Delaware - Days 21 & 22

Killens Pond State Park
Monday, 21 & Tuesday, 22 January 2019

It's been as cold as promised, and that seems to have led to some trouble for me.

The high temperature yesterday was 23°, but the wind chill brought it down to 2°.  That was the high.

At 6:00 this morning it was 14°, and the wind had died down quite a bit, bringing the wind chill only as low as 5° (better than yesterday's best).  The morning weather report said it was 20° warmer in Juneau, Alaska, than here.

It's been nice and sunny both days, but that doesn't seem to have made much difference as far as the temperatures go.

Yesterday we had strong wind gusts throughout the day.  Today the breezes have been much milder so it may have gotten up as far as 30°.

The bottom line is that we haven't gotten above freezing in nearly 48 hours.  Because I filled up with propane Sunday, we've had plenty of heat inside, but that doesn't seem to be enough for all the RV's systems.

I think one of the water lines has frozen water in it.

During the morning I stopped being able to pump any water to the faucets.  Since I'd just filled the water tank on Thursday it seemed impossible that the tank could be empty, but that's what the interior gauge showed and that's what the water pump sounded like.  So I tried to fill it.

For my first 4 attempts at getting water from the campground's pump into my RV, I tried different configurations of my hose and the water pressure adapter, to no avail.  Finally I decided there must be water in the hose that had frozen and was blocking the water flow, so I brought it into the cabin and put it in front of the heater for a while.  That upset Gracie.  For some unknown reason, the hose in the clear plastic box scared her and she did the best she could to get as far away from it as possible.

After an hour or so, the hose seemed much more supple so I drained it, and sure enough, water came out.  So I tried yet again and this time I got water from the outside pump into my RV.  And just as I thought, it didn't take much to fill the tank because I hadn't used much.

I tried anyway to get my water pump to work and didn't have any more luck than before.  So my latest theory is that the line that runs from the water tank to the pump has some frozen water in it, blocking the flow.  Both the tank and the pump are under the bench seats, but the tank is under the front seat and the pump is under the back seat.  The line that connects them runs along the outside wall under the table at the floor level and is covered for cosmetic purposes.  The under-seat compartments for both the tank and the pump have small openings to the outside - and I can't imagine why they aren't closed up, but they aren't.  So somewhere in that system, I think there's a frozen blockage, just like with the hose I used for the campground pump.

I have both compartments wide open right now, hoping that somehow the warm cabin air can exert enough influence to thaw the blockage.  Given the forecast temperatures, I'll leave them open overnight.  This arrangement has upset both Gracie and Lily - for some reason the upheaval, which I see as being confined mostly to me (since I can't sit at the table or watch the TV because the cushions are stored in front of it), causes near panic in two of my critters.  But I figure they'll get used to that just like they've gotten used to everything else - and in the last hour Lily's curiosity does seem to be taking over the panic.

I don't really expect this open compartment thing to work, but you never know, so I'm trying.  But I do expect salvation will come tomorrow when the temperatures are forecast to reach the 50s and stay that way for several days.  If I'm right about the frozen line bit, the warmer temps should take care of the problem.

Meanwhile, I'm taking the dogs in to be boarded for a couple of days.  It'll make things easier for all of us, I think.

We've still had some nice walks around this campground, when it wasn't so cold I could feel frostbite coming on after only a few minutes.

Yesterday I saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker who was kind enough to sit still for at least a minute, giving me a good look at him.  I didn't have a camera with me but got this photo off the internet.

Pretty, huh?

Lots of trees at this campground, though most of them are some kind of deciduous trees.  The leaves are inches thick on the ground - which has been useful in keeping the ground from being really muddy, after all the rain we had a couple of days ago.

The campsites are much closer together here than at the other 2 state campgrounds I've visited, so it's good that there's almost no one else here - only 4 of us, one of which is the campground host.