It all started innocently enough for Mark and Lisa—newly minted RVers on their maiden voyage through Tennessee. They had spent the day at a local winery, sipping muscadine wine and buying artisanal goat soap from a roadside stand. With the sun setting over Norris Dam State Park, they rolled back into Site #43, buzzed on life and Pinot.
Lisa, ever the multitasker, decided it was the perfect time to catch up on laundry. Their RV had a compact washer/dryer combo—a luxury she insisted on when they bought the fifth wheel. She loaded it up, tossed in a few shirts, and reached for the handmade soap they had just bought.
“This stuff smells like heaven,” she said, shaving off a generous chunk of goat milk lavender delight into the machine.
Mark, meanwhile, was outside pretending to know how to work the sewer hose. He had watched approximately 2.5 YouTube videos on RV waste management, including a well-meaning video from a man named “DumpMasterDan.” He attached the sewer hose, flipped a lever, and congratulated himself with a cold beer.
Things started to go sideways about an hour later.
Foam. Everywhere.
Suds were pouring from every drain in the RV. The kitchen sink burped bubbles, the shower drain erupted like a frothy geyser, and the toilet gurgled ominously. Lisa opened the washer mid-cycle and gasped. It was a cloud factory.
Outside, Mark noticed that their sewer hose was suspiciously limp and not doing its job. That’s when it hit him—he had never opened the gray tank valve. All the water from the washer, combined with enough goat soap to wash a herd, had backed up into the system.
In a panic, Mark yanked the gray tank valve.
*WHOOSH.*
A surge of soap suds shot through the hose like a firehose of body wash. The hose whipped out of the drain hole and sprayed a fine mist of bubbly gray water across Sites 42–45.
Neighbors stepped out of their rigs, beer cans paused mid-air. One guy yelled, “Is that… lavender?” Another shouted, “Honey, bring the camera!”
Lisa, mortified, ran outside holding a colander to try and redirect the flow like some kind of sudsy Greek tragedy.
Eventually, it stopped. The campground smelled amazing, the grass gleamed with unnatural cleanliness, and Mark had earned a nickname that would stick for the rest of their trip: “Bubble Boy.”
That night, they apologized to their neighbors with s’mores and wine. One older RVer laughed so hard he nearly choked on a marshmallow. He pointed to the foamy remnants along the gravel road and said, “That’s the cleanest that dump station’s been in years.”
Lesson learned: goat soap is for your body—not your RV plumbing.
