Wednesday, we got up bright and early (by our standards) and ate a simple breakfast. Laura was coming to visit and before she did, we wanted to get our little expedition to dump the tanks out of the way. We put away some things that we needed to, moved some of the outdoor stuff like chairs and outdoor carpet out of the way, and hitched up. We got out of the spot in one smooth motion, and I tried to take note of exactly where we’d gone so I could repeat the feat in reverse.
The dump station was in the middle of the “A” loop, on the other side of the lake. Not exactly far, but not exactly close either. We dumped the tanks fairly uneventfully, but man, the water just flooded out of the grey tank. And afterwards, the drains worked fine. Made us more confident that the problem we’d had with the drains was entirely the fault of the grey tank being full.
We also stopped at the spigot to top up the fresh tank. We were sure the fresh tank would be nearly empty, but it only took about 25 gallons before it started coming out the tank overflow. It was so full that when we backed into our space on the upslope some more came out the overflow.
Backing back in wasn’t the ideal one pass that I’d hoped for (I was hoping I could follow the track from pulling out), but it was also considerably less fraught that our Monday night debacle. I didn’t hit a single tree, and we got into a decent alignment to the view, so I’d call that a win for experience.
Laura arrived, bearing cheese balls. I made myself busy eating the cheese balls while Vicki showed Laura around the camp a bit and the dogs made Laura know how much they missed her. Vicki and Laura tried a bit of trail that I didn’t get to. I don’t know if it was good or not, but Vicki never suggested it when we were walking the dogs, so probably nothing special.
Eventually we headed off to Gettysburg. Laura had expressed interest in the Jenny Wade House so that’s where we headed first. We had a bit of time before the tour started so we headed up to Cemetery Hill and had a look around there. One thing that’s impressive about the battleground is that they put stones showing the ends of each regiment’s lines, and it shows you how crowded together everybody was. I remember that from when I visited Cemetery Ridge on the way between the US Orienteering Championships (Pottstown PA) and the North American Orienteering Championships (Dumfries VA) in 1992.
The Jenny Wade House tour was pretty good, but unfortunately we were too late for a battlefield bus tour, and I was in too much pain to do a walking tour, so I just went back to the truck and caught up on the internet while Vicki and Laura went off to a chocolate shop.
After we got back to the campsite, we put up a tent so Laura could stay overnight, and we sat around with a fire going and enjoyed the evening. Alcoholic drinks are prohibited in the park, so I had a glass of what looked very much like a Diet Coke, but also looked very much like a Scotch Ale, and Vicki drank something that may or may not have been a lime soda, or maybe a vodka gimlet. When it got dark, we did a bit of star gazing through the trees and the scattered clouds.
Thursday, we took the dogs for a walk around the lake and then Laura left. We briefly discussed returning to Gettysburg for a battlefield bus tour, but I was still kind of sore from the previous day’s trip. Vicki suggested if we went Friday, I’d be too sore for the trip home on Saturday. So we decided just to hang around and enjoy the beautiful park and the beautiful weather for our last two days. We did got back into town to do a bit of shopping at the Giant, but I also took the opportunity to upload my previous blog posts that I’d written offline where I had a cell signal. We had another fire on Thursday night, and Vicki cooked a big steak and baked potatoes over it. It was quite delicious.
Friday started out nice again, and we had another nice walk around the lake. Over in the A loop and the cabins, there were several campers displaying signs saying that they were there for a particular person’s memorial (I think it was “Rich Stahle”, but don’t hold me to that) and today we discovered that they’d erected a memorial bench on the walking trail.
Unfortunately that afternoon the weather turned a bit rainy. Not horrible, but we did spend more time in the trailer instead of out on the lawn chairs. Once again, the water started backing up in the kitchen sink when we were washing dishes, but this time after a while there was a great big burp sound and then it drained. That happened twice. I wonder if the grey tank drain “repair” did something to the stack vent. Not sure how to diagnose that.
It was still raining in the morning, and once again I’m doing the outside packing up tasks while getting wet. Stashing things like the outside carpet and picnic table cloth so they can be dried out when we get home, trying to re-attach the hitch, and coordinating when I can do tasks like turning off the propane and raising the jacks and disconnecting the shore power with what Vicki is doing in the nice dry trailer.
After we finished packing up, we headed out to dump the tanks. The grey tank once again had a huge flow, so I suspect we were quite nearly full when we had the burping yesterday. Using the shower hose to flush the black tank worked quite well, and flushed out some solids that didn’t come in the normal dump. So definitely something that I need to keep doing.
The drive home was mostly uneventful except the first bit. RVLife send us down a very dodgy steep and narrow road called Stumpy Lane. After about 5-10 miles of driving, we came out to an intersection that we’d seen on our previous trips out of the park where there’s a sign that says “Cowans Gap State Park, 3 Miles”. And then after what seemed like another 10-15 miles of travel, we came across another sign that said “Cowans Gap State Park, 7 Miles” near a place called Burnt Cabins. I’m going to have to look at why RVLife didn’t route us north on Aughwich Road, which would have got us to the 7 mile sign after 7 miles, instead of somehow spiraling further and further away from Cowans Gap until we finally escaped the gravitational pull. Looking at RVLife now, what it does is send us down Stumpy Lane, then north on PA75, but as far as I can tell on the day it routed us south on PA75, then west on PA30 past that 3 mile sign, then north on PA522 to Burnt Cabins. I’m seriously considering getting Garmin’s RV specific GPS unit.