Wandering the Blue Ridge

 So this section of the trip has been all about visiting friends, and it has been delightful!

In case you thought we were done visiting you are wrong, we had turned west and now we went a little north to visit old friends in Tazewell VA, Harold and Wanda. We learned from their son Don that Wanda was ill and getting treatment in Virginia Beach, we hope she improves soon.

Harold and Barb share a hug

Harold welcomed us and proudly showed us around his garden and the surrounding district. It’s over 20 years since we met riding motorcycles and it was good to see him again.

We stayed at a local park near Tazewell on a lake with great views. It wet my appetite for more of the hills of Western Virginia (as opposed to West Virginia which is a whole different state, but still with great mountains).

The lake near Tazewell in Cavitt's Creek Park.

We next headed for Roanoke VA which adjoins probably my favorite road in the US, The Blue Ridge Parkway.

We stayed at a great Elks Lodge that had a beautiful building, camping with an electric hookup and a full size swimming pool. The food was excellent, everyone was friendly and we loved it.

Fabulous Elks Lodge in Roanoke

We had lots of time to explore the city of Roanoke and we cruised the Parkway up to Peaks of Otter where we enjoyed lunch overlooking the lake.

Peaks of Otter looking over the Lake

On the way back we used my amazing sense of direction to “Explore in a different direction” and found ourselves in the town of Bedford and noticed signs for the National D Day Museum.

The entrance to the D Day Museum

The connection isn’t immediately obvious with Bedford being well away from any coastline, but their story is of the 20 young men who were part of the 29^th Division who died on D Day.

Dramatic statues
 

Its just a small town in the hills so taking 20 men from it was a blow felt in some way by every house in the community.

Amazing details

We toured the museum and we were impressed by the statuary in the park like atmosphere. It brought back memories of my Dad’s experiences that we only uncovered after his death.

We also sampled the beer at a few local breweries of course! And luckily there were several breweries in Roanoke as well as the good selection at the Lodge. I’m not saying any of that influenced us but the intended 2 day stay stretched to a week and we felt so welcome there. A nice place to stay.

Steam locomotives at the Virginia Transportation Museum

But move on we did.

My next favorite road after the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP for short) is VA rt 340 that ambles North/South parallel to the BRP and I81. Initially we drove Rt 11 and then got on 340 to Waynesboro and another great Elks Lodge with hook ups.

View across from the BRP

I used to camp just down the road at Sherando Lake for a motorcycle rally over the Labor Day weekend. That’s where I met Harold and his sons David and Don. Mike and took our sons there too. It’s scary to think they are nearly 40 years old now!

On the BRP near Sherando

Barbara is new to this area and I’m sure she got tired of me telling her where I had been, when and who with! Fortunately she has been enjoying the area as much as I have and I think I’ve made her  another fan of the area.

Mad Man Dan's brewery

Naturally breweries were an attraction and especially Wild Man Dan’s which was tucked away in the middle of nowhere but so full of character. We chatted with the owners and marveled that they had dedicated parking for us! Not really! They have a Bed and Breakfast there and the parking signs say BnB Parking. We parked the car next to the sign because our license plate is “BNB CAR”!

Reserved parking just for us!

Another 2 day stay turned into a week before we continued up 340 into Maryland. East lay Baltimore and Annapolis where we lived for 25 years, so lots of catching up to do!

Texas and more

 Maine was our next objective, but how we will get there and what we will see along the way is anyone’s guess!

Tag along, it’ll be fun.

North was an obvious choice of direction! So we did that.

A night or two in St Augustine seemed nice but the trip up I95 to Savannah was a mess with trucks and cars fighting for lanes. Exactly what we hate, and a good reminder to stay off the interstates. We have no deadlines until August now so there is no need for speed.

Nice tree lined streets and little parks everywhere

We have never visited Savannah before and didn’t realize what a pretty city it is. Except for the parking situation.

Some really fancy tombstones

We have always had a “Thing” for cemeteries and the Bonaventure Cemetery was an excellent one, with memorials going back to the foundation of the Colony of Georgia and including prominent people up to the Civil War and beyond.

Old buildings and cobblestone streets on River Street

Savannah was spared from destruction in Sherman’s “March to the Sea”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea

which split the Confederacy in half. The citizens of Savannah paid the Union forces 25,000 bales of cotton to spare the city and so there are lots of original buildings to wander around.

Juliette Gordon Low founder of Girls Scouts in the US
was from Savannah

We did our customary “Hop on Hop off” bus tour to get the feel of the place then explored the water front area which is aptly named “River Street”. Some nice beers and seafood helped us get to know the city and I think we will return again sometime.

By the end of the day we were both feeling exhausted from all the walking. We should have done more during the winter… but we say that every year!!

North up the coast again to Myrtle Beach gave us the opportunity to see another old friend from our Maryland/Motorcycle days and we explored some of Barry’s favorite watering spots. Not being particularly “Beachy People” we spent our spare time shopping for RV accessories!

Our tour guide Barry

Barry’s last name is Monaco so he liked our rig!

He liked the RV brand.

It’s beginning to sound like we slogged further and further North but things were fairly close together and next we had an invite to stay at Mike and Holly’s farm in North Carolina.

The faithful Sheep Dog

We were back in Maryland last October for Mike and Holly’s wedding in Frederick and they kindly invited us to stay with them if we found ourselves in the Wilmington area. 

We jumped at the chance!

The curving driveway

Porch overlooking the creek

Their “farm” is a charming little place at the end of a country road and down a winding private driveway which opens up to reveal a beautiful house on a quiet creek with a barn and their collection of animals roaming in the paddocks. So quiet and relaxing with room in the drive for our rig.

Enough room for the rig!

Our great hosts Mike and Holly

We spent several days exploring the area, eating out at their favorite spots, sitting on their pier and annoying the fish with my amateur attempts at fishing! We eventually had to tear ourselves away but thank you Mike and Holly for the great hospitality.

Not much further away but West instead of North had us camping in a nice campground attached to an adventure park outside of Charlotte NC just a couple of miles from Barbara’s cousin Helen and her family who we got to meet.

Helen and Barbara

Friends and neighbors from Maryland also live within about 50 miles so we caught up with Dave and Kathy who we rode Goldwings with. 

Dave, Me, Barbara and Kathy

Then with Heather who is the daughter of our neighbors back in Gambrills. You realize how time has flown when you find that the young girl from back then is now a teacher and mom!

With Heather and her family

So this section of the trip has been all about visiting friends, and it has been delightful!

Still more friends to see along the way but you'll have to wait until the next post to meet them!

Start of a new adventure

 

So that’s where I was and what I was up to until the end of March.

And now where are we?

Well right now I’m sitting in Savannah trying desperately to remember how to put together a blog post!

The beginning is probably the best place to start, then progress from there. So here goes!

Welcome to the blog. We had discussed our summer 2024 trip some time over the winter and came up with what we laughingly described as a “plan”. Of course we are the original No Plan Kids so things were a little loose. Things like where we were going, how we were going to get there and when. Nothing major.

Our motor home - the Monaco, has basically sat for 2 years in indoor storage to protect it from the intense Arizona sun during the summers we were in UK.

The Monaco in Mexico 2 years ago.

Maintenance was due. Overdue if the truth is told, so initially we took it to Norris RV in Casa Grande for them to fix the entry step and step cover, both of which had ceased working over the past year or so. They also resealed the roof which needed doing and while they were doing that I had them replace the bathroom skylight which I had patched 4 or so years ago when we first bought the rig but really needed to be replaced altogether, and doing it when the roof was being done made sense.

I’m not going to list costs because if you can’t afford the price of maintenance you shouldn’t own a motorhome in the first place!

The second thing was the rear tires which where well outdated but it made no sense to replace them and then have them sit for 2 years, so we waited until we were getting ready for our new season. Purcell Tire in Casa Grande were considerably lower in price than anyone else and had fresh tires of the brand we wanted and in stock, so they got the business.

Last thing in Casa Grande was the engine and chassis maintenance. Big diesel engines have a massive oil capacity which is used both for lubrication and also cooling. 11 gallons of oil, new oil filter, new fuel filters, generator oil and filter change and lubrication of all the many grease points on the chassis was accomplished at a local truck/RV shop.

I wonder if the license plates taste like lobster??

We had decided that a return trip to Maine sounded good (Think LOBSTER). But more maintenance was needed on the 4 slide outs, where the seals along the top had fallen apart after 15 years of neglect. I had replaced the side seals about 4 years ago but the top seals require the slide topper awnings to be removed and I’m no longer capable of working off a ladder.

A company named Talin have an outstanding reputation for excellent work and also specialize in slide outs. The have developed a “Guardian Plate” to address a common problem in the slide floor where water gets in and rots the plywood.

They aren’t in Casa Grande, not even in Arizona. They are way over in the East Coast in Florida about 2200 miles away!

Obviously the directions were not going to follow a straight line between Casa Grande and Maine!!

Our initial thinking was to make an appointment with Talin (They are very busy people and you need an appointment way in advance). We called them in January and made an appointment for mid April. Then came my vertigo thing and with doctors etc we weren’t able to leave early so it looked like 7 LONG days of pounding across the country on the I-10 Interstate, which neither of us liked the sound of.

After some consideration we blew off my annual wellness exam, which was the last one and the problem, after all I had just seen an endless stream of doctors, had blood drawn multiple times and had X Rays, MRI etc etc and nothing except vertigo had been diagnosed. I was mostly recovered from the vertigo too so we canceled the wellness visit and left April 3^rd headed East.

It is an almost perfectly straight line to Jacksonville FL from Casa Grande and all on I-10, not our favorite way to drive. What could we do to make it more bearable?

An old thing in RV’ing is “The Rule of Twos” which suggests drive 2 hours and take a break, drive less than 200 miles a day, get to your destination by 2pm and stay 2 nights. We have followed that pretty much all our Rving life and it works for relaxed travelling.

We sat with the big Rand McNally Road Atlas (Remember them? Thanks to Barbara Whaley for ours!). We divided the trip into 200 mile segments and adjusted them to suit places we have been before and liked.

After putting the rig on an RV site at the park with power, water and sewer we got everything running and charging while we loaded up the fridge, transferred our clothes from the house, cleaned the tanks, filled the water tank and got the whole show ready for departure on April 3^rd.

Not being 100% sure of my driving ability after all the problems I’d had, we planned a fairly short first day on the road and stopped at the Wilcox AZ Elks Lodge where there is a big RV area with full hook ups and a very friendly Lodge.

After that we stopped in Las Cruces NM, a Walmart in Odessa TX and an RV park in Sweetwater TX before stopping for a couple of days in Haslet TX, near Fort Worth.

Side trip to Dallas and Dealey Plaza

Why Haslet?? Well that’s where our friends Paul and Karen are living now after they left Sundance a couple of years ago to be nearer their kids and grandkids.

We soon got caught up with all the news and by complete coincidence it happened to be exactly in the zone of totality for the solar eclipse! I swear we didn’t plan that, it just happened and we were very fortunate that the RV park they live in had a last minute cancellation just as we were getting near!

Solar Eclipse any minute now

Goofy glasses.

We all had goofy glasses on looking at the eclipse then we toured around the Fort Worth area sightseeing and eating at all the best places. Life on the road can be tough!!

Paul and Karen getting goofy

Eventually we had to tear ourselves away and keep heading East. Marshall TX, Vicksburg MS, Hattiesburg AL at Elks Lodges and commercial parks led us to a longer stay at the Escapees Rainbow Plantation in Foley AL near Mobile on the Gulf Coast.

Gorgeous Sunset over Mobile Bay

We spent some time in this same park back in 2017 after being chased out of Florida by Hurricane Irma. 

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2017/09/back-to-usa.html

This trip was much less fraught and allowed us to tour the coast, eat some delicious seafood and chill out for a couple of days.

What else is there but seafood??

Next came Elks Lodges in Tallahassee and Zephyrhills near Tampa FL. This later was handy for Talin and also our old Escapee friends Peter and Donna! More parties and dinners out, all aided and abetted by MORE Escapees friends Larry and Marilyn! We had just the best time with this group of like minded people and time just flew by.

Donna and Peter

Larry and Marilyn et al.

Talin took our rig and plugged it into power to keep the fridge running and the batteries charged, then they walked the work we wanted to ensure they understood what we needed. Then we left it in their hands for the 4 days they needed to get it done.

That’s right, we unhooked the car and left the rig with them for 4 days.

UUHH? Where would we go?

Well to more friends! Fred and Judy - from back in our motorcycles days - live in Sebring where they had a spare bedroom waiting for us in addition to the great welcome they gave us.

Fred and Judy

Naturally more dinners out, tours of their park, the town, the Elks Lodge all followed and again time flew by.

But we still had 1 night left before we picked up the rig so we got a room in a Holiday Inn at Bonita Springs another 100 miles South near Naples FL so we could visit with our Casa Grande friends Al and Marie, who have moved closer to their son Drew after Marie suffered some medical problems.

Breakfast with Al and Marie

It was onIy was only 200 miles back to Talin after that!

We were sorry to have to leave everyone behind. It has been wonderful seeing you all and hopefully it won't be quite so long until we meet up again, Love Ya’ll.

This meant that the first stage of our “Plan” was over and we had to proceed with the second stage. Maine was our next objective, but how we will get there and what we will see along the way is anyone’s guess!

Tag along, it’ll be fun.