The funny thing about "holding tanks"....

.... more to come on the holding tanks at the end of this post. For now, a little on how we spent the day yesterday. A long day of driving, but the sites along the way were pretty spectacular.

After pulling in to the campground on Monday night, we let the slides out hoping that all would be OK the next morning when we went to leave (spoiler alert: we were fine Tuesday morning). With camp set up, we explored a little but mostly got down to preparing our feast. Trofi pasta & sauce, steak on the grill, focaccia with tomatoes and cheese.... Pretty impressed with our skills given that it was our first real night of cooking out of Alphie.

We all rolled out of bed around 8, and headed straight to the river for a morning wash. The water was actually pretty warm, and made for a refreshing wake-up - albeit the current was really strong, and we all almost fell over a couple of times even though it was only a few feet deep for the most part. There was one four foot eddie that was calm enough to relax in.

We eased Alphie out of the campground around 9:30. First thing we see on the road - REDWOODS! Everywhere! We got out a couple of times and snagged some pics... as requested, here's one of the five of us. You can see how wide this redwood is... and it's a relatively young one, as it's part of growth from the early 1930's after some deforestation. These trees grow 3-5 feet per year!

As planned, we stopped at the Eel River café and had a delicious breakfast and got to take in the sights of Garberville. Next stop – Patricks Point National Park. Patricks Point is a small park right on the coast, with some incredible views of the ocean. We hiked around for a good hour, snapping a bunch of pics on the way. (re-reading paul's most recent post, i now realize some of the above is redundant. oops.)

Creepy moment of the stop – seeing ashes from a cremated body, along with a blessing printed on a shot glass. Other creepy element of the morning... (can anyone tell what I'm talking about?)

After about eight hours on the road, we pulled into the Turtle Rock RV Resort, right on the Oregon coast. The resort gets it’s name from a large rock foundation that actually does look very much like a turtle…

We set up camp, and went for a stroll on the beach. Renee and Michelle pulled together snacks for the beach (despite Hannah, Paul and Keith mentioning how cold and windy it was…). The water was FREEZING. So much for Paul’s theory that the water would be warm since the currents are coming from the South! We did find a somewhat cozy little alcove in the turtle for a couple of drinks and snacks.

We headed back, and realized that there were about 20 more minutes for the sunset, so we brought our chairs down to the beach. Sunsets are always pretty spectacular, and this one did not fail to impress.

On to the holding tanks story... there are two main tanks on an RV. Grey water – from the sink & shower, essentially, and black water – from the toilet. Well, when we picked up the RV the guy told us that a) these tanks are huge, b) you probably will only need to empty them once or twice, and c) the monitor panel that tells you how full they are isn’t all that accurate. With that knowledge, we figured we didn’t need to worry about the tanks for a few days.

As Paul was getting our electrical hookup stored away today, he noticed that water was dripping from under the RV. Hmmmm. Check the panel – grey tank is totally full, black tank is two thirds full. Hannah happens to look into the shower… water is coming up. Uhoh. We decided to dump, and hit the dump station on the way out… trailing our overflowing grey water behind us. We high-tailed it outta there as soon as we could!

Off to the Oregon sand dunes today! We’re renting buggies… giddy with excitement!