Dump & Fill Day with a little shopping for good measure

Note: this was started yesterday, but didn't get finished until today, so it pertains to yesterday.

I knew I'd have to do a dump and fill run any day now, but hadn't expected it to be today. One of the most talked about topics on RV lists is the black tank. How long does it last, how do you empty it, toilet paper down or not, valve open or closed, etc, etc. I'm not going to get into all that here as the answer to all of it is "it depends". Suffice it to say, it was full and on top of that, while preparing to do the dishes, my pump started sucking air as if it was getting no water. What?? I just checked the gauge a moment ago. I checked it again and suddenly I discovered my gauge had been lying to me.

Now, that's always been the case for the black tank gauge, but never the grey or fresh. Well, nevertheless, I needed an emergency dump and fill run. With no fresh water in the tank, that meant no dishes, no potty, no hand washing, nothing that uses water. It wasn't supposed to be like this, but it was. 

Once one is planted in one place and has set up camp, things tend to get moved, left out on the counter, on the front seat so the rest of the place is livable. So, it was time to put things in their stowed position and clear the drivers seat so I could drive off. That was just inside. Outside I still had the shade tarp, lights, awning to put away and one of my solar panels to put down. I had just got all that set up again after the windstorm a couple days back, but here we go again. At least this time it wasn't in a mad rush at 3am!

So, anyways, I got all that done and off I go. The dump station, which I previously posted about has two nice water filling facilities and two nice dump stations. They are clean and well maintained and the water quality is quite good. It's often not busy at all and it wasn't when I got there today. However, by the time I was done, there were four rigs lined up at the dump stations, two using and two waiting in line for their turn. I was thankful for good timing, otherwise it could have taken much, much longer than it did. The best part of it is it's free. So, after I was done there, I headed back to camp as we had other things to do and places to go and this dump and fill trip was not part of the plan today...

Our main goal today was actually shopping. We had several places to go and some were quick and others we knew would be lengthy. 

We stopped at a really neat drug store in Brawley called White Cross. It's a Good Neighbour pharmacy so they don't look like your chain store drug stores. The shelves seem empty, but they are full of good things and unique things which we cannot get at the large chain stores in our home area. I was able to find Vick's cough drops for a change, after I requested a special delivery from Canada via one of my snow birding Canadians that we meet up with every year. So, now thanks to him, I have a good stockpile of cough drops, which I certainly needed as I got sick on the way down here. I might just stock up on more, but we do have an independent pharmacy near home, so we can talk to the owner of that and see if he can get them in since they are available. 

Anyways, here's a picture of the inside of their store. You can see what I mean. They have everything, but the shelves are not crowded. Also, my camp mates requested a couple of obscure items which they were gladly able to order in and they will be in tomorrow, which is now today. 

They also had an awesome Christmas tree, which is the first thing I spotted when I got down the aisle. It has an upside down umbrella type dish on the bottom and an air pump pumps snow pellets up the tree trunk and shoots them out the top so it is snowing around and on the tree. The dish collects them, funnels them down to the bottom and the process repeats. It is so cool! I really like that tree. Here it is but it's hard to see the snow, so look carefully for the white lines of the snow falling. It's quick.

After the drugstore, we figured it's time to get something to eat before they close, so off to Brownie's we went. It was pretty dark when we got there, so the picture is kind of dark, but that's what it looks like as you pull up.

It's a nice interesting down home type restaurant with autographed sports memorabilia all over the walls, local school team pictures and you can get pretty much anything there from your classic American food to Mexican of course and they serve breakfast through dinner. 

Here's a picture of the inside of the restaurant to give you an idea:

Next it was shopping to Walmart. The threat of laundry came up, and I needed a new pair of pants since the spare pair I brought with me were a little tight and not real comfortable, but they'd do for a backup. So, we needed clothes, camp mates needed housewares and various other little items which we can easily pick up at Walmart, which is now only open till midnight. It used to be open 24hrs as it is a super Walmart, but they've cut back the hours this year. So, we finished off our day with an evening of shopping and various errands that needed to be done anyways and everyone went home happy and tired.

Which by the way, is why this post is today instead of last night. I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer so it needed to wait.