What a week we’ve had. Nothing has been simple our first 7 days of RV life. And the worst was yet to come.
Warning: No pictures ahead. Just a long, harrowing story.
The first day of our second week started off well. We managed to miss the rain as we dumped the waste holding tank on our way out of the Alexander Springs campsite, hitched up the Jeep without incident, and set off on a beautiful back road through the Ocala National Forest and into horse country. An hour and a half later, we pulled into Williston and checked in early (and paid $10 fee for the privilege). Our volunteer escort, an older woman in a golf cart with a sign that said Follow Me (we saw her many times during our stay and that sign seemed permanently affixed to her cart), led us to the site. The large spacious sites were dotted with tall shade trees and as we wound our way through the park, we noticed a pond with a fountain, a large fire pit, and a general sense of civic pride and proper maintenance.
We got to the site and the escort waited for us to unhitch the Jeep so she guide Marina into the site (though we hadn’t asked for it).
The escort – a few feet away on the driver’s side of the Jeep -- said something about always having the hand brake on while unhitching. This is like someone telling you to be careful after you trip or fall.
Marina backed us into the site with ease, and the escort left us to hook up. First order of business was to plug into power. Marina brought out her electrical test kit and after satisfying herself that all was well, she plugged us into the 50-amp outlet with our massive surge protector.
Next, she took out the and the water softener (blue tank) and the water filters (set of three joined together in a big black case plus another separate one), and set about hooking all that up. She laid all the brass fittings and water hoses with various connectors out on the grass. I was of no help standing over her so she told me to “go put the kettle on or something.”
I did the “or something” which was to take Charley out for a pee, give her some water, unpack the things that we put away on travel days, and generally tidy up. I went back out about 20 minutes later, and no water hook-up yet.
“Where’s my tea?” she said.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you wanted tea. Be right back.” (I haven’t learned after 22 years that “put the kettle on” means make me a cup of tea.)
I brought her a cup of tea, and she sat on the 3-filter contraption drinking it in the sun, puzzling out the water connection. “I can’t understand it,” she said. “I just did this a few days ago at the other site. There’s something I’m missing and I don’t know what it is.”
I offered to help but that required her to first explain all the parts laid out before us, and after about a minute of that, we both agreed it would be better if I went inside and made us sandwiches. Neither of us are particularly good at receiving help from the other when we are determined to figure something out for ourselves.
Finally, about an hour after starting the process, she managed to hook up the water. As with most things RV related, the solution was simple – turn the 3-filter pack in the opposite direction and then the parts would fit into place.
We opened the living room slide since all the hook-ups were done, and Marina went back outside. (When we first arrive at a campsite, Marina spends a lot of time outside doing all sorts of things that I don’t know about.)
I lured the cat out from under the bed and opened the bedroom slide. He came out right away, and I was pleased with that bit of progress. After he ate, I expected him to use the toilet but instead he went back under the bed and started scratching. I immediately followed with the flashlight. That scratching was for one reason only – pooping.
We had smelled something funny during the drive over that morning, and I had traced it to the bedroom, but with the slides closed and the coach moving, it was impossible to detect the source. By the time we had arrived at the site, the smell had either dissipated or we had gotten used to it. But now that I was right in front of it, it was hard to miss. The cat had pooped under the bed. I couldn’t see it yet, but I could smell it.
The opening under the bed was only a few inches, and it was pitch dark under there. I took some flash pictures with my phone, and saw exactly where I had to clean up. He had found a tight little spot in between the cables and steel brackets. Luckily, and I do mean luckily, it was close enough to the front that I could reach it.
I lay flat on the floor, my hand under the bed and over the steel brackets, swiping and wiping again and again, using up half a roll of toilet paper sprayed with Lysol, collecting all of it in a plastic bag, taking progress pictures to see where I had cleaned and where I had missed. Turns out the cat had done this at least once before because I picked up dried poop as well. I managed to get it all out finally, and while I was still on the floor tying up the plastic bag, Marina came back in and I told her what had happened.
“He’s going to keep going back under there to poop,” she said. “We have to keep him out.”
I agreed. We couldn’t do anything about it that day, and in any case, he had already done his business so he wouldn’t be pooping again till tomorrow. But we made a plan for the next day. We would close up the opening under the bed with plexiglass. I had suggested this back in Miami, but Marina had contrived something with blue pool noodles taped together. It wasn’t working because he had managed to claw the noodles out of the way, and the entire contraption was unwieldy and took up way too much space in the bedroom. We dismantled it and Marina took the noodles outside to store in one of the bays.
By this time, it was close to two o’clock, and I was looking forward to sitting down and relaxing.
Now, before I tell you what happened next, you need to first understand how an RV toilet works. It’s similar to a boat toilet. There’s a holding tank, called a black tank, and the toilet sits on top of the tank. The “flush” is a lever you operate with your foot, which opens a sealed flap inside the toilet to flush away whatever is in the bowl into the holding tank. The toilet bowl is connected to the holding tank via a pipe which drops straight down.
I used the bathroom, and when I flushed, I could still see wads of tissue when the toilet flap to the tank below opened. That’s odd, I thought. We had just emptied the holding tank that morning before arriving here, so there shouldn’t be all that paper in the tank. Marina had gone back outside again, and I told her as soon as she came back in. She tried to flush the toilet, and sewage started backing up into the bowl.
A wave of shock, disgust, horror at what might possibly happen if the sewage continued to rise, all of that passed through me. But only for a second. With age and experience, both Marina and I have learned to focus on the task at hand, especially in an emergency, and not panic or let our emotions drive us. Marina had complained that I was using too much tissue, and I had complained that the RV tissue she bought was too thin, but we didn’t discuss any of that now.
We closed the toilet lid and each of us separately Googled how to unblock an RV toilet. Boiling water and ice cubes were two different suggestions, but both would take hours and may not work. It was clear to me (though not to Marina, who hadn’t seen it) that the blockage was the toilet tissue at the top of the pipe. The tank was empty, so luckily, there wouldn’t be massive amounts of sewage about to spill into our RV. But even the one bowlful would be unacceptable. Another suggestion was a snake, but Marina vetoed that, saying snakes were no good for RV toilets.
She found a YouTube video with a procedure that “Works Every Time!” to unclog an RV toilet. It involved emptying the gray tank into the hose hook-up outside, then lifting up the hose with the water from the gray tank and then levering it vigorously to push that water up into the black tank to clear it. I said that looks needlessly complicated and there is no way the water is going to get from outside all the way up through the black tank to the bottom of the toilet, which is where the blockage is. But she insisted we try it, and I have learned that with Marina that it is best not to argue, especially when its comes to anything technical related to the RV.
I’ll spare you all of the going into and out of the coach, hooking and unhooking, starting and stopping, trying to flush, turning the water off and then on, and all the steps and missteps to execute this “Works Every Time!” solution. It didn’t work this time. In the meantime, I ordered a chemical from Amazon that breaks down toilet tissue in RVs and boats. Unfortunately, it would take 48 hours to arrive and we needed a solution now.
There was an Ace Hardware a mile from us, so Marina sent me there with instructions to get a plunger. On the way there, she called to say that a plunger wouldn’t work because there was no P-trap on an RV toilet, and so I should just get a long stick that she would poke through the flap at the bottom of the toilet to loosen whatever was blocked. I went to Ace, and explored a pressure washer gun. Too much water everywhere, too much pressure, too dangerous, Marina said. I asked another Ace worker for a long stick, and then I told him what the problem was. Why don’t you just use a snake? he said, and led me to the plumbing aisle. I picked up a 3-ft household snake for $9.99 plus tax.
Marina plunged the coiled wire into the depths of the toilet, and I turned the handle at the end. The toilet gurgled and spit and all the sewage went down. I was flooded with relief. The tension that I hadn’t realized built up inside suddenly subsided.
The snake emerged clogged full of toilet tissue. Careful not to touch any part that went into the toilet, we put all but the snake’s handle in a bag and took it outside to wash and disinfect. I gave silent thanks for the snake, to whoever invented it, to the Ace hardware being nearby, to the gentleman who suggested it, and to Marina for knowing how to use it.
Later that day, we stopped for ice cream – vanilla for Marina and chocolate for me. It was piled precariously high atop the cone, and though I held it carefully, two large dollops fell to the ground. As I picked them up with a napkin, I was glad it was evening, and that this would be the last brown substance I would be cleaning up that day.
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