Today was the day for a dump of our waste tanks and refill of our fresh water tank. Our freshwater was nearly empty although our black and gray tanks were not completely full, but it was time to make the trek into the Bouse Community Park Campground and make use of their dump station and freshwater fill. Fortunately we arrived just in time, as there was no other RV's waiting to use the campground facility. Shortly after our arrival, we noticed 3 more RV's waiting behind us. Sadly our tanks seem to take forever to empty and we felt guilty about holding up the parade.
Our other issue to address was that our propane tank was also showing empty. There is a RV park on the south side of Bouse that sells propane so we rolled into there and had the gentleman fill our propane tank.
Overall it was not unduly expensive at either stop. The community RV park charges $15 to dump the tanks, $5 to fill the fresh water tank, and the RV park with the propane supply charged us a reasonable $2.95 a gallon for propane. We took about 11 gallons of propane and with a tip for the gentleman who kindly filled our propane tank it cost us $39. This makes the few inconveniences of boondocking in the desert seem that much more worthwhile when you consider that the cheapest RV parks (Bouse Community Park Campground) we found are charging about $160 a week plus electricity at 16 cents per kWh electricity for camping. Once we made it back to our camp location, levelled the motorhome and put the slides out, we decided to spend the balance of the day relaxing and walking about the immediate area.
When we first arrived at our site near Bouse, we noticed Baxter seemed hesitant about walking in the area. We quickly realized that he was having trouble walking on the sharp stone surface of the desert. Most people would expect the desert area to be sand, but here in Arizona there is actually a variety of gravel surfaces that are baked by the sun. Without much rain the stones never get worn down, and the edges are sharp and ragged. Fortunately we had packed Baxter's winter boots with us just in case we ran into bad weather on the trip down. These boots turned out to be the perfect answer to Baxter's tender feet. He can now run across the area, and he sounds like a tiny horse with the clip clop of the leather pads on the bottom of his boots.
Brenda managed to photograph a couple of the interesting cactus types of the area.
