I forgot to mention that we prepared for this day by hooking up Wanda2 to the Jeep last night before we turned in. This was supposed to give us an early start. And a dry start, since rain was expected in the morning. We were soooooo proud of ourselves!!! Read on to hear how the mighty have fallen ….

We rose early, skipped breakfast, and left at 8:29 to go to Sauder’s Store in Seneca Falls, another favorite spot in this area. We were in such a rush, we neglected to dump our waste tanks on the way out. Thought about that as we approached Sauder’s, then saw how badly the trailer was tilting to the rear after we parked, and determined we should go back to take care of this important detail. We picked up coffee and muffins and some groceries at Sauder’s, and returned to Cayuga Lake State Park to take care of our business. And this is when the real fun began ….

The park was quiet, as most people had left earlier. We pulled up to the dump station, and it began to rain. Could not remove the cover from the trailer’s drain pipe. It rained harder. Finally got the cover off, and our spiffy new extra-long drain hose attached to the pipe. Opened up the valve to the black water tank, which was supposedly one third full. Nothing, or very little, came out. Not a good start. Shut off the black tank drain and switched to the gray. This drained energetically, but nothing was coming out into the sewer hatch. Hmmmmmm……. Disconnected the hose from the trailer drain pipe, and a flood poured out of the grey tank onto the ground. Just then, another camper pulled up behind us to dump their tanks. Now the pressure was on! We tried lifting the hose to force the water down, and it just came up out of the top. Nothing was moving. We finally disconnected everything, drove off to the bathhouse to clean up. Desiree suggested that it might be a good idea to see what was left in the tanks. Sure enough, both the black and the gray were where they started. No choice but to go back to the dump station and finish the job.

On the return trip, we discovered that the plug that closes off the drain hose when we store it was still in the hose when we were trying to dump the water. That would explain why nothing was coming out. Somehow we lost the plug into the dump tank during our first visit. At least it was no longer impeding the flow of water from the hose! We were able to get the gray tank to empty, but the black was not moving. We had encountered our first black tank clog! 😖 (At least we were lucky that it happened at this point, because if we were dealing with that instead of gray water on the first trip it would have been so so so much worse!)

By now the rain was coming down hard. But we had no choice but to try to break the clog. We drove up to the clean water faucet, filled up the fresh water tank, and flushed as much of it as we could get into the black tank. We then returned to the dump station for a third time and dumped the black tank again. Third time was the charm. Waste tanks empty, fresh tank full, ready to go. Lesson learned! (I hope!)

Four hours AFTER our planned departure time, we left Cayuga Lake for Niagara Falls. It rained hard for the first half of the drive, but cleared up as we got closer to our destination. We are staying tonight at a KOA in Youngstown, NY, just north of Niagara. Tomorrow we hope to get in a visit to the famous falls and their surroundings. Looking forward to that!

Today’s stats: 139.2 miles, 2 hours 45 minutes driving time, 12.2 mpg