Today was a rainy day so we stayed in, and I had to deal with the mobile poop tank! Hahahah (insert poop emoji here).
And we have another rainy morning today, and the forecast is for run all day long, so we don’t have any plans besides Carol going to town to the post office and grocery store.
The girls did their school work, Bia as always just got it done. Bella had a slow start, seemed like we’d have a tough day, but she accelerated and finished it all, including the 7 pages of math left over from yesterday. She rocked!
The rain didn’t stop all day, and just varied in how much rain was coming down. We had some times of downpour but most of the day was light rain (more than a drizzle).
Carol finished the laundry (beddings and stuff) and made lunch, then went to town to the post office and to get some groceries. The girls finished school and were working on their save the planet project, testing out Zoom, etc. One of them was in my bedroom with the doors closed and the other was in a bunk with the curtains closed, and they were talking to each other on zoom. I’m glad I got the wifi here and am using the data offloading feature on the router otherwise we’d be scrambling for bandwidth.
They also worked on wrapping up the gift for Vi, decorated all the wrappers and wrote messages all over.
I worked on some clients stuff today and had some calls. Call quality today was not great, I think too many people stayed in and were online, so it impacted call quality through wifi, but I made it work enough. Work stuff took most of my morning, and in between I did some posts work and some trip planning. I wanted to go for a run, even in the rain, but it was raining way too much.
Around lunch time I decided I’d call the Tank Drain service from the campground since we don’t have sewer. The paperwork said they come Tuesdays and Fridays, and the pricing is $25 if you call ahead, or $35 for same day. If you need anything any other day they charge $50. I called in expecting to pay the $35 bucks and be done, but to my unfortunate surprise, the guy was done for the day, and even if I had called early he was booked. Also learned they don’t do the “other days” service anymore, and my only choice was to wait until Friday.
Well, we leave on Thursday, so that was not going to work. The lady from the office told me my options and as I told her my situation she offered two choices… I could unhook my trailer, close everything up and drive to the dump station, then come back and hook it all back…. (Which is a major pain and inconvenience)… or, she would let me borrow her “poop tank on wheels” hahahahaha. It’s actually called a portable RV waste tank, and that was really the only option cause I was not going to unhook everything, move kids around and the whole shebang….
So, some time after lunch… I washed the dishes, Carol cleaned the bathroom and I went outside, in the light rain, to empty our tanks. The lady didn’t know how big her portable tank was, but told me to get it from under her 5th Wheel, which was 3 sites from us. I went there and found it quickly, it is a small 12 gallon tank, which meant it’d be easy to haul around, but also that I would likely need to do multiple trips. I got the tank and brought it to the trailer, then went inside to watch a few videos of people doing it, just to be sure I didn’t screw anything up and literarily have shit all over.
Process is pretty simple… connect a hose to the portable tank, then to the RV, then open the air valve and then open the RV tank… watch to make sure it doesn’t overfill (this one did not have an automatic stop), then close the RV tank. Once you close the RV tank, the hose still has quite a bit of stuff, so you need to remove the hose from the portable tank connection and cap it. Then close the opening from the portable tank, close the air vent and take the tank to the dump station. At the dump station, you connect the elbow to the dump, connect another hose to the portable tank, open the air vent and tilt the portable tank to empty it into the dump. And that’s it… trying not to get any spills. Then close up and repeat the process.
I ended up doing three trips total, but didn’t empty the tanks all the way as it is hard due to height of the tank and angle, etc, but it was enough to last us until Thursday when we leave, then I’ll just stop the RV next to the dump station and empty all the tanks and do a flush. When I was done, I hosed everything down, cleaned it up and returned the portable to the same spot I got it from.
It was raining non stop, so I was pretty soaked. When I went to dump the second time, there was an RV dumping and I had to wait. I went to the structure that was covered and next to it, which is where the bathrooms are. There was a woodpecker on the side wall as I approached, and I wanted to take a picture but it flew away before I got it. I went where it was, and those guys had opened a crack on the siding and were filling it with nuts. hahahah.. very cool!
After I was done I wanted to take a shower, so we all went to shower as it was late afternoon already. Then Carol made pizza, you know the one with fresh tortilla shells that you grill, but she made on the frying pan which works great as well. We had dinner, had a bottle of the wine we got at Coppola winery, then played some black jack with the girls while betting using perler beads hahahahah… and watched some TV. Oh, now we only have 10 bottles of wine left ahhahahaah… Girls went to bed, then we went to bed.
Not a ton happening today, but we got a few things caught up.