Yes, I've been a bit lax in posting. But I have excuses...LOTS of excuses! Honest!! No, really. I do! But...but...but... Okay, I get it. You don't care. You just want to know where we are and what we are doing. Fine! Whatever....LOL!
Can you tell I'm struggling with what to write? While we've been quite busy, nothing has been particularly interesting. We came back from
our cruise and finished getting ready for our drive north. Before we left, we had stored all our outdoor gear in our cargo trailer and put the trike in the garage. That left a few outside things and the inside work to be done. Looking at the weather forecast, we jumped to it and got the outside things taken care of (other than the necessities like utilities and Directv) before several days of bad weather moved in courtesy of Tropical Storm Colin.
I don't think I've ever taken pictures of our rig inside once everything is stored and the slides are in...it's, um, interesting. LOL!
We finally left on Thursday morning and discovered we weren't used driving, we hadn't done any long trips in quite a while. We were both wiped out when we finally stopped for the night in Woodbine, GA. Because of the intense heat, we knew we weren't going to asphalt park (truck stops, Walmart, etc). So we stayed at a cute, secluded campground just off I-95. Formerly King George RV Resort, it was bought and renamed
Walkabout Camp & RV Park. The staff was quite helpful, even though we arrived well after office hours. The rate was under $19 for 50 amp thanks to our
Passport America 50% discount.
[click any photo for a larger view]
We got a kick out of the resident chickens, too. We ate out, opting for Denny's for dinner and Cracker Barrel for breakfast, both a couple miles down I-95. Coming out of Cracker Barrel, we spotted this cool truck. I had to take some pics as well as one of the local color.
We had planned on staying one day but as often happens, life intervenes. One, I was completely wiped out and two, we had lost our trailer brakes. Stu knew what to do to fix the problem, he just needed a few parts and a little time. We opted to stay a second night and slept in the next morning, enjoying our breakfast at Cracker Barrel.
Of course that wasn't everything we discovered that first day - we also found out that our inverter wasn't working. Normally that wouldn't be an issue but now that we have a
residential refrigerator, with temps in the mid-upper 90's, it was important to keep the fridge running.
Back on the road on Saturday, hoping for cooler temps and not finding them. We ran the generator for several hours to keep the refrigerator working with the added bonus of running the A/C and cooling the inside a bit.
Between Woodbine GA and Brunswick GA, we had two sport bikers tear past us in the far left lane. Not something we would normally pay attention to but the first one had to have been doing between 90-100 and the second one, a minute or two behind, must have been doing between 80-90.
We got to see a state trooper pull the second one over and hoped another was targeting the first, faster bike. A couple miles up the road, there was some road construction at an exit ramp. There was a motorcycle that had gone off the ramp and was laying in the grass. A few people had stopped, one man was picking up debris as he walked towards the bike. We will never know for sure, but we suspect it was the first bike, either missing the exit or cutting in front of someone and getting hit. Sad...
Night three found us in a campground on the SC/NC border - literally. We stayed at
South of the Border back in
2009. It was fairly sad, needing a lot of refurbishing. Well, it looks like they have done quite a bit. The campground had plenty of room and we paid under $35 with our Good Sam discount (10%) for a 50amp site.
We headed out early, knowing we weren't going to arrive until Monday (still in plenty of time for our first medical appointments) and knowing we wanted to drive no more than 300 miles. The drive was uneventful, but we did enjoy seeing a smaller motorcycle pass us with the rider wearing a
Captain America backpack. Oh, and his helmet was decorated like a duck from the rear view, a duck with a mohawk. LOL! Wish I could have snapped a picture but he was gone too quickly.
On our way south last October, we found a nice little campground,
Carolina Crossroads, in Roanoke Rapids, NC. $30 was the overnight rate for a nice pull-through. The owners are great folks and that was our destination. I did forget to take photos so I had to borrow these.
Our last morning, Monday, was a nice drive, for the most part. We finally got off I-95 and took US 301 the rest of the way. The Virginia part was a two-lane divided highway, cooler, refreshing, quieter, had less traffic and more green. Sweet! Well, except for one idiot who was entering from a side road.
He looked right at Stu, then pulled out IN FRONT OF HIM. Remember, this is a medium duty Freightliner pulling close to 20k pounds! Stu slams on the brakes, signals left AND THE IDIOT MOVES LEFT, RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. Stu moves back to the right and lays on the air horn. Scared the crap out of the guy as he pulled over two lanes to the right (side of the road) - again, right in front of Stu. Sigh....
This route took us over the Potomac bridge, one I had never been on. I know my good friend Nick Russell wouldn't like it at all. I snapped a few pics with my phone, just to give you an idea.
Traffic wasn't too bad and we arrived at our final destination in Stevensville, MD around 2pm. Phew! We're the bums in the backyard for the next few weeks. Then it's on to Vermont and the Escapade!
Ciao for now!
Stu has been extra busy with doing maintenance and our various vehicles (oil changes on Freddie the Freightliner, Scooby the pickup as well as our propane generator). He had to replace the gray and black water valves to stop some leaks and change out the mechanism inside our toilet (it had stopped holding water). He still has several things to get done between now and July 10th. Final fix on our trailer brakes and finding out why our inverter isn't working are at the top of the list.
Stu and Donna