Skip to content

Cabin Life, Chapter Five

Utilities: electricity

Since there is no electricity in Mineral King (unless one uses a generator or is some sort of a solar genius), you might be wondering about some basics of life.

Let’s start with cooking. Lots of cabins have propane stoves, a few have propane/wood stoves, and we have a wood stove without a propane section. We also have small propane burner for quicker cooking when we don’t want to wait for the fire or heat the place.

Good thing I like to split wood. (Trail Guy makes it easy by providing smaller chunks for me.)

What about refrigerators? They come in propane. Ours isn’t top-notch (does that surprise you??) and in warmer temperatures it becomes more of an icebox with a good freezer on top.  So, we supplement with ice made in our freezer (or a neighbor’s) and sometimes we supplement with snow.

(HEY, SHUT THE REFRIGERATOR DOOR!!)

Those propane refrigerators have lots of troubles, beginning with the fact that the easy strike start-up device ALWAYS breaks first, and then it takes a gymnast to reach around the back with a match while someone else holds in the button, usually with a tool because it is really hard to push the button.

But that’s okay, because life is slower at the cabin.

Wait! What about light??

Again, propane.

Almost everything requires matches, and “Strike Anywhere” matches have become rare. (We call them “1 in 3s” because it takes 3 matches to get one that will actually light.) Lots of people use those plastic things that resemble curling irons with hard-to-press switches; I think they are called “lighters”, but the handle is longer than smokers’ types. And I bet they have a tiny internal propane canister. But plastic, ugh. So cheap, so unreliable, and so disposable, probably made in China. Sigh.

6 Comments

  1. A back-up on Jana’s analyses: It’s not just Jana’s cabin she’s describing. It’s the Crowley cabin and I’m sure almost every other cabin, too. Even with a solar panel!

    • Thank you for that confirmation, Louise! These rustic cooking appliances are indeed common to all our rough shacks in the best place on Earth. (And I didn’t even address the ongoing struggles with water heaters!)

  2. Funny you should mention refrigerators . . . I spoke with Kathy last night and ours is no better than a Coleman cooler with a few blocks of “blue ice.” Most likely the seal has been compromised And yes, it took them forever to get it lit. Replace with a new one? Good luck with that!

    But no electricity? A bit of heaven on earth! I wouldn’t have it any other way.

    • Sharon, everything in life is a mixed bag, ain’t it?

      • Especially when you’re working with 100-year-old structures built somewhat haphazardly that suffer through severe winters every year!

        • Our cabins are the shabbiest oldest weakest housing in all of Tulare County, located in the harshest weather that our county has to offer!

Comments are closed for this article!