Mammoth Goes After Spring Migration, Day 8

Thursday 14 April 2020

I'd spoken to Edward the previous day, and he said that he got off at noon on Thursday and had planned to head straight for our house. No go--we had another day of camping planned. In retrospect, it might have made more sense to cancel it and head straight home from Sea Rim, but we decided not to. So today, we went with the original plan--a 2-hour drive to Sandy Creek Park at Steinhagen Reservour.

Bye ocean! You were awfully pretty today...at last!

It's a pretty place. A typical corp. park--lots of space, lake-side sites, and truly horrible roads coming in and out.  The reason that I say it would have made more sense to go straight home, is the driving. Going straight home from Sea Rim would have taken us right up I-45 to home in six-and one-half hours. Stopping at Steinhagen meant we had to take small roads up from Sea Rim almost to Jasper, and then next day, take small roads to get to 69, then go to Greenville and take 380 west to home. That route avoids taking 45 and 75 smack through downtown Dallas, but the drive through downtown isn't as bad as it used to be.  Highway 69 to Greenville goes through a lot of piddly llittle towns with slow speed limits and stop lights. The total time on the map is only 10 mintues farther to stop at Steinhagen, but our drive time will be much worse,

Now to speak of a somewhat indelicate matter, but a matter which must be dealt with if one is going to RV. After four nights of camping in a single spot, we had the issue which is the subject of many a humorous key chain and bumper sticker warning:
Shitters full!

Yes, for the first time in our RVing career, we'd filled up the black water tank. To the point where a few little wees might be able sneak into the corners, but a major  bathroom blowout would have resulted in an overflow. Most likely the reason for this happening now--after all, we've stayed in a spot for 4 nights before--was two-fold--one, I'd gotten careless with my flushes owing to our last few longer stops being at places where we had sewer hookups, and two, Ed having put a little too much water in the tank when we first arrived. He's learned that if he puts a few gallons in the toilet to start off with, it helps with the odor and keeps things flushed down a bit better.

So we had the choice of unhooking and taking the shitter to the dump on Wednesday afternoon, or just bearing with the annoyance for one last day. Which wasn't that bad--the campground pit toilet was only a little walk away. About the length of a football field, I'd estimate. So we "pottied out" for the rest of the day, and next day, started off with a nice, satisfying dump.

Driving through Port Arthur

The drive seemed longer than expected, but that's because it took 30 minutes to dump. It took about two hours and five minutes for a good map time of 1:58. So that wasn't really all that bad.