Last Lap - Long Faces

My Eureka Moment - at last

We left Myrtle Beach on Wednesday April 17th, heading north west for a little town called Martinsville in Virginia - a convenient stop off point about an hour short of the Blue Ridge Parkway which was our target.

We travelled through beautiful countryside but noticed the further in we got that the leaves on the trees were less developed and less lush than MB had been. We were struck by a feeling of foreboding. It's like the feeling I used to get when I was returning back to boarding school after a few weeks of the freedom of being at home. We were heading north and back to face the music of real life.
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We were a few miles short of Martinsville, when I had my Eureka moment..... I noticed a little dumpy gas station coming up and there it was ... the cheapest gas in North America. Eureka -  $3.15 a gallon. I had already heard that South Carolina has the cheapest gas in the USA, but here we were in Virginia and in all our driving I hadn't seen it cheaper than this.  I couldn't resist. Foot on the brake - screeching traffic behind me, while I lumbered in to claim my prize. I have bookmarked that stop for all future travels - it felt so good filling up with all of that cheap gas. My day was made, or so I thought....

Martinsville - Worth Missing

We dutifully followed that annoying lady in the GPS (we call her Susy) into Martinsville to an RV Park. The surroundings got dumpier and dumpier and then we arrived at it - the dump I mean. It also happened to be the RV Park.
It turns out that the owner is an old car collector and right in alongside the RV Park was his collection of rusted out old wrecks that he can't bear to part with. He clearly has a customer base that enjoy picking up spare parts for their vintage vehicles or he relies on unsuspecting types like us to roll in. So much for buying over the internet.

We were done for the day and decided to live with our choice. We were the only visitors it seems. The only other folks looked like permanents. We were starting to hear that Deliverance theme music again.

Once we were set up we decided to go for a walk and check out the area. Maybe we were being unfair. We passed a couple of young guys sitting outside a cabin on our way out. They were slugging back beers and greeted us enthusiastically. We reciprocated on the greeting and carried on. As we were walking away from them we noticed a groundhog, or something like it, scittering up the bank ahead of us - something else for our growing list of wildlife sightings.

The tour of the area was just plain depressing. We headed for home when we got to a dilapidated mobile home location - compared to that, we were staying in the Ritz. On our way back in, we noticed one of our young guys sporting a hunting bow, busy retrieving arrows from the bank we had seen the groundog on. We decided not to do the walk back that way and found a back route in to our RV. We'd had enough of the highlights of Martinsville and retired for the night.

Up Up and Away

The Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive has been highly recommended to us and for that reason we had researched it down to a T. It covers almost 500 miles of mountain top driving, reaching from Georgia in the south to Virginia in the north. Cher knew virtually every twitch and bend in the road.... and that's without having visited it. What we missed in our research was that most of the facilities and campsites along the way only open on Memorial Day weekend (it seems the same weekend as Canadian Victoria Day weekend). Once we discovered that we canned the idea, but we had now revised it and decided to come down off the parkway to find RV parks at the bottom of the mountains where facilities are currently open.

For one of the USA's premier touring highlights the Blue Ridge Parkway is not well promoted. In fact we struggled in figuring out how to get onto it, it was so faintly signposted. Once on it, it was great - very little traffic, but miles and miles of beautiful mountain top scenery. The speed limit is 45 mph which I was grateful for, but with lots of Outlook stops where one can let impatient people pass by. I was also thankful for my 2nd gear which saved me burning out my brakes on the downhill portions.
We entered the Blue Ridge Parkway at Roanoke in South Carolina and did about 40 miles and then came down the mountain near Natural Bridge, Virginia.

We were in good time to have a nice long walk around this natural phenomenon. It was massive and very interesting. A couple of points of interest; at one point George Washington climbed up a rock face and carved his initials on the rock. We verified that. The walk in total was about 1.5 miles and ended with a waterfall. We finally gave up on reaching the waterfall as it seemed to be the longest 1.5 miles we had ever walked. We turned around and bumped into a Mom and her whining son. The Mom said cheerfully " how much further is the waterfall?". Not wanting to be a discouragement we replied "not too far - just around the corner and up the hill a bit more". You need to understand that this kind of direction giving we learnt in Africa where one doesn't want to discourage people needlessly. Nevertheless we did go on our way rather quickly, not looking back. I have this picture in my mind of a young boy laboring onwards and upwards for another hour or two, cursing that apparently friendly couple.

We finished our day tripping and came to the RV Park a few miles away where we had booked. The receptionist there will rank as one of the least helpful we have dealt with. We finally found a beautiful site, but discovered too late that our site's Wi-Fi signal didn't work too well. Our friendly lady had sadly neglected to mention that detail in a largely empty campsite. The weather report had predicted a lot of rain on Friday so we had decided to hunker down at our campsite and sit it out. It did rain hard, so we were glad to be snugged up in our cosy HAFH and managed to watch the Boston Reality Drama in full minute by minute detail - we are very thankful to see the two brothers brought to justice, but of course sad to hear of such needless loss of life which they caused.

Lured by Luray

Somewhere in our travels, someone had mentioned the Luray Caverns as a must see. We decided to do a half day of the Skyline Drive and then come down the mountain again and do Luray for a couple of days. The Skyline Drive was at least as nice as the Blue Ridge, and maybe more so because we had a spectacular day weatherwise.

We got into our KOA campsite around 4pm and were very impressed. It is perched atop a hill in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley with mountains on either side and more or less a 360 degree view all around. We were backed onto a site overlooking a small farm complete with sheep, lambs and a brand new llama, the other campers tell us. We have been endlessly amused by the bleating of the lambs and the antics of the farmer as he has tried to bring them into the shed for the night. It gives the phrase " we all like sheep have gone astray" a whole new meaning. A couple of ladies came by and told us that they have stayed in RV parks all across North America and this is the most beautiful one. It is beautiful, but oh my the wind cuts right through one at the top of the hill.

This morning we decided to take our chances with a "contemporary service" at a Southern Baptist church in town. We duly arrived and were warmly welcomed to the downstairs hall where the meeting was happening. Coffee, cake and choruses were the order of the day. It was a simple but nice service. I was a bit distracted by the little girl next to me who kept going back for extra doses of purple cake. Judging by the size of the mother, the little one is destined to be not too far behind her if she keeps that up.




The highlight of the day for us was our visit to the Luray Caverns. It was discovered in apprx 1878, or thereabouts, and oh my goodness have they done a beautiful job of dressing it up with excellent lighting, imaginative names for the various formations and an excellently produced script by our young tour guide. We walked 1.25 miles underground without retracing our steps and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

 

Snippets from Along the Way 

A couple of people we have enjoyed meeting in the last few days:

Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia - there we were parked off at an Overlook viewpoint. There was a cyclist stopping to catch his breath when out of the woods appeared a tall man carrying a large back pack. We all got chatting. The back packer was doing a big chunk of the Appalachian Trail He had left home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania the day after Easter and had been walking the trail ever since. He was shooting to be in Georgia by the end of the summer where the Trail ends. I pointed out that I had noticed his wife wasn't with him. He smiled and said "she doesnt' do bugs and dirt". As we all split up I asked the cyclist where he was from. He replied in  perfect English "Quebec". I asked him if he is French or English and his reply as he waved goodbye was "French of course, what else?".

KOA Campground, Luray, Virginia

We were sitting out at our site in the late afternoon and another couple came by carrying matching coffee travel mugs - and we had thought we were the perfect couple. We got chatting. My goodness what an interesting couple. Robert and Stacey Meacham. They are travelling around, living actually, in their 46 foot Class A (the big bus) motorhome. We asked where home was and their reply is "site 49". They have lived for five years on a 34 foot trawler in the southern tip of Alaska and now count home as their motorhome. We popped by this evening to have a snack with them. Robert is a retired aircraft engineer and Stacey does consulting and training on certain types of software which does some amazing stuff.. We sat in their gorgeous Class A motorhome with a 180 degree window view of the mountain backdrop and we yacked non stop. Robert demonstrated how to make a pop up bird feeder, which they set up when they stop for awhile. That got my wife's juices going. Robert and Stacey "dated" for fifteen years and have been married for 10. Robert said he moved from being a confirmed bachelor to marriage and cannot imagine now why he had waited so long. Nice.


And now sadly, our vacation is ending. From here on we are mainly intent on heading home. Nevertheless it has been good time and our objective of getting to know our RV and how it all hangs together is largely achieved. Having said that we keep discovering new things, so life is an adventure.

Until the next time,

Rob and Cher, reporting from our Big Baby :0).