Second Try

     Although our first camping adventure of 2025 was fraught with problems, from no running water in our camper to having to spend time replacing a power cord chewed through by rodents, my wife and I had high hopes our second camping trip of 2025 would turn out better.

    Now that we had figured out how to get running water in our camper, our next goal was to get hot water. It comes in handy when you're doing dishes or taking a shower. After searching everywhere inside our camper to find the valves to open the pipes to the hot water tank, we finally found them. They were under our camper bed. I would have never thought to look there.

    We were under a heat advisory when we journeyed to Sauder Village campground in Ohio. I parked our camper in the parking lot of a hotel adjoining the campground. It was a long heatstroke inducing walk across the blacktop to the hotel and its check-in desk. I filled out the registration papers for our camp, but balked when it asked for our license plate number. I didn't remember it.

    Another long walk across the broiling blacktop to get the license plate, then back to the hotel check-in desk again. Once all checked in, we located the wastewater dump station which is usually where you get fresh water. But there was no fresh water hose or spigot there.

    So another long walk across the burning blacktop to learn where we fill our camper with fresh water. We were told there were multiple spigots located inside the campground. We just had to supply our own hose. That's usually not the case at previous campgrounds where we'd stayed and the vermin who chewed through our power cord also did the same to one of our hoses. Thankfully we still had one intact. And it was just long enough for us to fill the water tank on our camper.

    We parked and unhitched our camper. My wife Wendy went inside to turn on the pump so the water would flow to our camper restroom. I was outside resting at the picnic table and waiting for my sweat to dry or evaporate when I heard the sound of gushing water.

    I walked around to the other side of the camper to see a waterfall coming out of a plug by our hot water tank. A rod which I thought had been securely screwed into place was anything but. I tried to push the rod back in but the water kept pouring out.

    Just then, a maintenance man came riding up on a golf cart. “Looks like you sprang a leak,” he said.

    “YA THINK???” I wanted to tell Captain Obvious. Instead, I told him it was just fresh water. We weren't dumping our wastewater or anything like that.

    “You good then?” he asked. Does it look like I have it under control? Hans Brinker had much better luck using his finger to plug a leak in a dike in the Netherlands than I was having trying to stop my waterfall.

    But I told him I had it under control. After he rode off, I had my wife turn off the water pump. That stopped the waterfall. I turned the valves to close off the hot water tank. No more leak. So we would get no hot water this trip but we still had running water anyway.

    Then Wendy announced, the water tank reservoir indicator light shows that we're almost out of water. And we're set up now nowhere near a water spigot.  I used a manual method involving a pail, a funnel and a couple hikes to a water spigot to put enough water into our camper to last the duration of our camp.  

    Maybe third time camping will be the charm.