Living in a motorhome has it's set of challenges, especially in the cold winter months.
I am fortunate enough to volunteer at the state parks, on my journey in my "Winnebago Journey", while I'm writing and adding content to our website from the road. It really is a great life and I meet many nice people along the way. If you've ever wondered about volunteering, you should check it out because a lot of the state parks and federal parks need help and it is a great place to park your camping vehicle.
My trip to Quarry Pond State Park started in February of 2019 and as I arrived around the first of the month the outside temps were hovering around 28 degrees. For some reason I completely forgot to make sure that the water connection was going to be ok since the weather was extremely cold. My water pump had quit working in December, and as we all know, the slogan in recreational vehicles should be "It is always something". As you can imagine, when I woke up, the water hose was frozen stiff. The nice park ranger Nathan from the park came over, and we thawed out the connection with a hair dryer. He said "put your hose in the pipe chase and let it thaw out for the day. So I did.
That evening he came around as they normally do checking on the campers, and he told me to "let the water in my motorhome drip so the hose wouldn't freeze that evening". I assured him that I was not going to make that mistake again.
I woke up getting ready for the day, and my camp hosting duties, and as I walked through the bus, I stepped in two inches of water in the bathroom area. It was then that I realized that the gray tank was still closed and the "little drip" actually filled up a 52 gallon gray tank and had backed up in the shower and overflowed. I was horrified.
I ran out of the bus and opened the gray tank, and all you could hear was the wooshing sound of all that water now migrating it's way through the pipes and down in the bays. Talk about a mess. The good news was that since it was so cold out, all of the water that went down below froze so it wasn't so hard to clean it all out. There were, however, icicles hanging from every bay door in the motorhome. It even went down the heater vents to the propane tank and the tank also had icicles hanging on it too!
So the moral of the winter story is, make sure you either use a water pump, or open your gray tank if you must have the hose connected in the winter. You can always purchase an electric water hose to keep it from freezing. The good news is that I lived to tell about it, and my bathroom floors were cleaned too! :-) I was also able to take the cat for a ride on the golf cart, she wasn't sure about being outside, but loved the ride.
Got a story you want to share? Feel free to send it to us at info@wikirecreation.com. We love stories from the road.
