De-Winterizing a Roadtrek Zion Camper Van + Some Hiking

Hi everyone. I'm Mickey. I'm Gordon. And we're hiking RV. Hope you all are doing well. We're up here at the Whistler RV Park and we're here primarily to de-winterize our Roadtrek Zion campervan. Finally. Yeah and to take advantage of being here to do a hike in the area. Yeah we've actually been doing some local hikes. You know with the restrictions on travel we've just basically hiked in some of the local parks once they opened up. It was nice. We got some beautiful forest trails some nice creeks just some beautiful scenery. We actually saw an owl which is a first for both of us and and so that was really kind of exciting. And then we came up here as Mickey said to finally get around to de-winterizing because we're hooked up to the utilities. So we've got water and a septic area so we can drain the gray tank. Yeah so in this video we'll just show you the step-by-step process of de-winterizing our van. We actually had a previous video up on our website about doing that but we ended up having a problem with it and deleted it so if you haven't de-winterized you can follow our steps. And also show you some clips from a few of our hikes in the last couple of weeks as well at the end of the video. So if you want to click through straight to the hikes then we'll timestamp it in the description below. Hopefully you'll enjoy coming along on the hike that we did do yesterday. Look at the bright side is you're not going to get wet like we did or all the mosquito bites. So step one of de-winterizing our Trexion camper van is to add two gallons of fresh water into the water tank with one cup of bleach. Bleach loses its potency over time so you should always start with bleach that's less than six months old and we actually just purchased our new bottle of bleach. So what Gordon is doing here is using a automotive funnel and twisting the bottom of the cup so that it opens and he's pouring the water in. And now we're adding one cup of bleach and we put it into a measuring cup, mix it in with some water and pouring it into our water tank. So the manual calls for driving around after putting in the water and bleach for about an hour and then to let it sit for a couple more hours. So what we did was we drove to Whistler which takes usually about an hour and a half to two hours and then once we settled down into our campsite we had a nice beer and sat around so we figured that was probably enough time to let the bleach sit in the tank. So step number three is to open the freshwater tank valve under the driver's doorstep and drain the tank completely. This process kills any bacteria in the tanks before you distribute them through the entire water system. We were in a nice dry gravel site so we just let the water drain straight into the ground. So the manual calls for filling and draining to ground the freshwater tank. We inadvertently skipped that step so we just actually started filling the tank with freshwater and halfway through we added a cup of bleach. Just constantly checking the tank levels here to make sure that we don't allow the tank to overflow which we've done before in the past and we had some water leaking out into the van. I think that was last year and once the tank was full we turned our water pump on. We ran both the hot and cold water taps in the galley and the bathroom sink and the toilet to ensure that all the pink antifreeze was out of the lines and the faucets were running clear. We also ran the outside shower faucets until they ran clear. Yeah and it's clear. And then we drained the remaining content to the ground and refilled it again with fresh water. And in order to get rid of the residual chlorine smell in the water we added a half cup of vinegar. So this little special concoction that we now do when we de-winterize and clean out our water tanks. No it's just, it's just vinegar in a jar. I don't know, I think it's better than bullion. Just measure it out. Half a cup. We let this sit for a few hours and then Gordon got up in the middle of the night actually and started the draining again and the water was completely drained by the morning. So once the water is completely drained off you can now add a tank full of fresh water and you're ready to go camping. So while we were up here we also got a chance to do a reasonable hike. It's actually a fairly long hike. It's about 17 kilometers but we would have to hike, we had to hike five kilometers just to get to the trailhead. It's up a rough road. We couldn't, certainly couldn't take the van. You'd need a four-wheel drive. We only really did about half the hike but it was still nice. We got a couple of decent views considering it was raining for part of the trip and we saw a nice, nice waterfall. Unfortunately it was pretty wet for most of it and when it wasn't raining it was very buggy so we had a quick turnaround and headed back and got back to the van and then shortly thereafter it started to rain very heavily. It was a good exercise hike for us. Yeah getting back into hiking shape. We've been, you know, keeping moderately fit but haven't done anything too hard because there's a lot of mosquitoes. Getting heat in the live here. Yeah I think we're going to turn around and head back. We're probably at about the halfway mark from where we're camped. It's kind of rainy and I'm getting kind of soaked through and it's not bad. It's not raining right now but the bugs are coming out so I just wanted to do a reconnaissance trip and now we know where the trail is. We've got an idea what it's like. It's fairly rugged from here forward but nice. A little bit swampy too. Skunk cabbage, water on the trail, kind of muddy. Anyway I think it's worthy coming back another time and getting an early start. Certainly doable if you want to spend one night. All right. Not a long day but a tiring day. One of our first hikes of the year. So we had a very quiet evening. Didn't do too much. We did have a fire for a little portion of the evening. It's been nice to be out. That's the best thing. Mickey said the other day it was just nice to come out and so it was nice to sleep in the van and have breakfast and dinner outside and we just enjoyed being here. We've got a good spot. Place is quite busy. I'd say it's about three quarters full and we've got a fairly quiet little spot amongst a lot of big trailers actually. Yeah it's been good. So we've actually last few weeks we've been getting out on some of the parks that have opened up and just doing some day hikes. Nothing too hard. Just out in the forest and seeing some nice creeks and scenery. It's just been really it was really pleasant just to be able to get out once again and in one case we actually saw an owl so that was quite exciting. Neither of give us a thumbs up and if you haven't subscribed please do so and we'll see you next time till next time