Nightmare at 3:00 AM

I don’t have a photo to go with today’s post, and it’s a good thing because it would be ugly.  At 3:00 this morning wind gusts against the motor home woke me up, and in the background I thought I could hear the refrigerator trying to start, and then the next thing I noticed was the warning flashing lights on the refrigerator.  Oh no,--- we are out of propane. 

On Thursday morning when we were leaving Red Bluff my propane tank had registered 1/3 so I stopped to get propane.  The attendant said the tank was full and he could not add any.  Motorhome gauges for propane, water, and sewer waste tanks are notoriously inaccurate, so I immediately concluded the gauge was wrong and went on my way.

On Friday we moved to the Buckhorn Recreation Area at Black Butte Lake, thirteen miles west of Orland, where we are camped without any hookups.  By Saturday the gauge read empty, stupid gauge.

At three o’clock this morning it was pretty easy to conclude we were actually out of propane.  The furnace came on about that time, and only blew cold air.  Jeanette tried lighting the stove as a test, no flame.  Now we are really in a pickle, because our generator also runs on propane, which means if the motor home battery is dead we would not be able to run the generator to recharge it. We assume the gates are locked until 7, so we are stuck. Now try going back to sleep with all that in your mind!

To bring this story to an end, daylight did eventually come, the motor home did start, we did leave the park, and we did get propane. 

As a footnote, while in town we did laundry, bought groceries, had lunch and visited Sacramento Wildlife Refuge. More on that tomorrow.