Her Maiden Voyage Pt. 2: In Hot Water

I wake up to a calm Easter Morning at the Sea Ranch RV Park. I see a white rabbit without blemish outside my kitchen window.

The Ranch is known for its flock of wild, moochy rabbits, but I still feel oddly blessed. 


Later I see this marmalade one. It wants a treat. I promise it a graham cracker at our next meeting.

We left the electric water heater on last night, hoping to wake up to hot water. Yesterday, we thought we were just being impatient when no hot water had run through the tap. This morning we learn that we have more to learn.

The French press coffee is good this morning. For me. Drew tries to drink his coffee without sugar (which I forgot to bring), but doesn't make much headway.  Twenty-seven years of marriage, and I still don’t think of sugar as a coffee ingredient. 

We try a few more tweaks to the holding tanks to see if the water heater might look kindly upon us, and leave for the beach. 

We choose the sole window of opportunity, weather-wise, to enjoy a mostly-dry beach walk. We stop at the Cannon Beach Bakery on the way back because you have to. 

When we get back, ready for our showers, the hot water is not.

I give up and head for the communal showers. I undress, hanging each article of clothing carefully on the hooks, as the floor is wet and there is no stool or other dry space. After finding that the shower stall I chose has only scalding hot water, I wrap my towel around me and carefully move each article of clothing to a new shower stall hook, then my shampoo and soap, and try again. The shower nozzles are all mounted at my eye level, which means I have to assume the “chair” yoga position to wash my hair. Good for the glutes, I guess. The floor is wet, and I have no shower shoes (assuming I would be taking a shower in my comfy trailer), so I balance on one foot as I dry and dress one foot and then the other. I come back in a less-than-Christlike mood.

After a call to a friend who is a veteran trailersman, we have some hope. Drew borrows a Phillips screwdriver from a Ranch hand, opens up a secret panel, and opens a bypass valve that had been closed in winterization mode. That shouldn’t have been like that. There will be hell to pay. I say on Easter.

Drew, not wanting to tax the grey water tanks any more than they have been by all the futile water-running in the hopes of hot water-finding, goes to take a communal shower. He comes back to tell me that if I had gone to the OTHER side of the building, I would have found new, individual shower rooms with all the amenities that the other ones lacked. I open a bottle of wine.

We turn on the hot water. And behold the burning water floweth from the tap.