Still alive and in good health! Currently hunkered down in Washington State.
Steelhead Trout is a thing here and it’s really good. We also foraged some stinging nettle back in Oregon and we made some really good pesto with it. I like it better than basil pesto.
Reports about it never raining in California are believable. The RV was covered in dust from a trip into the outback that is Williams Hill. We couldn’t get it washed off by rain until we were completely out of Cali.
Driving through the Southwest is challenging if you don’t like endless miles of the same desert scene. But the tamales there are legit.
The South is serious about their BBQ. It was more meat than I’ve ever wanted all in one go. There were also a ton of pick up trucks on the road. What is everyone hauling around?
Florida was pleasantly warm during the winter. I caught my first tasty bass there!
Even though clam chowder is a big Northeast thing, you can find it in a lot of places along the east coast. But the best Maine lobster is in, you know, Maine.
Favorite places (besides NYC): Wherever my friends/family are. But Letchworth and Flume Gorge were pretty cool.
Favorite experience: Seeing people from around the US talking about their home neighborhoods with a glowing sparkle in their eyes. They’re living in a place that makes them happy and that’s nice to see.
Least favorite experience: Travelling at a pace that’s too quick to enjoy. Driving several hours, then staying overnight at a Walmart parking lot just to drive for several hours again the next day, and then repeating this many days in a row, is not the way to go for us.
Bonus RV poop story: There are tank level indicators in our RV. One for fresh water, one for gray water (shower and sink waste water), and one for black water (anything flushed down the toilet). We usually dump our tanks when we reach 90%–100%. The waste tanks aren’t completely full at 100% (100% actually fits a lot), and the freshwater tank isn’t completely empty at 0% either.
Next to our toilet, there’s a “tank full” indicator light that turns on and disables flushing when our black tank can’t fit any more stuff. We were told it worked at our last RV service visit, but we never filled our black tank enough to ever confirm.
So one day, we decided to test it out. The black tank level hit 100% and we didn’t dump. For a couple days, actually. Finally, we got impatient and kept flushing and flushing. I went outside while this was happening and got in my truck for some quiet for a video call. I noticed a splashing sound and turned around to see a waterfall of brown sewage gushing out of our roof, down our awning, and onto the ground right next to the truck. The sewage had nowhere to go in the tank, so it went up along the air vent and exited through the roof.
Edit: Now that we’ve proven that the “tank full” thing is broken, the service center ran a diagnostic and found out our toilet assembly has some kind of unique error that even the manufacturer hasn’t heard of.
Why is this poop story not my aforementioned least favorite experience? I must have emotionally blacked out at the time because, in hindsight, I can only recall it being catastrophically hilarious. I’m certain I was quite displeased that day.
On that note, I leave you with this picture of a toilet paper shaped cake I saw in a supermarket somewhere recently.
