4Runner Camping in -9 Degrees (no heater)

All right, it's about 4 30 right now and I am heading into my favorite Colorado town and I decided it'd be a fun experiment to try and camp here overnight in the negative degree weather. This will be the coldest night I've ever spent in the Forerunner and I have a down quilt and a down blanket and that is it. I don't have a Mr. Buddy heater, I don't have a diesel heater, I could turn on my car but I'm going to try and avoid that unless I am absolutely freezing but I think the quilts, the two down quilts, should be sufficient but we'll find out. Here's to a cold one! I am pretty sure that I am the only person in this town rocking summer tires which means I will be staying in town. I'm not going to get myself stuck especially because I don't have any way to get myself out except for a set device. Currently looking for a spot to stay for the evening. All right, this is looking as good as anything. Put it right here. So as usual the car is kind of a mess and I'm also out of water in my down jeans because I didn't go to Planet Fitness this morning, obviously, and I need to fill those up first. So I get to motivate my butt out into the 21 degree weather to do that. This one has a straw but I'm gonna take it out just in case. That'll do. I'm really excited to see how car camping goes tonight. I'm curious if I get cold. My prediction is I'll be warm all night even if it gets into the negatives. And there's some good wind right now so chances of it getting a little bit chilly are pretty strong. So I lost my hat in that whole process so I have to go into the gas station looking like this because I am going to the gas station before I settle in for bed. I am one of approximately three women in this town right now and that is not an exaggeration. I was sitting at the coffee shop this morning and I was like, um, are there any other girls here? All right, so I'm a little hungry but I don't want anything too heavy so I think the move is going to be a protein bar because I still do need some protein for the day and that kind of fits the bill. Back in business. Can we appreciate the fact that it is 6 16 and it's still this light outside? This looks like a normal Christmas tree but wait the back side isn't covered in lights. Cracks me up. There's no lights on the back. All right, back to my spot. Questions and like talk to me on Sunday and I'll like tell you if they're good questions. I'll talk to you later. Sounds good. Love you. Bye. Okay, so I just got off the phone a little bit ago with my sister who I ended up facetiming for a long time and now it's dark outside so I'm gonna put in my window covers and sit in the front seat and work since the back seat was not working for me today. Weather. Look at these temps in the morning. Drops to negative seven. I'm hoping that these window covers help the car stay just a little bit more insulated. I'm not sure if it will actually work but in my mind that seems to be the case. Two window covers are in. So since I already washed my face earlier today at the coffee shop I'm just going to wipe my face down with witch hazel. Another important step. Moisturizer. Brush my teeth and then I'm good to get to work. Actually, I do know what I did with my toothbrush. It's in the back of my car. All right, I guess I gotta get out of the car one more time. The nice thing is I know exactly where it's at so it should be a quick trip. This is what the situation is now. Okay, so it is 8 40 right now and nine degrees and my toes are starting to get cold so I'm going to just go to bed. Okay, so it is 5 15 and definitely in the negatives. It's negative nine right now and honestly I am not even a little bit cold. I woke up at I want to say 11 and 3 30 but not because I was cold. I just kind of woke up and I am still my toes are a little chilly but I wouldn't even say they're cold and the rest of my body is not cold at all and I think that's because I'm in my little cocoon. If I stick any body part outside of this little cocoon it starts to get really cold really fast so I can actually feel the air coming through right here since I'm holding the down quilt up and it's definitely cold outside so I'm going to lay here a little bit longer. One down quilt, second down quilt. Watch this. It's supposed to be black. It's not black. Okay, maybe there is a little bit more condensation tonight. This is still perfectly dry though other than the frost that I just ended up flaking onto it. This is also dry so for people who are concerned that this is down and it's not going to insulate me this is this is dry as you can see. In case you're wondering what I slept in I have merino wool base layer and then I have some regular leggings underneath that I just didn't want to take off yesterday so I left them on and put my base layers over these. I'm wearing a down puffy coat and the matching base layer top and some wool socks. One layer is all. It is time to motivate for the day so I'm gonna unstack my quilt and crawl out of here. One last look. I made it to the front seat. It's chilly. It's angry but it started. I'm curious how cold it is in here but I have no idea and I can't figure it out because I can't find an app that will tell me but this is the water that I filled up last night. It's still water. There's not even a little bit of ice in here. That's pretty impressive and it was sitting right right here just like that so it's not as cold in here as you might think regardless of the exterior temperature and I don't know if it's because of this reflectix or just that it's a super small confined space but this is sitting up in the front where there's a lot of open air so I'm kind of surprised honestly that this isn't frozen. Let's see if the big jugs are frozen for the hold of one of these. Let's find out. This one is the lower one. Yeah listen you can hear the water swishing. It's not frozen and just as some proof that it is in fact as cold as I'm saying it is it's negative nine right now and 608 in the morning. I am going to make some tea but to do that I have to grab all of the tea stuff from the back of the car so we're gonna check out just how chilly it is outside of this vehicle. If I can get my frozen shoes on that is. Not too bad. Let's see if this door opens. Oh I'm done. I'm gonna leave this door open so that I don't get locked out just in case. Grab this just in case. I can confirm but it is just as cold out there as you might think for negative nine degrees. My fingers are already frozen and I was out there for a minute tops. I am almost out of fuel in this can so it's not wanting to heat as quickly but that is why I brought up the other can too because I had a sneaky suspicion I would run out. A little bit more potential. I'm out of fuel in this can. I have to be really careful because the top part of this stove is actually very hot. Successful. Twist. More like it. Peach tea. Mint tea. Set this down there for now. Time to pull the window covers. Frosty. Come on in or else I'll be frost. So now that I pulled the window covers I need to take off these base layer pants that I have on right now because honestly that's what I wore into the coffee shop yesterday and I need to look a little different. The changing clothes process in the car is honestly one of the hardest parts. If there was an easier way to change in the car it'd be a business. Goodbye to my trusty spot. Morning mountains. Look at those snow piles. I hope you enjoyed this little camping experiment. I'm really stoked that I was able to camp in weather that was as cold as negative 12 degrees. Because this opens up a lot of other opportunities for me. I wanted to be sure that I was close to town for this first night of camping in weather this cold but now that I'm good to go we'll have to see where I end up next.