The campground at Birmingham was a muddy, sloppy mess after days of heavy rain, so packing up this morning was a real 'treat' to say the least. 'Packing up' amounts to securing everything inside the RV so nothing is harmed as we go down the road, and then disconnecting and packing anything outside: Power cable, CATV cable, water hose, sewer hose, barbecue, leisure chairs, etc.
I needed to do a thorough flush of the black sewer tank this time so that took sometime. We have two 'gray' tanks - one for the kitchen sink and one for the bathroom sink/shower. These generate 'gray' water. Then there is a 'black' sewer tank that connected to the toilet. The black tank has an internal flush mechanism we hook a water supply to which helps to flush inside the tank to remove solids. Then we also have a wand we hook on the end of a utility hose with a backflow preventer, and it really blasts inside of the tank to help remove any remaining solids. OK, more than you ever wanted to know about cleaning sewer tanks! It is not nearly as bad as your imagination may be portraying right now. Cousin Eddie makes it look easy in 'Christmas Vacation', you know, just dump it down the city storm water sewer, right?!
Another time consuming task is cleaning off the tops of the slide-outs, all five of them. All of the rain brought down a lot of leaves and seeds from the campground trees and they end up on the roof and the tops of the slide-outs. All of that wet stuff has to be removed or else when you bring the slide-outs in, all that stuff would end up inside the RV - a nasty mess! I use a lawn blower with an attachment like you would use to clean out your gutters at home. It works really well whether the leaves are wet or dry. If they are wet it also helps remove the water so it does not end up draining off inside and running on the carpet. The blower comes in handy blowing off leaves and seeds from the site too.
Now I will say we have yet to set up and use our barbecue grille and we have yet to use our leisure chairs. The weather has simply been crap since we departed Ankeny with the exception of the very first night at St Louis where we had sunshine and temps in the low 70's. We are hoping for that really soon again!
So back to the trip, we are all set up at Maxwell AFB FamCamp for the next eight nights and we are really happy with our site. It is an end site so it is bigger than most. A large yard outside our walk-in door, plenty of space for Liberty our dog. The spots are mostly paved and this one is about 100 ft long which is huge. There is a paved patio as well where the picnic table is. On the other side of our yard is a shower house complete with an end room with a help-yourself ice machine!
By the time we arrived and got set up, we were damp and cold, so we did not get any outside pictures taken. Will post some tomorrow.
Campsite#: 4 of 30
# States Traveled Through This Trip: 6
Baseball Parks Visited So Far This Trip: 0
Point to point travel miles: 982 miles
- Avg point to point travel miles: 246 miles
Vicinity miles: 304 miles
- Avg vicinity miles: 101 miles
Total miles driven: 1286 miles
Total point to point driving time: 18 hrs 20 minutes
Total fuel purchased: 115.568 gals
Total fuel cost: $344.98
Average fuel cost: $3.027
Max fuel cost: $3.179
Min fuel cost: $2.669
Average MPG: 10.29 miles/gal
# Nights at end of this stay: 17
Lodging cost: $581.04
- Average lodging cost/night: $34.18/night
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