Category: Virginia

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.

We’re ready to arrive home and decided to break our 250 mile/day rule and went for 411 miles today. Therefore, we got up at 7AM EDT and departed from  Twin Grove RV Resort in Pine Grove, PA by 8AM EDT (crazy!). Because we got up so early, we didn’t want to mess around with making breakfast, so we stopped at the McDonald’s at our campground’s exit. It was the coolest McDonald’s we have experienced in an RV. They had a whole parking lot set aside for Trucks and RV’s. No parking concerns whatsoever.

Since we knew we would be on the road for close to 9 hours we pulled into a Rest Area a couple of hours down the road and switched drivers. As always, I took advantage of the opportunity to display my napping skills. I woke up about an hour into my nap to our big grey cat Kirby getting sick (vomiting) in our kitchen area. Beth then pointed out that he had been sick (both litter box and vomiting) all night and became concerned. We stopped and swapped drivers at the Rest Area where we had originally planned to eat lunch. We skipped lunch and I started driving again while Beth started calling Veterinarian Offices near the campground where we had tonight’s reservations. She contacted one that was open until 6PM EDT and they said they fit us in once we arrived.

We stopped for fuel at the TA Travel Center in Lexington, VA where we purchased diesel fuel for $2.79/gallon. While I was fueling up and washing bugs off the front of the RV, Beth went inside and purchased Chappy’s Deli Spicy Chicken Sandwiches which weren’t bad at all for truck stop food. Another notable point regarding this TA Travel Center is that it also had an attached campground with full hookups for $37.50/night.

We ate our sandwiches on the road, drove a bit harder than we usually do and arrived at the Carroll Veterinary Clinic in Hillsville, VA by 3:30PM EDT. While Beth filled out the paperwork, I disconnected the Tahoe because the parking lot was too small to turn around in with the Tahoe attached. We only had to wait about 20 minutes after we got the Tahoe detached and the RV turned around before Kirby had been taken in, treated and returned to the RV (owners could not go inside). Just when you wonder if there is still goodness in the world, you come upon a place like this that confirms it. No qualms about not having an appointment, etc. We’ll bookmark this place (in terms of RV parking and emergency vet care).

After our Veterinarian visit, my varmints and I headed on to the campground (about 10 miles away) while Beth stopped at the Food Lion grocery store for supplies. Utt’s Campground is a beautiful Virginia hillside campground in Fancy Gap, VA with full hookups and decent Wi-Fi (7Mbps/2Mbps download/upload speeds). We were able to get 18Mbps/4Mbps download/upload speeds on our AT&T hotspot. My Tracfone got 9Mbps/1Mbps download/upload speeds on the Verizon infrastructure. There are no trees here, so DISH Network satellite access was no issue from the roof mounted satellite antenna. The temperatures at this elevation (roughly 2,700′) were delightful at 81 degrees for a high (we traveled through mid-90’s all day) and no humidity.

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This morning we got up and entered Cabela’s the second they opened the door at 9:00 AM EDT along with about 20 other people starving for ammunition. Both guns and ammunition are difficult to find these days. The folks at Cabela’s told us yesterday that they sometimes get more ammunition overnight, but unfortunately today there was none to be had.

We then traveled 168 miles and are staying here at Candy Hill Campground in Winchester, VA. We stopped for diesel fuel at the Sheetz station in Martinsburg, WV paying $2.39/gallon. We arrived at the campground just before 1:00 PM EDT and were placed in Site #H2 (one site North of the spot we stayed in last year).

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Beth wanted hamburgers for dinner so we purchased firewood from the campground which was quickly delivered to our site via golf cart. This was probably our last campfire on this road trip so Beth elevated her pyromania to another level. The burgers were great and cooked quickly over the massive pile of hot coals.

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We traveled 237 miles today and are staying here at Candy Hill Campground. This is a very nice, clean, well manicured campground. There is decent space between each site. The only potential negative is that we are located right next to VA-37 which is a 4 lane limited access highway (speed limit 65 MPH), so there’s a bit of traffic noise, but that’s not going to bother someone who grew up on US-20.

Winchester is a very historic town, so after we parked the camper, we unhooked the Tahoe and headed into town (approximately 2 miles) and toured the George Washington Office Museum. He served here for the Virginia regiment during the French and Indian War planning Fort Loudoun and supervising it’s construction (1755 – 1756).

Old Town Winchester, a restaurant and shopping district, was only a block away, so we walked through it and stopped at Brewbakers Restaurant for dinner. Beth had a Roast Beef sandwich smothered in beer cheese and I had a Philly Cheesesteak that was delicious.

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We knocked out another 230 miles today and are staying here at Ft Chiswell RV Park. I can certainly get used to this retirement 250 mile 9AM to 2PM driving. We had originally planned to stay at Pioneer Village RV Park just up the road, but we decided to see what spontaneity is like and refused to commit to reservations on the home to Albany leg of our trip. Depending on how you look at it, that backfired today and tomorrow as neither today’s planned campground nor tomorrow’s has any sites available. On the positive side, this campground is very nice, only a few miles from our original destination, surrounded by cows and sheep, and large enough for us to sneak in a 2 mile walk by doing several laps up and down each lane just prior to the heavy rains arriving in the late afternoon.

The rain has stopped and we are now enjoying mid 60’s temperatures with our windows open and sheep baa’ing in the background. The cats are excited!