frozen-1139263_1920Never in a million years did I think that it would be hard to access fresh water for my RV when I left Hayden ID. In fact, it was the last thought on my mind as far as ‘a concern’ goes…

Turns out that traveling during the winter “off season” is a little trickier than anticipated. EVERYONE has the outside water hose/faucet/spigot turned off for the winter. I don’t blame them and understand why but I didn’t think EVERYONE (all the gas stations, truck stops, rest stops and including any of the open ‘all year’ campgrounds I stopped at) would have their outside water turned off, but they all did.

I was down to almost empty in my freshwater tank (the gauge showed empty a long time ago) but a manual inspection showed my water line barely above the intake for my Sureflow pump. At my last (and final stop) on this adventure from Hayden to KC, I pulled into a place called Sapp Bros Travel Center.

Upon entering the establishment, which my first thought was “this is really clean or it’s new,”  I asked about getting water for my RV fresh water tank at the front counter. Not only did they turn the water on for me, they asked if I needed a hose to reach out to my rig. Now, I was impressed. For the last three days of traveling covering 500+ miles, I had been in no less than 6 different locations along my route and the answer was virtually the same “sorry, but the water is turned off for the season.”

Shout out to Sapp Bros and Thank you! I felt obliged to top off with fuel even though I didn’t need any. I pulled around to the front and unfortunately, the way they have the pumps set up and the total length of my rig only allowed me into one end island spot and there was a car parked there. I waited 20 minutes and gave up. I decided to call it a night and fuel with them at O’dark thirty (when I woke) which I did. I pulled around back and Zodes and I relaxed for the remainder of the evening.

I felt obliged to top off with fuel even though I didn’t need any. I pulled back around to the front and unfortunately, the way they have the pumps set up combined with the total length of my rig, it only allowed me one end island choice and there was a car currently parked there. I waited 20 minutes and gave up. I decided to call it a night and fuel with them at O’dark thirty (when I woke) which I did. I pulled around back and Zodes and I relaxed for the remainder of the evening.

After fueling, I went back inside and asked about laundry facilities (which is upstairs). They have very clean machines and laundry area so I decided to do a load of laundry (I had accumulated about  one load over the past ten days of travel) too. While the laundry was in process, Zodes and I went for a nice long morning walk. This was by far the best truck stop experience we had along this journey.

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