A Bit of a Learning Curve
This morning I’m sitting out in front of the camper in shorts and a t-shirt. As I look through the towering pine trees swaying gently in the breeze, puffs of white clouds drift lazily overhead. There are a couple prairie dogs darting around the neighbor’s camp site, perhaps looking for the remnants of last night’s s’mores. It’s a comfortable 72 degrees in the shade but a sun beam has made its way through the tree tops and is warming my toes.
I think this is what we envisioned a year ago when we decided to launch. To find a spot in the woods, away from the hustle and bustle, to know that an hour’s drive in any direction will bring untold adventure with mountains, meadows, and meandering streams. Just the other day we trekked to the top of Spokane mountain and found all of that and then some. Pine and poplar covered hillsides, flowered meadows and lake dotted vistas off into the horizon.
This is a truly beautiful and expansive part of the country that started as we passed through the meaty SE corner of Idaho, continued up into Montana and Glacier National Park and is still amazing us as we continue west through Idahoshingtana…that spindly part of Idaho which separates western Montana from eastern Washington.
As with much of life, perspective is gained over time which helps us appreciate the here and now. For example, Missouri gave us mid 90’s on the thermometer and super high humidity. Gorgeous but oppressive. Tucson in July helped set the bar for what hot really means. I absolutely love desert landscapes but I don’t prefer the environmental equivalent of an air fryer.
So we fled the heat to this current “remote” wilderness outpost. While the nearest metropolitan area is only an hour away, the campground is wild enough that there is no hookup for sewer. That means a finite capacity in the camper to contain what goes down the drains of our shower, sinks and toilet. It also means trekking down a narrow dirt path at all hours to reach the shower house…that a large number of other campers use. Let’s just say that not everyone was raised with the same importance on cleanliness.
With trips to the latrine during the wee hours as a new non-negotiable, I found my perspective adjustment came in the form of a run to the RV supply store picking up a brand new 36-gallon honey wagon. For those of you that know, you can imagine our delight and apprehension. For the others, this is a portable containment system to transport waste from our campsite over to a dump station on the other side of the campground. It’s accomplished by hitching the rolling turd wagon on the back of truck. With no foresight of possibly needing a hitch, we just left ours in Tucson a week ago so as to jettison some weight. I am going to leave the stickers on the new one to remind me to think twice before getting rid of any more hardware.
So moving on to the operation at hand let’s get to learning opportunity. The up side at this point is that I’ve had to learn new systems in the camper at numerous times over the past year. The down side is that those experiences have proven mastery comes in its own time. So my initial test dump, no pun intended, was with our fresh water holding tank that held a solution of water and vinegar for disinfecting purposes. With our honey wagon in place I found myself laying on my back with arms contorted - one holding a hose under the fresh water drain and the other straining to reach a handle to open the flood gate.
I was successful in starting the flood but woefully underestimated fluid dynamics and the ability of water to enter a sealed container. I looked over and realized the pressure air valve had not been pulled. My arm proved a worthy conduit for the overflow and I lay in a rapidly expanding puddle until getting the handle pushed back in so I could scurry to higher ground. Standing there shaking out my dripping sleeve I had a pungent odor but no harm done.
After opening the vent valve on the honey wagon I moved on to the main dump connection. The expandable sewer hose got connected, the next flood gate pulled open, and I was afforded another physics lesson. Namely, that if you add enough pressure to a hose, especially one designed to expand, it will do so. And it will do so very quickly. The compressed hose, which formerly filled the 3-foot gap between trailer and honey wagon, instantly expanded to its full 15 feet of possible expansion but did so with no sense of organization or control. Think of a 15-foot-long slinky that’s full of actual waste water. It was an anaconda on muscle relaxants.
I stood there and did some analysis and came up with “chaos but contained.” Well…huh. Time to make a couple notes to future me in the mental notebook. After cleaning up the pieces, attachments and six pairs of used rubber gloves I entered the trailer and made pronouncement of tank emptying success. Donelle asked how it went and I simply replied, “There was a bit of a learning curve.”
Several days after that inaugural run, I was “excited” to once again use the honey wagon and dump the tanks. (Side note…I don’t imagine I will ever again experience that same sense of eagerness.) That second experience, honed by wit, wisdom and a healthy respect for physics, went off without a hitch.