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Ben and
Marlene sent this story:
About two years ago, shortly after
acquiring our new 5th wheel trailer and truck, we took our first camping trip
to a lake about three hours from home to learn how everything worked. We dry camped with
no hookups, and had a great time, using all of the features in the trailer, including
nightly showers, using and flushing the toilet as often as we wanted, washing dishes, etc.
etc.
Obviously, after three nights and
four days of more fun than we thought possible, we returned with our fresh water tank
empty and all three of the other tanks full; black, gray, and galley. We had noticed a
fuel/food plaza on the way out of town with an easy access dump station and decided we
would stop there on the way into town and empty all the tanks. No one was using the dump
station, and after some new driver maneuvering, I had the rig in the proper place to dump
the tanks with one section of hose.
Little did I know the adventure
that was to follow!
I didn’t notice that while we
were at the lake, one of those kids that were prowling around our trailer had pulled out
the handle marked “sewage holding tank.” Sooo , I laid out the hose in it’s
approximate route to the dump pipe, stationed my wife at the end and told her to take off
the cap on the pipe and get ready for me to pull the handle after I got everything all
hooked up.
When I removed the cap on the
trailer sewer pipe, much to my surprise, all kinds of STUFF came spewing out of that
pipe!!! I yelled and sputtered as my mind was already programmed to hook up the sewer hose
and I tried to twist it on the drainpipe with all that STUFF pouring out! After finally
(it seemed like it took forever) getting it hooked up without swallowing too much STUFF,
suddenly at the other end of the hose, my poor wife had the same problem. She had been
watching my dilemma with a smile on her face and now STUFF was pouring out of her end of
the hose, and she didn’t have the cap off of the dump pipe yet. Needless to say, she
yelled and sputtered as she struggled to get the cap off and the hose inserted into the
dump pipe!!
We were having a heated discussion
about exactly whose fault this whole incident was when we looked at each other, and at the
STUFF that was spread liberally around the pavement and stuck on ourselves in various
places, and we nearly died laughing at the whole ridiculous scene.
We cleaned ourselves, the dump
station, the sewer hose, and everything else we felt obligated to clean as good as we
could, and got out of there!!! We laughed the rest of the way home, and wished someone
could have videotaped that scene for posterity! Needless to say, we check the
position of those handles regularly now, before, during, and after a stay at a campsite!! |
