mile 705: Laurel Hill State Park

mile: 705
Laurel Hill State Park
Hey this is our first official stop!

The spot they gave us was seated right next to the bath house. It was clean enough. But were they trying to tell us something. Did they know we were new at this?

Neighbors: Fine. We watched a guy with a jay feather tow behind trailer tinker with the leveling of his trailer for an hour, and that was kind of fun.

Being newbies we may find this to be the case, but they put all pet owners together in the same area so on a bike ride we noticed a bunch of nice spots that were unclaimed but apparently didn’t allow our 4 legged boys. One woman’s trio of yapping toy poodle things made me realize why we were herded into our own area.

Another epiphany struck. It occurred to me that we are now never too far from our own poop. It travels with you. The novelty of going number 1 or 2 while your wife is guiding the vehicle down the interstate was somewhat sullied by this realization. 
Conversely, the idea of using restroom facilities outside of the RV also brings another thought, not sure how to describe it but it is delightful. Part birthday present, part thieving for a good cause.
In any case…

Milestone: We dumped the black and gray tanks! I woke up thinking about this procedure! And we didn’t get “anything” on us.

A bit nervous, but confident. The process goes that  you dump the black tank, which is all your toilet waste first. Most RV parks and campgrounds have what is called a dump station and you connected an expandable 4 inch hose to your holding tank and the other end to a hole in the ground that goes…somewhere. I assume the parks have large treatment systems or septic tanks. I haven’t asked about this yet, but that’s what I will assume.

We had to park on a -5 degree slope towards the front of the coach and subsequently the RV needed leveled but the auto leveling wouldn’t work perfectly. With auto leveling all 4 hydraulic legs come down and do the work for you, so unlike the guy in the tow behind trailer we don’t have to fuss jacking up one side, then the other, then back to lower one side etc. Since we were on the slope only the front jacks needed to be lowered. The wife dug in to the manual and within a few tries had the front deployed and left us only sloping -1 degree. Good enough for us and a manual deployment of the hydraulic levelers was in the books.

The water here has a heavy iron smell and stinks to high heavens, but after some time we either got use to it, or it dissipated. I need to understand this as the smell reminds me of visiting relatives in my youth maybe it was their well water or maybe it was a less filtered iron heavy water. Not sure, but I love how smells can take you back unlike any of your other senses. Unfortunately, this wasn’t smell of cookies baking, but more a rotten egg sulfur melange.

The running and Mt. Biking was solid here as there were some nice trails, as well as a lake to cool off in.

Kids give it: Pretty nice. But it may blend in with the others in about 3 weeks.
Dogs give it: Meh, they don’t like getting stuck with all the other “animals” so much.
Parents give it: Hey we got one in the books and we didn’t back over anyone.