In preparation for the upcoming season and particularly for the 3-week Canada trip Barb and I have planned in June, Larry and I took the MH out for an "Expedition of Discovery". We do this every couple years to find new destinations we want to return to with our wives.
This year, we decided to venture South into Virginia and West Virginia, with some ideas of where we might end up, but nothing cast in stone. The plan was to leave from Larry's neck of the woods in Chester Co. about noon on Sunday, April 22. The last thing I had on my checklist before leaving our house was to check the tire pressures. Lo and behold, the left rear inside dually (the one you can't see) was flat and wouldn't take pressure form the compressor. After a lot of fooling around and consternation and being a Sunday when no big truck service companies were open near me, I called Larry and told him the trip was off.
After talking it over with Larry, I tried calling one of the emergency big-rig roadside service companies to see if I could get it fixed fast. Turns out a local truck tire company near me had such a service and I was able to meet a service tech in their parking lot. He got the problem (a faulty valve stem) fixed and I was on the road by 11:30am. We snatched victory from the jaws of defeat!
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| The tire repair guy's truck |
With no particular destination in mind and after a nice ride through the PA Dutch country, York and Gettysburg, with the Jeep in tow, we came to Cowan's Gap State Park near Chambersburg, PA. We decided to spend the night there. We got a nice site in the nearly empty campground, made some drinks and crabbies, built a fire and finally turned in around midnight. It was a long day.
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| We had to use the MH's hydraulic leveling jack to get the wheel off the ground |
The next day, after a late start that included a bacon & egg breakfast, we turned South and headed through the W. Virginia.panhandle into Virginia. We drove for several hours, finally beginning to look for a place to overnight around 4:00pm. We stumbled onto Shenandoah River State park near Front Royal, the gateway to the Skyline Drive and got a nice RV site with a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We unhitched the Jeep, took a ride into town to buy a few groceries, and returned to have a dinner of a salad & Lasagna. Later we made more drinks, got plastered, and baked a batch of Ghirardelli fudge brownies; boy were they good! We made a campfire, but it was cold & rainy outside, so we spent most of
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| He removed and replaced the tire by himself |
the night inside watching the satellite TV, which I just had activated the previous week. Larry wanted to take a hike in the cold & rain and I resisted, so we had a tiff about the TV wrecking the trip. For me, it was something that had to be done to prove it was ready for the Canada trip.
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| Lake/beach at Cowan's Gap State Park |
The next day, we decided to drive a little bit of the Skyline Drive. Not realizing it was a National Park, I left my NP lifetime pass in the MH, so we had to pay the $20 senior rate to get in. After going to the visitor center, we decided to proceed a little further, and ended up driving about 50 miles, about 1/2 the length of the Drive, to the RV campground at Big Meadows. It was a rotten, foggy, miserable day, so we couldn't see a thing at any of the 25 or 30 overlooks we passed. All was not lost though, as we decided it's a place we want to return to with our wives next Spring and tour for a couple days.
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| Everyone knows at least one of these guys |
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| Says it all |
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| Visitor Center near North entrance of Skyline Drive. |
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| Inside visitor's center |
We got back to the MH around 5:30. Baked some pizza and had some drinks. To bed around midnight. Left for home Wednesday morning about 11:00am. We took the major highways until we got into PA, then decided to get on Rt 30. Maybe that wasn't a great decision, as there was lots of weekday traffic and we were low on diesel with no truck stops or large gas stations that we could get into with the car in tow. We stopped along the way and poured one of the two 5 gal diesel "Jerry cans" into the tank. We ended up pulling into a large gas station a bit further down the road, but had to disconnect the Jeep to get in.
All in all, it was a fun trip and we accomplished our mission of finding new places to come back to. Most importantly, everything in the MH worked perfectly, so we feel good about the upcoming Canada trip.
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| Larry made this for RC. It's made from 6 different species of rare & exotic hardwood. |
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