Constipation

So here we are, Moochdocking in son Ryan's driveway.  Having a ball with the girls, doing all kinds of things.  Taylor and Kierra love to hangout with us in the Journey, they make a bed on the floor  and watch their favorite TV shows and Disney movies.  The shows are much more enjoyable in "Mimi's" camper.

Mimi brought all kinds of crafts and projects and the girls have enjoyed both making things and spending time with Mimi.

It shows on their faces how happy they are to have us here.

Astoria has a great indoor pool complex, we took the girls swimming there.  For a little town, the pool is quite impressive.

One wall has painted murals with scenes from life in Astoria.

Looking through the windows on the other side of the building you see this.

It's actually a retired Columbia River Bar Pilot boat, the most recent addition the the excellent Maritime Museum right across the street.

With all the swimming and fun,

even the girls joined Marti for a little down time.

We realized that Moochdocking in a driveway for an extended time has its own benefits (free) and problems (Oops!  No sewer hookup).

Normally, we can go almost two weeks if we're very careful of our water usage.  Using the bathroom and showers in Ryan's house should have extended our black and grey tank capacity.  But with the girls spending so much time with us, the bathroom got a lot of usage and the black tank filled up pretty quickly, the grey tank was nearing full, too.

Option one was to take down all the Christmas decorations, jack down the Journey and go to the free dump station two miles down the road.  Dump, they return, re-jack and re-level the Journey and re-apply all the Christmas decorations to their previous locations.  Not a good idea.

Option two was get a blue boy portable sewer tote and offload the tanks a little bit at a time, load the blue boy in the back of the Element and run down to the free dump station.  Looking at blue boys at the local RV supply store, the biggest they carried was 15 gallons.  Doing a little math, 15 gallons, liquid weighing about 8 lbs a gallon and two 50 gallons waste tanks, that would be a lot of weight to lift into the back of the Element and require many, many trips to the dump station.  Even worse idea.

Then the light bulb went off.  I called a sewer service and they sent over a truck to pump out the tanks.

It took all of two minutes to suck the tanks empty.  Then it took 40 minutes of polite "Uh Huhs" and head nods as the driver told me his life's story and every bit of sewer gossip in the whole greater Astoria area.  He should have paid me for listening...

The truck drove off but he didn't get far.

I did say the tanks were really full.  ;c)

Anyway, the Journey's tanks are empty, we'll be a little more careful monitoring the bathroom usage and hope we can last another ten days.  Then  the Christmas decorations will only have to come down once. (Phew!)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.