The Princess Goes to Boy Scout Camp

I have probably told you that I am not much of a camper.  I've only been camping twice as an adult—both times when I was a newlywed and would have done anything as long as it was with Bruce. 

But I have a hard time falling asleep in my own lovely bed and I wake up frequently during the night, even at home. Sleeping in a sleeping bag, on the ground, and waking in a dewy sweat in the morning are not my thing.  Still, I convinced myself that sleeping in a tent all summer would be OK; I'm a mom and used to not getting much sleep. (When I found out that we'd have a cabin—with a queen-size bed in it, no less! —I was very happy.)

Using an outhouse is an entirely different story.  My family went camping a lot when I was little, and I very well remember the old wooden outhouses where you needed a gas mask just to walk into them and not pass out, and where you sat on this old slivery-looking board with a big hole cut into it, and flies buzzing up out the the depths.  Uuuugh! Blech! Super-blechhhh!

I knew Camp Steiner would have no electricity or cell phone coverage, and I knew that it was waaaayy up in the mountains, and pretty rustic, and I even suspected I might have to use an outhouse, but for some odd reason I was still very attracted to the idea of going there right from the first. (That was a long sentence!)  When I found out that the kitchen had running hot and cold water I was relieved.  But the major selling-point for me was that attached to the kitchen/dining hall was a bathroom with a flushing toilet.  Yaaayyy!

Well guess what happened last week . . . ?

Yes, our plumbing pooped out.  On Wednesday afternoon, to be exact.

At first the toilet just wouldn't flush and so we tried to plunge it.  But that didn't work.  Then a strange thing happened:  when we unstopped the kitchen sink (after doing the dishes) all the dishwater backed up into the ADA bathroom (which is attached to the lodge); dishwater coming up out of the shower drain and toilet.  Uh-oh!

So we called in Kyle, the local camp plumber.  He couldn't find a problem and when he tried it the toilet actually did flush; the only problem was that the shower was draining slowly, so he poured in some Drano and left us feeling OK.

But, alas! On Thursday the toilet was making these "bloop, bloop, bloop" noises, and blowing big bubbles.  And it was obviously not working.  Stephen guessed that the septic tank hadn't been pumped in a long, long time; maybe never, for all we know.   This was kind of a problem because no one could find the magical lid that opened into the tank.  So Kyle came back and he, Stephen, and Honzie started digging, looking for the lid to the septic tank. What happened was that they broke the drain pipe from the ADA bathroom and sewage gurgled out onto the ground and they had to rope off that side of the building.  Eventually they did find the lid, though. (They think that when the ramp to the ADA bathroom was made a few years ago, the contractors buried the lid and then tamped the ground down hard over it.  Oops.)

So on Friday a  big truck came and pumped out the septic tank, and Kyle fixed the broken pipe, and everything was right with the world again by dinner that night.  Yaaayyy!

The building on the left (foreground) is the ADA bathroom, which sits on the back deck of the lodge—about six to eight feet from the kitchen.
The big truck is pumping out the septic tank. 
Guess what's in the tank on the truck?
It was pretty rank around there for a couple hours.  We closed all the doors and windows to the lodge while they were working.

But what did I do in the meantime?  What could I do? I mean, when nature calls . . .

I had to use the "kybo."  Fortunately we don't have those old, icky outhouses of my childhood at Steiner.  We have Honeybuckets—those little portable potty shacks that you see at big outdoor events sometimes—and a truck comes along to pump them out during the week.  (By the way, the name "Honeybucket" for an outhouse is kind of sickening to me, the princess at camp.)  Between pumping times, the scouts clean the kybos, following Captain Kybo's instructions.

Every week Captain Kybo and his sidekick Little John
teach the scouts how to clean the kybos.
Notice his toilet-seat shield and the scepter he holds.
(That's Honzie in the backbround to your left.)

Honeybuckets are not so bad, as outhouses go; they are pretty clean and actually don't smell too terribly bad.  No worries about flies or splinters in the bottom either. Nevertheless, I get sick the second I enter them.  It's not because of the smell or the way they look.  I think it's partly because it's just a very little room made entirely of plastic, so the floor has a little give to it and it also absorbs a lot of heat. 

But the biggest problem with them is that, although the Honeybucket delivery guys find the best place they can for them, there is not a truly level surface to place them.  I think they would be more aptly named "Vertigo Shacks" because I had to sit or lie down quietly and recover from the dizziness every time I had to use one.

But now everything is all better . . .  It may even be better for years to come!
Thank goodness for indoor plumbing!