We’d just spend a wonderful 3 days in Fernwood Campground & Resort in Big Sur, CA. This is such a cool campground with electric and water hookups, friendly staff and Big Sur River running right along most sites. We’d had wonderful weather all three days, but as we started to pack up I could feel little raindrops as I hustled along. By the time I hooked up our trailer, the rain had really started coming down, which would have been decent timing if I didn’t still have to dump. No biggie, I put on my rain poncho and pulled up to the dump station.
Now, before I go any further, I have to tell you that our travel trailer is equipped with a tank flush-out system. For anyone not familiar with this, it means we have a water inlet on the outside of our trailer that we can connect a regular hose to, turn on the water, and several nozzles located inside the black tank will spray the tank walls to help flush out more waste.
Well during our last camping trip, I used our flush-out system to clean the tank after dumping. This means I had my black tank drain valve open (very important to do) so that the water being sprayed has a way out. I did this until I could see the water run clear through my elbow connection at the sewer. All standard procedure at this point. Next, I turned off the hose faucet and waited until I couldn’t see any more water coming out of the elbow connection. This is where I made my crucial mistake; since there is no more water coming out, it’s easy to just disconnect my sewer hose at this time and start cleaning it out, which is what I did. Immediately after disconnecting, I put my drain cap back on and moved on to spraying out the sewer hose. Some of you may already know what I did wrong. In case you missed it, I completely forgot to close my black tank drain valve.
Now, back to Big Sur. It is pouring rain at this point, and I’ve just pulled up to the dump station at the campsite on our way out. I put on my gloves, grab my sewer hose and pull off my drain cap…three days’ worth of black tank waste immediately starts dumping on to my shoes! I would have been wearing rain boots if it hadn’t just started raining.
Just to clarify, when I failed to close my black tank valve during my previous dump, it meant the only thing stopping the waste from coming right out was the plastic drain cap on the main outlet. So when I pulled that off to connect my sewer hose…ya, you get the picture. Anyways, I slammed the valve shut as quickly as I could and stopped the deluge of…you know…from continuing to soak my shoes. The rest of the job went as smooth as can be hoped for in the middle of heavy rain and I was suddenly thankful for that rain to help wash away my embarrassing mistake.
I finished dumping, walked over to the dumpster, threw in my shoes, and had my wife drive by to pick me up.