50 Shades of Gray Water

WEEKLY WEATHER REPORT FROM CAMP WEBEGONE

High, 88
Low, 50
Humidity, 34-85%
Wind gusts, 4.7
Rain, sprinkle

CHERYL'S NEWS FROM CAMP WEBEGONE

As you my recall, Camp Webegone is a dry camp - no water or electricity. So, where do we get water and how do we manage it? Rich and I have three sources of water that we use.

1. A National Forest well
2. The Rouge River
3. Rainwater

For the rain water, we capture it in buckets as it flows off the trailer. We use this water for house cleaning and other tasks where some yuck is okay. If the water is clear enough, we use it for bathing.

Where we get our river water

Rich Hauling Water Buckets

Rich hauls water from the river in buckets and ports them to our site on his bicycle. This water is mostly used for bathing.

Rich Filling Water Jugs at the Well

The well water - our source of pristine water - is used for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, face and hand washing. Rather than take the trailer to the well (which would be a serious pain in the butt to do), we fill a number of one gallon jugs and one seven gallon container and haul them back in the truck. These last us about seven days.

Disposing of gray water is simple now that we have switched to using Dr Bonner's soap for everything, so that the gray water is earth friendly. Using buckets, gray water is hauled to various plants and trees, which are then given our offering. Personally, I think most of the water we collect ends up in the pit toilet.

A note on bathing. It happens less often here than when living in the city. Rich and I have differing methods. Rich uses the bucket method, like when he lived in Haiti. I do more sponge bathing and about once a week use a solar type shower that I rigged up inside the trailer shower. I heat about two quarts of water for this shower. Not a lot of water, but effective. So far we have not dunked in the river, which, despite it being late summer, still has a temp way too cold for both of us.

Cheryl