Adventures in Van Land

I ran across some pictures from the trip and realized I didn't talk about the van at all due to the rather exciting Wesley event. Taking the van on vacation was a hit. It handled the mountains just fine, the kids were comfortable and the toilet was well used. I realized last year we were still potty training Greta and she wore a pull-up throughout the whole trip. This year was a whole new ballgame. We had two kids that chimed in at nearly any moment with "I have to go potty!!" And this wasn't just a "hey, I might need to find a toilet in the next half an hour", it was a "you'd better find a toilet in the next 30 seconds or I'm going to soil the seats". Luckily, we had a toilet on board! Sean would find the nearest exit and pull off to the side of the road. It saved a whole lot of time not having to stop at gas stations. I have to admit I used it quite a few times too.

We all managed to fill up the waste water tank in no time. So then the hunt for a place to dispose of the waste water began. Apparently most rest stops have black water dump stations somewhere so we stopped at a few before finding one. Now since not a single one of us had ever dumped the tank before it proved to be a learning experience. In theory you just take the hose and hook it from the van into the ground and then open up the lever on the van to let all the nasty stuff go into the ground hookup. That worked fine. Then, since you don't want to stow the nasty poo hose, you wash it out. There was a water faucet right next to the dump station so we attempted to wash it out. I held the hose while Sean pushed the lever. It was going fine until I adjusted the hose and caught the rim on the high powered jet of water and proceeded to soak us all with what I'm going to say was water. In reality it was probably not water. We got a good (well needed) laugh out of the experience and are having fun learning the ins and outs of RVing.