The Lows of our First State Park Stay

Once we determined that water pump #2 needed some serious TLC, we decided it was best to ensure we had water hookups as much as possible until we could get our trailer in for service in May. This meant that any plans for boondocking needed to be scrapped. Unfortunately, our very next stop after DC was going to be a boondocking spot - one we were really looking forward to - but we needed to scramble to change our plans. We decided to head straight down to North Carolina, to what would be our stop after the boondocking. We had reservations at Jordan Lake State Recreation Area for a couple of nights and hoped to extend our stay a few more days. This brought up a host of issues:

1. In the winter, the Jordan Lake campgrounds shut off water, and we didn't know if they had turned it back on
2. We weren't sure if our site was available for the extra days

We hoped a quick call would answer all our questions, but we got a bit of a run-around. Eventually, we confirmed that yes, water had been turned back on that previous week. We couldn't get our site for the extra days, but we were able to switch sites and stay on the dates we needed. Crisis averted! What this did mean, though, was that we would be spending extra time in a water and electric only site. Shouldn't be too hard to conserve our tank space without sewer hookups...or so we thought.

When we got to the state park, our joy of being away from the highway and into nature quickly dwindled. We had done really well so far not showing our newbie status when getting into campsites, but this one gave us trouble. We had a lot working against us. This new site that was not our choice and was not as easy to back into as the one I had initially chosen. It had trenches on either side, and you know how much we love a good ditch...not! It was a back-in from the passenger side, which is inherently more difficult, but we also hadn't practiced it as much. Lastly, we were backing in from a narrow state park road, and if we got too misaligned, needed to loop all the way around the campground to set ourselves up again. This happened a lot considering it was peak check-in time, and we had to keep pulling over up the street to let people by.

It's the story that everyone has - almost a rite of passage for RVers and the very reason for the shirts that say "I'm sorry for what I said when I was backing up the trailer." Anthony and I were arguing about how to get into the spot, well-meaning neighbors kept coming to ask if we needed help. I never wanted to be that person, but yet, there we were.

The solution to a lot of things in RVing: Take a break! I eventually had Anthony drive to the dump station and pull over to regroup. There, I was able to explain to him which maneuver I thought would best get him into the site. Our driving instructor had shown us how to align our trailer at the angle we needed before backing in. We want our hitch rotated the right way so we can follow the trailer into the site. Turns out Anthony didn't remember this lesson the way I had, but once I re-explained it to him, we drove back to our site, keeping our fingers crossed that we had solved our back-in woes.

The maneuver worked like a charm (thanks, Aaron!) - and Anthony and I have now had a long discussion of how to better communicate when getting into a site. It's an ongoing process, but it looks like we'll have plenty of opportunities to practice as we stay at more campgrounds.

An hour had passed from arrival to the campground to actually being parked in our site, and by then it was getting dark and we were hungry. We quickly set up, cooked a frozen pizza, and poured ourselves into bed, hoping to at least get a good night's rest.

Not in the cards. Early that next morning, our cat Lily began showing signs of a stomach bug. We'll spare you the details, but she needed a whole lot of diapers and butt-washes. This being our first stay without sewer or laundry, we became worried at how we would handle a sick cat without having all the necessary resources. That day was also stormy, and thunderstorms make Tanner anxious. So we hunkered down, sheltered from the rain, and tended to our pets-in-need.

Lily has a chronic illness that causes UTIs and incontinence, and Tanner isn't the picture of health either in his old age, so we knew that we needed solid veterinary resources when traveling for extended periods of time. Their vet back home is wonderful, so we're always in contact with them. The problem is trying to find vets who A, have availability in a short timeframe before we need to travel again, and B, finding ways to refill medicine when we're on the move. Lily's digestive upset lasted 3 days, so I was making some calls to different vets to see what our options were. I didn't have as much luck as I had hoped, but I did form a game plan to make veterinary care easier to get in the future. If it works out, I will share my secrets in an upcoming blog post.

Thankfully, Lily ended up not needing medical intervention, and she began perking up by the end of her third day of illness. We did end up using a lot of tank space from washing Lily and handwashing her diapers, but it gave us a good sense of just how long we'd be able to go without sewer under normal conditions, which is quite a long time! And, just as Lily began to improve, so did the weather. This allowed us to spend the last couple of days at the state park enjoying the scenery. More details on that will be coming in the next post.