"Blue Boy?" you ask

Not 'The Blue Boy' by Gainsborough that hangs at the Huntington Library along with 'Pinkie' by Lawrence. I remember visiting there as a child and doing a school report on the two paintings. No, this Blue Boy is not so pretty or refined.

You can see Blue Boys in campgrounds where RVers don't have full hookups. We saw a lot of Blue Boys in Quartzsite. Lots! Being towed behind ATVs, jeeps, trucks and bicycles. On the back of homemade trailers and being pulled along by the Blue Boy owner. Eeeuuuu! Who else would tote a Blue Boy, but it's owner?

Last year when we were staying at Thousand Trails Lake Minden, where they have limited full hookup sites, we'd been there for a few days and needed to move the motorhome to dump the holding tanks. Rick had become friends with the neighbor and had seen him dumping his holding tanks into his Blue Boy, then he pulled it over to the dump station. After watching the neighbor, Rick said to me "Do you think the neighbor would let me use his Blue Boy to dump our sewer tank?" I just looked at Rick, and with one eye squinting and the eyebrow arched, I said, "I think there must be some type of campground ettiquette that doesn't allow the sharing of a person's Blue Boy." Rick quickly agreed and never brought it up again. We moved the motorhome to dump the sewer tanks.

A Blue Boy is the common name given to a container, blue in color, used to transport sewer waste from an RV to a dump station. Blue Boys usually are 15-20 gallons or more, with a couple wheels, a handle, an intake connection and an outflow valve. The smaller the blue Boy, the easier it is to manuever and store, but the more trips you'd need to make to empty it. The larger sizes hold more (yipeee) so you make less trips, but being bigger makes it oh so much more heavier.

One day while in Quartzsite I decided to follow a guy hauling his Blue Boy down to the Blue Boy dump station and catch a few photos on the sly. Never having used a Blue Boy before, I learned a lot just by watching. I'm sure the guy wondered why I was so interested in such a private moment.