OREGON '23...............Postcards from the Road

Van Living Forum

Help Support Van Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Guess I just need to say congrats on the progress and may the rest of the needed fixes progress easily for you.
 
Thanks..........That's the ORANGE stuff............we already had the radiator replaced .......... And I'm out-of-warranty.
 
I don't recommend IrishSpringBarSoap for pest control

irish spring.jpg


Nasty damn creatures...........that bar is half eaten.........No wires chewed YET...........Cleanup continues
 
Last edited:
If you can stand it... moth balls.. in a container with hole poke in it....
 
Rodents who live in the forest and desert areas are used to strong smells and hot spicy tasting foods. For instance they eat juniper berries as one of their foods. They dig their burrow nest down among the roots of sage brush. They naw on all kinds of woods that have natural strong resins.

So essentially all that advice for what smells to use that works on city mice is useless to try because it does not apply to the rodents who live in the desert and forest. Of course it will eat Irish Spring. Last summer a friend put out some herb and eucalyptus scent bags that were filled with vegetative pieces and the rodent drug off two of them. Loved the stuff even though it was advertised as a rodent deterrent. People put out cotton balls soaked with various types of essential oils and those are snatched up for nesting material.

What works are baited snap traps! Catch them and kill them.

But I have seen being sold on Amazon and EBay a rodent catching device made for use on 5 gallon buckets. It has a swinging platform in a lid that fits on the bucket. A ramp is included for climbing up to the trap. Bait goes in the bottom of the bucket or put bait just underneath the inside back edge of the bucket where the swinging lid does not hit it. The rodent climbs the ramp, steps onto the swinging platform, moves past the fulcrum point and gets dumped into the bucket.

It is much easier for me to fit a few snap traps into storage that carrying a 5 gallon bucket trap.
 
Last edited:
Two years ago I came home to a nest in the popular mouse deterrent… dryer sheet…
So you are not going to be in bend yet???
I’ll bend my plans… I better get up to sons anyways as my grandson will be born in the next three days…
 
Cat piss. Courtesy of the feral feline population at my home base RV park.

They piss on the front tires, and I observe no rodent activity everywhere I go.

Somebody should make spray bottles of the stuff, it's natural you know.
 
Last year I did some research on the coyote urine stuff that is being sold as a rodent deterrent.

Turns out humans have the same component that repels the rodents in our urine but in lower concentration. Of course so do dogs and cats. Up to you to decide if you want to mark your own territory and how you want to do that. You could of course let natural evaporation increase the concentration before an application of your own proprietary product.

Just getting a laugh thinking about asking my male friends to do a urine treatment on my tires or asking friends to deliberately let their male dogs mark my tires.
 
Last edited:
We have seen some wonderful campsites

AnnieCreek.jpg

Annie Creek Snow Park.............We were camped right there............The water was so cold......Too bad the van was overheating.....We couldn't enjoy Crater Lake ! ........and NO Cell Signal

The Rat mess is cleaned

cleanratshit.jpg

Soap......water.....brush.......Rinse/Repeat and finally AIR compressor..............Still no chewed wires

We head to town this week to purchase additional relays/fuses......we may need the Radiator shop's engine computer to figure this one out

I need to bulletproof this engine for the Long Haul
 
Last edited:
Last year I did some research on the coyote urine stuff that is being sold as a rodent deterrent.

Turns out humans have the same component that repels the rodents in our urine but in lower concentration. Of course so do dogs and cats. Up to you to decide if you want to mark your own territory and how you want to do that. You could of course let natural evaporation increase the concentration before an application of your own proprietary product.

Just getting a laugh thinking about asking my male friends to do a urine treatment on my tires or asking friends to deliberately let their male dogs mark my tires.
Chemistry 101: Urine breaks down to ammonia. Buy a jug of ammonia it’s cheeeep and pour it where u want it. It’s cheaper than buying beer for ur male friends and u don’t need to wait for it to cycle thru the kidneys. 😊👍🏼😎🤙
 
Nice work Doug… my grandson was born yesterday so I’ll be bee lining it to Washington tomorrow. My plans are while there to upgrade the suspension on the trailer. Springs, shackles and equalizers in between. Pack bearings, and figure out my overheating issues…
So we’ll be watching your locations… I’ll be heading back to Utah also to see grandsons there play football… and finish a little thing I started in sleeps trailer.
Good luck on your radiator issues…
 
Camp hosting on Detroit Lake for the Summer. Never spent much time in Oregon before this. Its a beautiful state. We drove from Tillamook to Newport one day last week on US101. My wife kept saying the ocean was on the wrong side. Normally when the water is on the right, we are driving north on US1.
We live close to the Pacific ocean and took a trip to Maine. I get the whole "ocean is on the wrong side" thing i was so happy to see Maine but even more to be home where the ocean is on the right side.
I know it sounds weird but that is a real thing. Hubby laughed at me a tiny bit too.
 
Silver Creek Falls is one of my favorite parks. I love the waterfalls walk, walking under the falls and and and .....
Also like the campground in Florence area. The far back area is a haven to the folks coming out to play with their dune toys. I don't have a dune toy, but it was fun to watch them going to and from the dunes. We 4 wheeled it a few times up to elk lake and if you really want some quiet out of the way camping try up there Just take it slow on that road.... As you can tell we like Oregon too.
 
We live close to the Pacific ocean and took a trip to Maine. I get the whole "ocean is on the wrong side" thing i was so happy to see Maine but even more to be home where the ocean is on the right side.
I know it sounds weird but that is a real thing. Hubby laughed at me a tiny bit too.
I know what you mean - the sun is SUPPOSED to set over the ocean! Nothing can convince me otherwise…

Also, the grass is supposed to be golden in the summer.
 
Cat piss. Courtesy of the feral feline population at my home base RV park.

They piss on the front tires, and I observe no rodent activity everywhere I go.

Somebody should make spray bottles of the stuff, it's natural you know.
Not sure about cat piss but I've seen lion piss and bear piss for sale...
I think they use it on train-tracks to deter the deer.
 
In my years of camping in the wild I have researched and tried a number of different solutions. From moth balls, coyote pee, rubber snakes, strobe lights, et.al. Most work for a little while, none work for long. If you move every week or so any of them will probably work. My best results (can one make that conclusion on negative data?) was with deer repellent sold to keep deer away from garden plants.

I don't like to use bait traps as one always attracts more rodents than one catches (the second mouse gets the cheese).

I don't know if it is the ammonia or something else in predator pee that repels rodents. I do distribute my urine around the perimeter of my camp to 'mark my territory'.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top