Blackwater, Bakery, and Bonito (5/13/07)

Dump Station Event

When we left Dead Horse Ranch State Park, we went to their dump station to dump our wastewater tanks, as usual, and had an "event" - no, it was nothing like Robin Williams in "RV"! But sort of funny in a gross way... While we were there, another RV pulled up in the next lane (there were two sewage drains in the same concrete pad) and started getting their hoses set up to dump their tanks, too. Now, dumping isn't really all that bad, for those of you who've never done it out there. There is a procedure - and specialized equipment to make it easier and neater. We use a PVC elbow to connect the flexible hose to the drain hole in the ground. Another important piece of specialized equipment is "the rock." There is always a rock that people place judiciously on their hose-drain connection to make sure the waste goes down the drain! Some drain fittings have threads and we can screw one side of our elbow connector right in so there is no need for a rock, but many don't, so the rock is a bit of insurance to make sure the hose doesn't come out while dumping. Other specialized equipment we use is a small folding chair, hand sanitizer, and oh yeah, common sense!

The pieces of equipment our dump neighbors were lacking were the latter, the elbow connector, and the rock. The man put their hose directly into the hole, and the woman came over to "help" and put her foot on the hose, which popped it back out of the hole and pointed it at us! Neither noticed this before pulling the valve release handle on their RV and sending their blackwater streaming toward us, though I was saying "Oh no! Stop!" Luckily, it didn't come out with the force of a geyser like in the movie, and was mostly clear liquid, and Devin managed to avoid the stream, but it was funny to watch the woman, with her foot on the hose holding it out of the hole, saying "DO SOMETHING!!" to her husband!! Ha. They apologized multiple times and we said, hey, it all smells the same whether it's yours or someone else's, and we ALL sooner or later have "accidents" at dump stations! That's why we are always careful what we touch and use hand sanitizer immediately afterwards.

Some words about waste... when you carry around your own water supply (we have a 75 gallon tank) and your own waste, you become acutely aware of conservation. One thing we find is our grey water (from the sinks and shower) fills much faster than the black water (from the toilet). RV toilets are very water conserving, and ours has a little hose you can use if you need to clean the bowl rather than filling it all the way up with water. We have a system of wash and rinse water for dishes, where we keep both in tubs, and last time's wash water becomes the dirty pre-rinse water of the next set of dishes, and last time's clean rinse water becomes the soapy dishwater. So by the time the water is ready to dump, it's been used to rinse, wash and pre-rinse dishes. We then dump it down the toilet since that tank fills slower. This, along with our solar panel set up, extends our stay when "boondocking" or "dry camping," which is what we did for a week in the Kaibab National Forest.

But I get ahead of myself - back to the journey!

Flagstaff

We arranged to meet our friend Graci for breakfast at Brandy's in East Flagstaff the next day, and had a nice visit, meal, and got some great baked goods for the road. Graci was moving to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon that day, and starting work with the NPS the next day. We caught her between finals and moving!

We stayed that night at Sunset Crater National Monument. The Forest Service Campground, Bonito, just outside the Park is very nice. We learned a valuable lesson the next day - we both thought the other was in a hurry to get to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, so we did not unhook and stay an extra day to explore Sunset Crater :( We both said later that we would have liked to do that. Better communication next time, and we won't miss any more opportunities to explore.