There are many ways to enjoy the RV lifestyle. You can travel to RV resorts and revel in luxurious amenities. You can stay at campgrounds at state and national parks and pursue outdoor recreation. And you can drive to remote areas, far from civilization, and camp on your own.
Dave Helgeson takes the latter approach, seeking out those remote, undiscovered places that can take you far from civilization and away from the world of TV, the Internet and smartphones and into a state of relaxation and serenity.
As Dave wrote on one of his blog posts at rvlife.com, “Once parked in the boondocks you are as close to God’s perfect creation as you can get. The stress of missing out on the latest Internet post, trendiest TV show or your social media feed will be quickly replaced by a feeling of peace as you are surrounded by family and the beauty of creation.”
Dave’s blog, “Adventures in RVing” offers a guide to destinations that are off the beaten track. You can find a new entry each week in his blog at rvlife.com. Here is one of his recent posts:
Adventures in RVing: Ghostly Dump Station
By Dave Helgeson
Highway 95 between Hanksville, Utah, and its junction with Highway 191 just south of Blanding, Utah, is 125 miles of pure adventure every RVer should travel at least once in their RVing life. Along the journey you will encounter slot canyons, old mining camps from Utah’s uranium boom, unique rock formations, Anasazi ruins, a national monument, awesome red sandstone cliffs, off-roading opportunities, a national recreation area, miles of hiking opportunities, scenic overlooks and much more.
You could spend weeks traveling this section of highway and only end up exploring a fraction of the “attractions.” Along this stretch of highway there are basically no services available other than a few federally operated dry campgrounds. Therein lies the rub to exploring this part of Utah via RV. It is not the lack of campgrounds mind you, as virtually the entire area is open to boondocking, but the lack of dump stations to off-load the ever increasing volume of gray and black water accumulated along the way.
I had done my homework and knew there was a dump station in Hite, Utah, at the head of Lake Powell. What I didn’t know was due to the lingering Southwest drought, Lake Powell (lake access was the sole reason for Hite to exist) hasn’t extended to Hite for the past ten years.
Imagine my concern when we turned off Highway 95 to Hite only to discover that it was basically a ghost town. Tumbleweeds lined the road; the visitor center run by the National Park Service was closed; stranded houseboats sat decaying in the desert; the small grocery/fishing tackle/bait store was closed, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Upon locating the dump station, it looked like it hadn’t seen service in years. The pad was dry and dusty, with weeds growing rampant in the center island through cracks in the pad and around the water tower/hydrants also obscuring the instruction signage. My prayer was that the sewer access wasn’t capped and locked shut. To my pure amazement not only was the access cover unlocked and opened, but the potable and rinse water towers were also operational. Tanks were soon dumped and rinsed and we were on our way to another great boondocking location for the evening.
Dumping your tanks at what must be the world’s ghostliest dump station, just another adventure in RVing!
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