After I posted to the blog on Sunday morning, Donna went outside to complete her exercise challenges and walk laps of the RV park. I was still thinking about the Ironman announcer the day before saying, “Allen Hutchinson from Royal Oak, Michigan, you are an Ironman!” as he crossed the finish line. That was the sixth time Allen heard that announcement. What an amazing accomplishment.

On Saturday evening, after the Ironman event, we stopped at the HEB store (a Texas grocery/pharmacy chain) and picked up a few items. One of the things I bought was a can of white corn. The guy at RV park office told me that white corn was a very effective bait for fishing in the stocked lake. I’d never heard of using corn before. He cautioned that white corn was the choice, not yellow corn.

I broke out my fishing rod Sunday morning and tried fishing the lake right in front of our site. The white corn was extremely effective – but it was also problematic. It comes off the hook easily and smaller fish can steal the bait. I had hits as soon as my rig hit the water, but sometimes it was small fish stealing the bait. The trick was to place the bait in the right spot in the water. The pond had a lot of algae and aquatic vegetation. I found if I could place my bait near deeper water right on the edge of the vegetation, I would find the larger fish.

I caught a few fish at our site – one was a really good sized bluegill. I moved to another part of the lake and caught and released a few more. Later, I caught a couple more bluegill at our site and Donna snapped a photo of a typical bluegill – some of the fish I caught were bigger and some smaller.

Average size bluegill from the stocked pond

I rode the scooter over to the store to get eggs (something we forgot the day before), then stowed it in the trailer. I was just in time. The wind kicked up and rain drops started falling just as I locked the trailer doors.

Yep, more nasty weather

We’re not supposed to spend this much time in bad weather – we’re mobile after all. We’ve had rain 9 out of the last 10 days. This is the most rain we’ve seen since we were in Great Falls, Montana last summer.

While it was storming, I watched the Moto GP race from Le Mans, France that I recorded earlier. By the time the race was over, it had stopped raining. This was timely as it allowed me to grill boneless chicken thighs that Donna had prepared by brushing them with olive oil and fresh herbs. She served the chicken with lemon jasmine brown rice and fresh green beans topped with chopped kalamata olives.

Excellent fare on the picnic table

I felt groggy when I got out of bed Monday morning. The overnight thunderstorms with endless bolts of lightning and cracks of thunder interrupted my sleep. The storm continued through breakfast.

At 10am, I donned a hat and told Donna I needed to go outside and start prepping for travel. As I disconnected our water line, the rain stopped. I had everything put away and fired up the Cummins ISL diesel powerplant before 11am. We had a plan for getting out of our site and hooking up the trailer and it worked perfectly.

I must digress before I continue to chronicle our travels. Our full-time RV living over the last 22 months has provided many learning experiences. One of the things I’m always learning about is something most people don’t want to think about. I’m talking about our holding tanks and dealing with waste water. I’ve tried many tank treatments with mixed results. I reported about it in this post.

Although I thought Happy Camper was the best I’d tried, I always remember the old motorcycle racing mantra – the best you’ve tried is the best you know (meaning there may be something better out there you’ve yet to try).  I was still somewhat disappointed in a couple of areas with Happy Camper. One – although all of the treatments claim to lubricate and enhance the seals in the system, I always found that the chemicals used tended to leave deposits on the toilet seal and it would start to leak after a few weeks. Having the water leak out of the toilet meant it was no longer sealed from the sewage system. I would mitigate this by putting a few ounces of vegetable oil in the toilet for a couple of days every two or three weeks.

The other issue was odor. All the treatments claim they eliminate odor. But the truth is, when you are in an area with high ambient temperatures, after five to seven days, the odor is present when you flush the toilet. So you’re left with the option of dumping the tank every five to seven days.

I’m going to tell you about a product that I have no affiliation with. Their success does nothing for me (other than I’d like to see their product become more easily available). When we were in Casa Grande in January, I met a guy in the RV park who had an alternative tank additive that he sold. I was skeptical (people used to call me Skeptical Mike).

This product is marketed by a company called Tank Techs. They specialize in high-pressure flushing of holding tanks. The thing that caught my eye about their approach was the mention of struvites. Their core business is the mechanical removal of struvites from holding tanks.

Then they worked with a probiotic firm to develop a new treatment. The mention of probiotics and other buzz words heightened my skepticism. It’s chemical-free and uses enzymes and bacterial action to treat the tank. This product not only controls odors and breaks down solids – including paper – it can break down struvites.

As always, I wanted proof. Our holding tank sensors have never worked right since we bought the coach. This isn’t uncommon. Conventional wisdom says paper is contaminating the sensors.

The guy who sold me the treatment called Tank Techs RX  told me I could see if I had struvites and if the product was working by watching the discharge. If I saw a white or gray sandy discharge from the gray tank, struvites were breaking up. I saw this within two treatments.

Before we left the Northlake RV Resort, I checked the tank levels on our control panels. Shazzam! The gray water and black water sensors were working after four and half months of using Tank Techs RX. Those dreaded struvites had broken down and the sensors were working.

There may be other products that work as well, but I can only say this is an unsolicited testimonial and I’m totally sold on this product. I’m also glad to see our tank sensors working.

I’ll add more about our trip to Rockport, Texas in my next post. Here’s a photo from our new location with the sun setting over water to the west. Not a very dramatic photo, but it’s nice to be parked next to a body of water. The sunset here is over the Salt Lake which isn’t Utah’s Great Salt Lake but an inlet off  Copano Bay in southeast Texas.

It’s not raining