the end of Afton Canyon where there is a grade crossing. Along the way I stopped to check out a large campsite embedded in some trees that must be a much envied spot among the OHV community. Again, there was no one here mid-week and I never saw or even heard a dirt bike or ATV either day.

I made it to the tracks and indeed they are not to be crossed here. Besides being illegal trespassing to do so the angles are deceptively awful. Yeah I'm sure many rigs - probably even mine - could do it but why the hell risk getting hung up on the tracks when I can just go around them with a nice drive through the desert? I could see evidence of someone either attempting or perhaps successfully crossing them but they had clearly disturbed the road bed by having lost traction and digging in with both wheels in the process.

The morning had been a slow start with the extinguisher mod and slow descent from camp while my stomach was still on east coast time so I had an early lunch at the tracks to see if a train might come along for a picture. One eventually did.

Crucero
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I had to head west a number of miles to get to the grade crossing at Basin Road near the end of Afton Canyon. It was a pleasant drive but like most OHV areas the route branches excessively because people can drive anywhere the hell they please which makes route finding more onerous than it would be otherwise. Along the way I stopped at the Dolores Holland grave which is right on the north side of the tracks. Dolores was not quite four months old when she died in 1931. The site is now obviously a curiosity that OHV users like to stop at and leave trinkets at. There is a well maintained fence around the site. It is a uniquely lonely spot.

Dolores Holland Grave Site
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I reached the grade crossing just before the railroad bridge at the end of Afton Canyon and crossed over to double back to Crucero on the other side of the tracks. Now outside the OHV area there was a single sensible road to follow. Looking east as I drove I could see sand draped across the distant mountains and hills as it got hung up on its way from the Soda Lake basin to its eventual resting place at Kelso Dunes. The tracks are straight as an arrow for some distance.

Eastbound to Crucero
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Finally returning to where Rasor Road and the old Tonopah and Tidewater meet the tracks I proceeded just a little bit further east to visit the "Rock Igloo" that Bill Mann highlights in one of his books. It sits right against the foot of the Crucero Hills and now almost two decades since Bill published his book it is a bit worse for wear. It has filled in quite a bit with sand and the roof has completely collapsed.

Heading south now the road generally followed the berm of the Tonopah and Tidewater except where the T&T would occasionally bend to better follow the grade. I stopped briefly at Mesquite Springs which were green with a few trees but no obvious flowing water. From there I decided to head out to what Mann calls Malcolm Rogers Rock Alignments and perhaps camp near there in the open desert. The rock alignments sit on top of a low ridge and are just a few rock circles next to a long line or border of rocks that follow one edge of the ridge. Nothing particularly exciting but the wash below the ridge made for a nice open desert camp site quite decidedly in the middle of nowhere.

Clouds in just the wrong spots once again managed to fizzle the sunset. I could jealously see that well to the south the sky was probably putting on quite a show. This evening at least the sky to the west was nearly perfectly clear and so I knew that unlike the previous evening there would be a soft, glowing deep twilight phase to enjoy. I spent the half an hour around sunset and twilight up on the ridge lazily clicking off exposures as the light changed and just taking in the quiet and beauty that only an empty open desert can provide.

Desert Twilight​

 

I just pre-liked this until I can enjoy it later tonight.

 

I dont know who you are or where you're from...But, I like your style.

 

My idea first. Don't even.

 

Mojave National Preserve - Part 2
November 2017

Woke up bright and early Wednesday ready to do some more exploring and very light hiking. First stop was some small petroglyph panels in the general area.

Rock Art
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After that I had some fun finding a few of the more minor sights called out in Bill Mann's book (volume 1 covers this area). Sometimes his directions leave a little bit to be desired - or perhaps in positive light leave a little bit to be explored. Anyway the GPS coordinates are usually spot on though one or two suffer from obvious typos which require a little bit of puzzle solving to get right.

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to check out one of those great desert mysteries - the Mojave Megaphone:

Mojave Megaphone
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This is one of those perfectly pointless and inexplicable things that seem to show up in the Mojave. It is quite large, obviously ludicrously heavy and with absolutely no discernible function. It is perched in a very inconvenient spot and probably required significant effort and logistics to get it installed there. The internet is full of half baked theories as to what it is and what the point of it might be - none of the theories make any sense. Bill Mann back in the late 80s or early 90s got it written up in the local Barstow paper with a request for information and none was forthcoming from any of the locals who would seem to be the most in the know. It seems plenty of internet historians have tried and failed to figure out who put it here and why. I guess one shouldn't expect there to be much logic in something like this - after all the Mojave also contains the Burro Schmidt Tunnel so it would be unwise to look for sense in everything you find out there. Anyway it was entertaining to finally visit this oddity as I had unwittingly driven past it twice in the past two decades and never realized it was nearby.

On a related note to the south not very far is one of the all too common desert junk piles. Now outside the preserve but in what is now the Mojave Trails National Monument there are a few private in holdings around. These always seem to contain poorly constructed and heavily weathering structures surrounded by absolute junk the value of which could only be known by their owners. In many cases it clearly took quite a bit of effort to haul said junk into the middle of the desert.

One Man's Treasure?
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I suppose those most likely to decide to own and live on a small patch of land in the middle of nowhere might have some odd eccentricities and that results in these patches of junk in the desert. In this case a sturdier than normal structure is on the site along with a nice note indicating it is a shelter used by the heirs of this patch of land who use the small shelter when spending time cleaning up the site. I can only imagine it takes quite a bit of effort and expense to undo the determined efforts of their benefactor who got these vehicles decidedly stuck out here!

Also nearby is the "Bacon Strip" which is a small private airport of sorts. The owner of the small patch of land here has a last name of "Bacon" and hence the clever name. There is a very small "terminal" with shade and tie downs for taildraggers who wish to visit. It appears from a web search that there is an annual fly-in to this spot. The "terminal" is on the edge of a dry lake bed that is used as the landing strip. I actually camped on this spot about 17 years ago before it had been developed by the owner. At that time there was what appeared to be the start of a tiny little cabin being built which I could see was still inside the fence line with a few other structures. As there was a fence and it was clearly marked "private" I just examined the site from the outside.

The Bacon Strip
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Down this way the T&T rail bed continues south. The rails were removed during WWII but ties still exist in some spots. For a long, long time I've been intending to do a composition with the old rail bed. Today would be a good day to scout it. My intended shot (some day) would be either at sunrise or sunset. This trip I made do with a mid-day shot and used my IR camera instead of my color camera. Hopefully I'll get back to this spot in twilight sometime in the next decade or so...

Abandoned Tonopah and Tidewater Rail Road
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My goal for the day was to eventually get to the Old Dad Mountains. The most direct route to do that would be to head east from the Bacon Strip and hit a power line road that continued to the northeast and eventually crossed the UP tracks. Looking at the topo map I picked a likely lunch spot with a bit of a view along the way and headed in that direction. I had a lazy lunch and spent a bit of time "exploring" with binoculars. The entire Soda Lake Basin was spread out in front of me and I could even in the distance pick out the hill I camped on the first night.

After lunch I proceeded across the tracks and briefly detoured to check out "Sands" which was a former railway site. When Mann's book was written almost twenty years ago there were still some structures but by now the site had been entirely cleaned up. The only thing that remains is a rather large water tower.

"Sands" Siding and Water Tower
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The last point of interest in this area called out in Mann's book that I probably would have driven over without noticing otherwise was the remains of a small section of "plank road" presumably constructed originally to help with the extensive sand in this area. Here the road traverses part of what is called "Devil's Playground" on the maps - an endless sea of small dunes anchored in places by creosote bushes. In the distance the blank grey face of the Old Dad Mountains were made more ominous by being partially in the shadow of some high clouds.

Plank Road
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This road eventually rejoined the power lines I had left earlier and then I was able to turn north on a road that runs along the western base of the Old Dad Mountains. This road was rather annoying going as it frequently crossed small washes coming down from the mountains. This was the one spot along the trip so far where a fair bit of clearance and good traction was required.

It was getting to be about an hour before sunset and I knew I didn't have the time or energy to explore a side road that was on my loose to-do list for the trip. So I found a nice spot to pull off the road and make camp. I picked out a few potential compositions for sunset - it looked like the clouds would once again be doing there best to skunk me on a nice sunset photo. After some rest it was time to watch sunset. One of my compositions indeed was a total fizzle but during the very last bits of twilight some color managed to find some clouds to the north behind Cowhole Mountain.

Cowhole Mountain
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Cowhole Mountain was originally a hike that I wanted to do on this trip (and on last year's trip as well in fact) but based on time on energy by this point I had decided to save it for another trip. There were a few bugs getting on my nerves as I clicked these last exposures so I retreated into the Flip-Pac to cook some hot dogs for dinner and read a book before nodding off.