My first trip: the story of stuff

I've been living in my driveway for a week in preparation for my first trip out in my travel trailer, Tawanda. Everything was neatly arranged, clean and organized. My electric was hooked up to my house, my frige was on and stocked with a few necessities, my few purchases were tucked away out of site. I even had my record player set up and was relaxing to a little Simon and Garfunkel.

Then I went camping, or rather, Kamping! My controlled driveway world got real.

I guess the most significant thing I have to say about my first trip can be summed up in a word: stuff. Stuff to sit on, sleep in, sleep on, eat, eat with, eat on, dispose in, dispose of, cleaning supplies, containers, tools, stuff to keep dry, stuff to keep clean, stuff to keep warm, to keep cool. That's just for me--now, here come my teenagers and their friends with all their stuff--bags of clothes in no particular order and filling the back seat of the truck to capacity. Now stuff includes chargers, batteries, ipods, laptops and cell phones. Argh!

We (I) loaded the truck and off we went--no wait, everyone was hungry so we stopped at IHOP. At 2:30 pm we left Los Angeles to drive 300+ miles to Santa Cruz. The worst thing that happened was that my bathroom door became unhinged en route. I should have left it home with my cassette toilet that is missing a cap.

We arrived at the KOA after full dark but before closing. A ranger guided the trailer into position and I unhitched. Two of the girls got busy making a fire and roasting hot dogs while the rest of us attempted to attach the tent to the trailer. This proved to be an enormous undertaking at night especially since the tent is such an unusual design. We succeeded after several attempts and very sore thumbs trying to slide the tent into the track on the t@b, despite the aid of silicon spray. The whole enclosure ended up looking like the work of a bunch of drunk monkeys but it held.

Next to stuff, I guess power was my next challenge. The trailer has all this ability to run gadgets: propane, battery and electricity, my personal favorite. However, as the campsite filled up for the big Fourth of July holiday weekend, there wasn't a whole lot of electricity to be had, at least by little guys like me. So the benefit of gadgets like cell phones, ipods, lights and heat was compromised even with the benefit of the backup power systems. I'll be looking into the addition of a surge protector for my trailer so that I don't have to be watchful of amps and voltage on future trips.

Of all the lessons learned on my first trip the one that had the most impact on me was this: waste water disposal. I successfully hooked up fresh water "in" and gray water "out" but it was tenuous, especially the "out". Space and gravity figure significantly into this equation. A skinny little hose without the benefit of gravity or a motor meant I had to situate my gray water "catch" container directly below the trailer. And here's the thing: it fills up fast! What this meant to me was that I was more frugal with the water in circulation, especially since I had to monitor it constantly: dishwater was recycled as much as possible to maximize water usage.

I came away from this trip thinking that everyone should take "camping 101" to teach us how we impact our environment, even the small footprints like cooking fires and how to properly dispose of the water used to brush your teeth. I put some of my gray water in a recycled milk jug and then poured it down "the hole" where my green hose would be (if it worked). However, now I'm wondering, where does that go?