How to dry your sleeping bag
After one night of dehumidifying..
May 20, 2025
5:42 AM
After, well, quite frankly a miserable night, I just got up, and left. I rolled up my wet sleeping bag and put it in the back of the car, along with my wet bedding, I blasted the A/C and heat at the same time in hopes of drying it out over the next 6-8 hours of driving. I crawled through the campground to try and avoid bothering any of the other campers, used the card lock and then returned my pass and card. On the road again, no breakfast, no dinner the previous night. Just going. I slurped down a protein shake I made and headed down the road. I'm pretty miserable, but I just have to keep going. There was a Irving station around an hour down the road, where I picked up a 50/50 coffee and the last bacon and egg breakfast sandwich in the store. The store was run by a couple of natives. Improvement. They also had lots of hats and t-shirts, and groceries. These Irving stations are pretty nice honestly. But, its still raining. I’m loathing the wetness I’ll need to experience tonight. The roads here are very stark, and the added fog from the rain has made this into a mushy grey line that just keeps going, I’m missing all the enjoyment of looking at the scenery as I go. There’s just hints of the beauty that could be if it were just a tiny bit clearer, but the clouds are covering everything and as a result, I’m just driving through clouds. I really don’t have much to write about here, just pushing and pushing, getting gas - that is.. until finally I hit Nova Scotia, and like a miracle.. the clouds clear. The sun comes out, and the roads are Dry. I saw the border crossing with its line of flags flapping in the wind, but I didn’t have time to stop since the sign in will be closing around 6:00 at Cheticamp, so I had to go. At this point I’m running on fumes, I’d stopped and picked up the odd snack at the gas stations along the way but it just isn’t substantial. There’s an Irving big stop, and I remember it. There’s a Dairy Queen so I got a double cheeseburger with a diet Pepsi and some ketchup which I squirreled away for my mac and cheese later in the week. This little meal perked me up, and I went and did a check on the trailer. My monitor has managed to vibrate so much the VESA mount screws have unscrewed themselves, all but one. I removed it and moved it into my car. I’ll have to try to fix that when I reach camp.
Leaving here, I continue to enjoy the sunny skies and cross over to Cape Breton island around ~2:21PM I stopped at the Petrocan and topped up, only to find another casualty of the trip - my Cell Phone booster was barely connected and in the process of trying to screw it down again, I realized the threads are just not engaging, and in fact the threads on the female side are just gone. I then went to disconnect the antenna and pull it off, but it just lifted off entirely. I guess that is that. I don’t think I have the tools with me to fix the antenna, but we’ll have to see during my downtime. I crossed over to the island at the crossing near Port Hastings, and headed up the west coast of the island on Ceilidh Trail (no do not ask me to pronounce that), finally arriving at Cheticamp around 4:30pm. I registered my vehicle, and got my national parks pass, and pulled into my camp site #10. And boy am I glad I have the trailer, if I’d had the tent I’d have not had any privacy. Consider the amount of space you get in the average parking spot, and then multiply by 4. There is a space between my site and next site over which is about half the width again of a parking spot. Very ‘efficient’ use of space. The picnic tables are concrete, so there’s no customization here. I spent the next 2 hours or so setting up camp, a lot of which was just trying to get the tarp to free stand over the picnic table, since there’s no really available trees here. I find this hilarious, because it would be great for my solar panels, and yet, this is a full service site, so I won’t be setting up panels. Inside the trailer, thankfully has either dried up or the plywood has distributed the moisture, though my mattress is still damp. I got the little dehumidifier set up, along with my little 500W heater which together should help dry things out. Unpacking, repacking, and organizing stuff I started to feel the effects of sleepiness around 7:00, and even though my trip log is direly out of date, since any time I’ve tried to do it WPS office has crashed (my entire Chromebook reboots.. so moving to Collabora Office instead) . With the heater, and the clear skies - and even with my neighbours being less than spitting distance away, I used the facilities and then went to bed.