The Call of the Wild

January 31

Tonight's post is being written seventy-two hours after the fact because for the last seventy-two hours we have been completely cut-off from the digital world - no cell phone service and no internet.

Maureen made it out to our campsite at Lake Skinner on Wednesday (without her dog Mabel, which would later prove to be a blessing) and Mary Ellen was thrilled to have someone to pal around with for twenty-four hours. Although we had gotten used to it, Maureen was shocked how "far out in the boonies" we were. We had told her about the coyotes and sure enough just after it got completely dark they began warming up for the night. Now each night before turning in I take Daisy for a walk; at Skinner Lake this proved to be about twenty minutes each night and took us pretty deeply into the empty darkness, even though we could still see our RV a distance away. But we were only out for about a minute when they really started up and this time it wasn't in the distant hills or up on the mountain but rather three or four hundred yards away and in the campground itself. And they were having a great old time for themselves, yelping, barking, howling and knocking each other around. The walk was shortened considerably and back we went into the light. I'm not really frightened of them, having had them sneak up behind me in the middle of the night to steal my bait while I was surf casting for striped bass on Sandy Hook. But I was afraid for Daisy. Most people think that when coyotes come across a domesticated dog they revert to that "Call Of The Wild" thing and get them to join their pack. In fact, what they actually do is kill and eat them. Anyone who has lived in the hills around the greater Los Angeles area knows someone whose dog or cat ended up being dinner for these scraggly curs. So I was grateful Daisy had made it back home in one piece.

Now what follows is strictly second-hand as I slept through the whole thing. Around 4AM all of their commotion started up again but this time it was right around our motorhome. They were apparently directly under our windows, fighting, howling, nipping each other and just going berserk. At one point Mary Ellen and Maureen could hear one scratching at the front steps, apparently trying to get in. Daisy was at the top of the steps leading down to the door with ears and tail straight up, hackles raised and her gaze riveted on the door, waiting for the first miscreant to try and enter. Had Maureen brought Mabel we would have been peeling her off the ceiling as she makes Daisy look calmly serene.

Finally, some guy who apparently had previous experience with them opened his window and began clapping his hands and yelling "Shoo!" which was enough to send them fleeing in terror back to the hills. But just to show there were no hard feelings, before departing one of them pissed all over our new outdoor rug which we had just unwrapped and put out before dark

This morning Mary Ellen announced she was finished with "camping in the dirt" so we have agreed instead to continue on "touring the country in our motorhome." Very civilized...

The Way Things Ought To Be

(Housekeeping Note: Through my own inexperience with blogging in general and Google's Blogspot in particular, I inadvertently deleted the first five posts I had written, detailing our preparation, The Five Days From Hell, Daisy's story, our sojourn at Orangeland and our day at Disneyland. I'm working to get them back and hopefully I'll be successful ASAP.)

January 29th

I'll bet when contemplating joining the RVing world, everyone pictures themselves parked in a spot overlooking a lake, surrounded by mountains, barbecuing dinner while watching a spectacular sunset and perhaps even listening to some far-away coyotes warming up for the night. In this camping Eden, the weather is always absolutely perfect, never raining and in a temperature that's never higher than 70 and never lower than 50. And of course, no bugs at all. After having paid our dues for the first forty days, not only does that spot exist but we are there right now.

Welcome to Riverside County, California's Lake Skinner Recreation Area. It is just ten miles east of Temecula, the center of southern California's wine country. We're about ten miles west and over the mountain range from Palm Springs and it is almost beyond-belief beautiful.

OK, so it's 99.9% perfect. Besides one of the rangers told me no one's even seen one in a long time...










But enough of the negativity, check out how gorgeous (as well as empty) this place is:



Like most southern California "lakes", Lake Skinner is actually a man-made impoundment which, being surrounded by a spectacular landscape (which these few pictures do not do justice to), was designated a combination nature preserve and public recreation area. The lake has been stocked with fish and supposedly it's some seriously good fishing for largemouth bass, bluegills and even land-locked striped bass. There are motorboats and kayaks for rent at laughably low prices (compared to New Jersey), a large, well stocked camp store, and their own gas and diesel pumps. They even can fill your RV's propane tank!

Each site has its own fire ring/barbecue and firewood is available at the store. Since Mary Ellen wouldn't think of cooking on anything that isn't spotlessly germ-free we only use the portable propane grill we bought at Camping World. It's amazing how tasty barbecued anything tastes when you're in a camp; I suppose it's the milieu that adds the extra flavor.

Tomorrow Maureen is coming down with her dog Mabel to visit for the day, have dinner with us and hopefully be our first overnight guest (she lives about ninety minutes away.) On Friday we'll be packing up again and heading back into Temecula proper to stay at the "campground" that's part of the Pechanga Casino complex. This campsite was voted the nicest campground in the country recently and there's even a shuttle over to the slot machine palace so we can blow even more of our dwindling life savings. And just in case you thought I was exaggerating about the sunsets we see every night while having dinner, see for yourself:

RVing 101: Bubble Bubble, Toil(et) and Trouble

When new RVers announce to their family and friends what their plans are, the first question usually asked is "But, how will you get your mail?" The second one that occurs to them often ends up not being asked out loud, to wit: "Where do you go to the bathroom?" Many well wishers seem shocked to learn that there are full bathrooms inside of most modern RVs. But a little further along their train of thought comes the realization that if the motor home moves, where does "everything" go?

It goes into two holding tanks: one is called the "grey" water tank - everything from the kitchen and bathroom sinks, as well as the shower and the washing machine go into that. The other is called the "black" water tank because (as you've probably already guessed) everything that goes down the toilet is destined for the black tank. Both of our tanks hold forty gallons; the grey tank always fills faster than the black; in fact a shower or load of wash will take up a full third. There is a small electronic panel on the wall inside the RV with a list of various containers and a small button under each one. Pressing that button lets you know how full each tank is and when either the grey or the black (especially the black) reaches the two-thirds mark, it's time to "dump" (the tanks, that is.)

There is an entire underground culture of black tank tales, horror stories of the sewer connection not being tightly secured, pulling the wrong valve handle, not making sure your hoses are where they should be, etc. but all of these legends conclude with the same ending - a humiliated RV owner covered in a week's worth of excrement or worse, your neighbor and/or his RV being covered with the effects of your carelessness.

Hidden behind one of the storage bay doors is the Crap Command Center. On the upper left is the water filter to remove any impurities from the water supply the campground provides. In the bottom middle is a large red hose connected to a "Y" joint serving both the grey and black water tanks; not visible are two pullout handles, one for each tank. The Red drainage pipe is supported by a train trestle like contraption that keeps it heading downhill into the sewer pipe next to your RV and thence into the ground connection to the city's disposal system.

 Also not visible is a clear, 90 degree elbow connecting the red hose to the Y Valve - that way you can see when the black tank's discharge goes from brown to yellow to clear. It's a fairly complicated two person job (at least for us new-comers) involving using two different hoses to prevent contamination, emptying the tanks in order and being sure to flush out Mr. Black with fresh water to make sure no refugees are lingering behind. If you're prudent (like I wasn't the first time) you open the grey water slightly to make sure there are no leaks - better to be cleaning up the laundry water than the remains of last night's pizza and beer bash. Then, after closing the grey, you slowly open the black. If you just pull the handle out all at once, over two hundred pounds of gravity-fed effluence literally comes roaring into the hose's enclosed space, making it "jump the tracks" and you holding up your wriggling red boa constrictor as you feel the entire week's worth of flushing coursing through your hands. But that's not the worst part. You see, the liquid in the black tank comes out first, followed after a momentary pause by an unmistakable load of you-know-what coursing through the hose at sixty miles an hour for what seems an eternity. I never realized how much my own "black tank" held until I literally got to "hold" it myself.

Now a curious incident happened two weeks ago. We had put our RV into the dealer's for a week but before we did, we made sure to drain both tanks completely. One week later after picking it up, we go to use the bathroom and the toilet bowl is filled and clogged. Huh? We try everything but it won't budge so one of the local Mobile RV Service guys comes out and in less than a minute has unclogged it. But, but...how did it get filled and clogged like that? He just looks at us until we catch on - the guys at the service shop had been using it for a week until they clogged it up and never bothered fixing it. Classy, huh? But it turns out there's another problem. He explains that right under the toilet bowl, the pipe takes a 90 degree turn which means that lots of clogs are in our future. He says that when we're ready he can remedy it for us but until then, we need "The Wand", a wriggling tube flexible enough to get all the way down through the clog but sturdy enough to push through and eliminate the, ahem, problem. The next day we buy one and it works great for the weekly stop-ups we begin experiencing. Behold: The Magic Wand