Lake Minden - February 22, 2014

We are just finishing our first week here at Lake Minden. Weather has been just gorgeous here. Temps into the low 70s during the day, and mid 40s at night, with lots of blue sky too.

I have been walking every morning.

I have been using an app on my Samsung SIII phone I downloaded called MapMyWalk. It is a pretty cool app. It uses GPS to mark your route on a map, keeping track of time and distance. It even records elevation change. And free too! I'm up to 3.25 miles now on my trip around the 41 acre Lake Minden here in the park.

While I do my walking, Donna is busy sewing the Good Sam vests.

She has 35 completed and working on the last 15.

We took a trip into Rocklin and Roseville to visit Walmart, Jo Anne Fabrics, Costco, and Camping World. We had to pick up some more thread and bias tape for her sewing. She sure will be glad to get them all done

Washed my shoes yesterday...........

While at Camping World, I picked up a 'Blue Boy'.

I chose a 27 gallon one because we have 2 grey tanks and a black tank, each 45 gallons. Many campground have water and electric, with a centrally located dump station. Now we can dump without moving the rig. And we can do laundry by leaving the Blue Boy connected and leaving Grey tank #1 open.

A few issues had to be addressed.

First... my sewer connection is a little lower that the top of the Blue Boy.

This will cause a bit of leakage (barf, barf) of nasty water when disconnecting the Blue Boy hose. Issue solved by using a container to catch the leakage.

And this is working out just fine.

Second issue is the female end on the sewer drain hose. I would not be able to connect the 90 degree threaded end that would stick into the sewer drain at the dump station. So I made one.

I used an old cam-lock fitting with a male connector end and added a sewer donut.

That should do the trick. It should seal around the sewer drain while dumping.

Our first trip with our new Blue Boy set-up. We hauled a very full black tank load to the dumping site using the hitch on the back of my truck.

So far so good....

I stuck my newly created hose end into the drain. It really wouldn't fit very well, and it made the hose rise up too far. I tried to bend it around to make the stuff flow into the hole better.
My newly created hose end popped off and stuff went everywhere......hence the shoe washing.

Who needs a hose end anyway. After 4 dumps, we now have the hang of it.

I also got to wash my truck (not because of a spill). I paid the 5 bucks here at the park for a wash permit. I used a bucket and sponge. This is the first time I have washed it this way since buying it back in October. I prefer doing it this way.

Looks pretty good.

I went to the little Post Office here in Nicolaus, CA to pick up a General Delivery shipment from Americas Mailbox. Who would have thought that the Post Office is only open M-F from 8 AM to Noon? Small town protocol I suppose.

I am also watching closely the Health Insurance changes going on for RVers who claim residency in South Dakota. Donna has Avera, and I was cancelled by Sanford. But I hear that Avera is now allowing their PPO insurance policy holders to use the PHCS National Network for not only emergency care, but for routine care also. I will make some calls Monday to verify, but hopefully I will get on with Avera also. For a bit, we thought we may have to change our domicile to Texas.

Health insurance.....sheesh!