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2024 Road Trip – Marion County Park – 7/12/2023 – 7/14/2024

On Friday we departed from Reed Bingham State Park at 09:00AM EDT. We stopped for fuel at the Love’s Travel Stop in Jackson, GA. We stopped at this particular Love’s because they have an Amazon Locker to which we had shipped a replacement toilet valve (ours is leaking). We hit three traffic jams in Atlanta at the south end (18 minutes), downtown (10 minutes), and the north end (20 minutes). We stopped at a new RaceTrac in Emerson, GA to use the restroom. We topped off on fuel while we were there.

Traffic in Chattanooga was backed up starting at the I-24 exit all the way through to the western edge of town. We experienced another one hour delay. We reached the Marion County Park Campground in Jasper, TN at 5PM EDT.

We have a nice campsite (#53) but it’s not on the water. When I made the reservation, I was told up front that it was 30Amp (no 50Amp) with water. We had to lift the driver side of the camper 2″ to get level. When I connected the power I noticed a 50Amp breaker so I gave it a try, but it was dead. I hooked up to the 30Amp connection and started both air conditioners separately to avoid popping a breaker. The breaker at the pole never popped, but one further down the line did. I called the campground office and they said they would send out the electrician. He arrived in seconds (he and his family are camped beside us and his wife was working in the office). He reset the breaker down the way and hooked up an amp meter and monitored our current usage. With just our small AC we were at 20Amps (because the converter was also trying to charge the batteries). I think I could have gotten both AC’s running if I had shutoff the converter. This is the first place we’ve been that we couldn’t run both ACs on 30Amps. It took until about 9PM to drop the inside temperature from over 100 down into the 70’s. By midnight the bedroom and the living area were around 71 and we slept well. Unfortunately, while running on just one AC the next day the inside temperature reached 87 again when the outside temperature reached 98. The electrician had been out boating all day and we didn’t want to risk trying the second AC and popping the same breaker while he was gone. We also had water pressure issues starting around noon and finally let it slowly fill our water tank so we could disconnect from water and run off our pump (one less thing to disconnect when we leave Sunday).

We like this campground (particularly the view), but it has been a bit frustrating. The good news is that the half of the campground that we stayed in back in 2017 is completely shutdown for new electric and water (they aren’t allowed to add sewer). So they know they have issues and are trying to address them.

We originally tried the TV antenna and only picked up TBN (and several of its sub-channels). We were able to setup our Dish Network antenna (R2D2) for the first time this trip and pickup all three satellites (61.5, 110, and 119). We are getting between 5 and 30 Mbps download speeds with our AT&T 5G+ hot spot although its reception seems to cut in and out occasionally.

Marion County Park – Site #53
Marion County Park – Site #53
Marion County Park – Site #53
Marion County Park – Site #53
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2024 Road Trip – Reed Bingham State Park – 7/08/2023 – 7/12/2024

Today we started our summer trip up North. We left home at 8:30AM when our lawn service arrived. We left in a bit of a hurry to try and keep the cats from getting too agitated by the lawn service equipment (they were already uptight about being in the truck). At the last second I asked Beth if she was sure we had locked the front door. She went back and checked which accidentally triggered our alarm system. We were just getting out of the neighborhood when the alarm monitoring company called us (so glad we answered). Once we confirmed to them that we were the culprits, we called our neighbor Terry and he graciously went over and reset our alarm system.

We drove up to Beth’s allergy doctor’s office where I dropped her off and then went and parked the camper at the nearby Dollar General. I was able to successfully park at the loading dock where I sat with my cats and hoped a Dollar General truck didn’t arrive. We left there at 9:33AM EDT and arrived at Reed Bingham State Park at 2:40PM EDT. We stopped for lunch and fuel at the Loves Travel Stop just south of Lake City.

Last year we stayed in Site #35. This year we tried Site #14 to see if there might be fewer gnats in the less wooded area. The answer is “No”. However, this is a really nice site that is still quite shaded, but has a huge open area right outside our door (with no other campers in site). Unfortunately, there are still enough trees to prevent us from using our Dish Satellite. We knew that was a possibility and are relying on the campground cable. The campground cable is “OK” at best. The three local channels (ABC, NBC, and FOX) come full screen, but all of the regular cable channels come in very small and a number of them are not clear. The campground cable uses Dish Network (satellite) which completely lost reception during a heavy downpour that lasted a good chunk of the evening. We originally tried the antenna and picked up a number of channels, but only two locals. We are getting over 178Mbps download speeds with our AT&T 5G+ hot spot.

Kirby the Road Warrior
Reed Bingham – Site #14
Reed Bingham – Site #14
Reed Bingham – Site #14
Reed Bingham – Site #14
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2023 Road Trip – Brunswick, GA – 9/27/2023

We left the KOA in Fort Mill, SC this morning at 9:20AM EDT. We’re getting back into the land of good gas prices. We stopped at the Flying J in St George, SC for $3.14/gal gas and ate our lunch in the parking lot. We fueled up again at the Flying J at tonight’s campground exit for $2.92/gal. This was our first (and probably only) fuel purchase under $3/gal on this trip. On our last trip in 2021 we averaged less than $3/gal for diesel fuel (not gas).

We arrived at Southern Retreat RV Park in Brunswick, GA at 3PM EDT. We stayed in this same park in April and August of 2021 (the August stay was our last night in the motorhome). We didn’t make any reservations (which was very difficult for us). We got a pull thru 50Amp site which is very level, so we didn’t have to unhook the truck. We’re all setup to thoroughly flush our tanks in the morning and head home. The campground has a good selection of HD cable channels, so we didn’t bother setting up the DISH satellite. We will stream tonight’s Ray’s game on the ROKU. Our AT&T hotspot connection is receiving excellent connectivity at 172/55 Mbps download/upload speeds

Southern Retreat – Site #14
Southern Retreat – Site #14
Southern Retreat – Site #14
Southern Retreat – Site #14
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2023 Road Trip – Fort Mill, SC – 9/25/2023 – 9/27/2023

Today we continued South to the Fort Mill, SC KOA which is at the second exit across the state line from Charlotte. It was an uneventful trip and the Expedition did another fine job of traversing some decent inclines (and declines) like the one at Fancy Gap on I-77. We stopped for fuel at an Exxon (Walmart+ discount) near the intersection of I-81 and I-77 and ate Beth’s homemade sandwiches in the parking lot.

This is a very convenient campground. It’s about 1/2 mile off I-77, although we do seem to be in the Charlotte airport’s landing pattern, but that doesn’t bother us. We can walk to the nearby Publix (we have Pub Subs for the Bucs Monday Night Football game tonight). We chose a back-in site to save $12/night. Had we known that meant that we’d be backing up to a camper behind us (we’re about 3′ apart), we probably would have splurged for the pull thru, but it’s only two nights. We have full hookups, but quite a few trees limiting our Dish antenna to satellites 61.5 and 110. However, we seem to be receiving all of the channels that we care about. Our AT&T hotspot connection is receiving excellent connectivity at 242/20 Mbps download/upload speeds. Our TV antenna is picking up all local channels out of Charlotte, NC.

Fort Mill, SC KOA – Site #73
Fort Mill, SC KOA – Site #73
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2023 Road Trip – Verona, VA – 9/23/2023 – 9/25/2023

Today’s travel was more interesting than usual thanks to Tropical Storm Ophelia. Last night we knew we would be packing up to leave Twin Grove RV Resort in the rain today, so we decided to get as close to traveling mode as we could. We showered and dumped our tanks so that we could put the water and sewer hoses away and also disconnected from the campground power (technically we were Boondocking at that point). We were also able to hook the truck to the camper and install the Weight Distribution Bars while keeping the camper level. We watched last night’s Ray’s loss (whah!) on ROKU powering the TV with our new little inverter that Dad helped us run 12V power to from our breaker panel (successful test). We used our gas furnace over night and it ran a few times. We woke up this morning with 70% battery remaining (which pleases me). So today all we had to do was lift our front jack and stabilizer jacks, and roll the camper off the leveling blocks we had to place under the driver side wheels. We got the cats loaded in the truck and all was going well until Beth got sick and tossed her cookies (she woke up with a scratchy throat not feeling well). We don’t know if it was food poisoning or a stomach virus, but we nearly ate the exact same foods yesterday (except for her having green beans for dinner) and I feel fine (fingers crossed). She felt better afterwards and seems to be fine now. We were on the road just before 10AM EDT.

It rained our entire drive. It was never very heavy rain, but I never turned the wipers off. We had planned to stop for fuel at a Walmart in Winchester, VA, but Beth didn’t want to eat anything but soup after her incident so we stopped at a Flying J that had a Denny’s restaurant. She went in to Denny’s and purchased some potato soup which she successfully kept down. Meanwhile, thanks to Murphy’s Law I was outside fighting the gas pump in the “RV Lane” in the heaviest rain of the day. For some reason, they chose not to put a cover over the RV pumps. I would have pulled up to a covered auto pump, but the lanes were all full and it was only sprinkling when we arrived. I kept putting my credit card in and the pump would say “processing” and never released it. It was raining so hard I kept getting back in the truck and waiting several minutes for it to finally fail and release my card. After two tries I went inside to be told, “oh, no, you can’t use your credit card at those pumps”. I bit my tongue and just let myself drip water all over their counter while they processed my credit card. Once I was done pumping I went into the camper and changed into dry clothes. We had a nice lunch in the parking lot while listening to college football on Sirius Radio.

We arrived at Shenandoah Valley Campground in Verona, VA just after 2PM EDT. This is a huge campground but the sites are fairly close together. We splurged for a full hookup, 50Amp, pull thru site which seem to be slightly larger. The site is long enough that we had room for truck and camper if we had chosen to keep the truck hooked up, but we felt we were sticking out too far, so we unhooked the truck and parked it diagonally.

We have full hookups and a fairly decent selection of cable channels. Our AT&T hotspot connection is so weak that I broke out an antenna which, for the first time ever, actually seems to be helping. After connecting the antenna we went from less than 1/1 Mbps download/upload speeds to just over 2/2 Mbps which allowed us to stream the Rays walk-off victory against Toronto once the 4PM football games got boring.

Shenandoah Valley Campground – Site #90
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2023 Road Trip – Pine Grove, PA – 9/21/2023 – 9/23/2023

Today we started our migration South. We left Albany just after 10AM EDT and arrived at Twin Grove RV Resort in Pine Grove, PA at 4:15PM EDT. We took I-90 West out of Albany and caught I-88 West to Binghamton where we picked up I-81 South. This route is longer by about 20 miles, but avoids going through New Jersey and then paying the $16 toll to cross back into Pennsylvania on I-78. We didn’t find I-88 to be as smooth as it used to be, but it was only bad in sections. When we got South of Scranton, I-81 got very rough. It wasn’t visually obvious, but something about the distance between the bumps in the road seemed to catch a resonant frequency on the trailer and it was shaking the heck out of the back of the truck. The rough ride ended about 50 miles South of Scranton, but there were votes in our vehicle to never take this route again. The problem is that my recollection of I-78 is pretty bad too, but that was several years ago.

This is a nice campground albeit hilly, which can result in leveling issues in some sites. We stayed here in August of 2021 and had some tires off the ground when the motorhome was leveled. The site we’re in on this trip is fairly level and only required that we raise our driver side about 2″. Our neighbors, on the other hand, have a massive 5th Wheel and both passenger side tires are completely off the ground.

We have full hookups and very few trees allowing our Dish antenna to pickup satellites 61.5, 110, & 119. Our AT&T hotspot connection is receiving excellent connectivity at 123/49 Mbps download/upload speeds. Our TV antenna is picking up NBC, CBS, and Fox out of Harrisburg, PA.

Twin Grove RV Resort – Site #A19
Twin Grove RV Resort – Site #A19
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2023 Road Trip – Albany, NY – 9/13/2023 – 9/21/2023

Today we made our final migration East in the rain to Albany to stay at Beth’s sister Kathy’s house. The rain was very light most of the two hour trip, but on the way we stopped at the Albany County Water Purification facility to dump our tanks (for free) and unfortunately it poured after we got started dumping. On the bright side, our “you know what” is no longer full!

Kathy has a beautiful brand new driveway so we were extremely careful not to do anything that might damage it (2″ x 12″ boards under the stabilizer jacks, etc). Kathy provides 50Amp service, good clean city water, and we are able to sponge off her Spectrum Wi-Fi using our range extender. We were also able to pickup enough Dish satellites (61.5 & 110) to get all our channels in HD after moving R2D2 (our satellite antenna) far enough back behind the garage to clear her two small trees. The weather here is just what we ordered (predicted upper 60’s and low 70’s during our stay).

Kathy’s House – Site #1A
Kathy’s House – Site #1A
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2023 Road Trip – Savannah, NY – 9/6/2023 – 9/8/2023

Today we continued East 263 miles to Rivers Crossing Campground & Marina on the Erie Canal in Savannah, NY just North of the finger lakes. We departed Geneva State Park Campground at 9:15AM EDT and arrived at the campground at 2:15PM EDT. We decided to pay the tolls and drive I-90 the entire way and stopped for fuel at a TA Travel Center in Corfu, NY where we also ate the sandwiches that Beth had prepared for lunch.

Interestingly, Mom & Dad stayed in this campground over a decade ago on a trip to Maine. At that time the campground had a different name and owners. There are a lot of seasonal campers here, but the campground is well maintained. The new owners purchased the campground four years ago. When we arrived at our site, there was no power at our electrical post and Beth walked back to the office to report the issue. While she was gone, a neighbor arrived home and I asked her if she was aware of any breakers for the electrical post. She pointed out that our power post was previously on the other side of our camper shared by our other neighbor and that I needed to turn on a breaker over there. Once we got the power going and the air conditioners fired up, I noticed that our voltage was very low (110v). It was very hot (91 degrees) and I noticed that the air conditioners on all the campers surrounding us were running. By the time we got setup and moved inside to cool off, our Electrical Management System (EMS) had shutdown our power due to low voltage. This is a built-in fail-safe to prevent us from burning up our AC compressors by running at too low a voltage. This is a difficult scenario to explain to a campground owner/manager. They tend to believe it’s our issue because all of our neighbor’s are up and running and blissfully ignorant of the damage they are doing to their systems. So, rather than waste time reporting it to the campground owners, we limped along on one air conditioner until I figured out how to stop our DC Converter from charging our batteries. At that point we were able to fire up the second air conditioner and just barely get by (our voltage was still very low (108v). Once the sun set, everyone’s power consumption dropped and the voltage climbed back up to 115v. They probably don’t have this problem very often since the temperatures here don’t often get this high.

We have full hookups and very few trees allowing our Dish antenna to pickup satellites 61.5, 110, & 119. Our AT&T hotspot connection is receiving excellent connectivity at 181/25 Mbps download/upload speeds. We didn’t try our TV antenna, but we are close enough to Rochester that I imagine we would pickup a lot of channels.

Rivers Edge Campground – Site #33