Goodbye to the fur, feathers and frustrations at Bluewater Lake

I always enjoy myself at Bluewater Lake State Park.  This time was a little stressful.  The first 14 days were really nice, then we had to leave for 6 days out of the park, so we drove to Grants where there's a Walmart and some truck stop gas stations, all of which I use to overnight while in town.

There's a nice park in Grants with a lake running through it that has some cool metal sculptures and beautiful ducks and geese.

I had an odor coming from my fresh water and my whole house water filter was filthy (I must have gotten some bad water somewhere - Storrie Lake, I guess).  So I had to sanitize my fresh water tank when I returned to the park, and when that was done, had to switch out the whole house water filter.

I put the correct amount of bleach into the tank the night before returning Bluewater to let it do it's cleaning magic.

It was really hot, of course, and while I was doing all the filling, driving around the campground to slosh the bleach around in the tank, then dump it out, fill with fresh water and dump again - over and over until the bleach odor was gone.  Actually I couldn't get it gone, and ended up the last time filling/dumping adding some baking soda to get rid of the bleach smell.  Then a final dump and all was well, bleach odor gone, and I filled up with clean water to keep and use.

With all the fresh water fill-ups and dumping, I left my sewer outlet cover at the dump station and when I went back it was gone, so I lost it.  Bummer.

When I finally had clean water again in the tank, I needed to switch out the whole house water filter - it was FILTHY!  While doing that I got water on my solar inverter that was near it in the same area, which wrecked the inverter.

That meant we had no solar power.  (I couldn't turn on the TV and when the charge was gone from my phone and computer, I had to run the generator to charge them up.  The only good thing about that is that I could run the air conditioner, too while the generator was running.  I tried that for one day, but luckily the next day found a non-reservable electric site that had just become available and moved there for the duration.) Whew, that was a long, hot, frustrating day.  I felt like I was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

I talked to my daughter afterward and told her all the stupid things I was doing - all the running around, leaving things, losing things, breaking things, forgetting things, etc., I didn't put it all down here, there was more. 😟 She's a therapist and said I was acting like I had ADHD.  That I needed to settle down and concentrate on one thing at a time.  Boy, I sure feel for people who have ADHD - it must be hard.

Anyway, I ordered a new inverter and made an appointment to have it installed the following Friday in Flagstaff, AZ.  Then a couple of days later I got the call from my brother about my mom.

The day my mom died, after hanging up the phone I got out of bed and saw a dozen or so horses around The Palms.  It was so calming.  Usually they stay a while and move on to graze in other places, but that day they stayed all day, in front of The Palms, across the street in the field, alongside the rig, it felt spiritual, somehow.  I've never had a full day's visit from the horses before.  I like to find meaning when strange or different things happen and thought there was some meaning to their all-day visit.

Hey, No Parking!  I guess these colts can't read:

Lots of sleeping going on during the day, the colts would play, nurse and sleep.  So cute.  I'm glad I got to see so much of them this year.

And there were some squirrels, too:

We had a couple of Hairy Woodpeckers and I got a few photos - here's one pecking away at the tree:

Some of the prettiest sunsets I've seen while full-timing have been at Bluewater Lake.  Here's the last one from our visit there this season:

We left on Thursday and headed to Flagstaff, where we over-nighted at one of the local Walmarts.  Then up early Friday morning to head into the repair shop, where we had excellent service by a crew of very nice people.

I would highly recommend this shop, they squeezed us into their busy, full schedule since we had no electricity, got to us quickly, took the inverter that we brought with us, and charged us one hour service charge to install it.

We were soon on our way to the next gorgeous camping spot.  I think we're up to date now, and the next post I'll be sharing where we are and show you some beautiful photos.

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  ❤☺❤