Back in NC 9-16

This not having satellite every day is taxing my brain because now I have to remember what happened TWO days ago. People ask us where we’ve been or come from and I have to work hard at getting it right. It all blurs together. We constantly test ourselves to keep the brain cells firing!

On Thursday we pulled out from Hillsville and wound around the back roads to get to the highway we wanted. We think Virginia is the best state we’ve been in for road signage. They number every single road and they are not chintzy with the signs. It made it very easy to find what we were looking for. We’ve been in states where there are numbers on the maps but you go through the town and there are absolutely no signs telling you what is what.

Anyway, this part of Virginia is beautiful. I imagine the whole state looks much this way. We came to this overlook and it was nice getting a bird’s eye view of what we had been driving through. We drove along highway 58 at the bottom of the state. We traveled 161 miles. We spent the night at Rudds Creek campground. It was stunning. It is an US Army Corps of Engineers park on a large beautiful lake, the John H. Kerr Reservoir. The sites were large and graveled and were like rooms. Lots of beautiful trees so we didn’t have a chance at the satellite. Had electric and water, no sewer and it was $20. We were on the lake, but it had been pouring rain and the mud was slopposis so we didn’t make it to our edge of the lake.

Our setup took a bit longer. I pushed the button for the big slide-out and NOTHING. Nada, didn’t make a sound, didn’t, budge. So Larry had to crawl all around with his meter checking out all the wiring and the motors and the switch. We had checked the fuse in the trailer, but it turned out to be a fuse in the slide’s control panel. So we were able to open the slide. Good thing too, because our pantry is inaccessible when the slide is in and my dark chocolate was in there!!!! I felt panic rising as time passed, but just in the NICK of time the slide moved. Whew, that was close!

We took a walk later in the evening and found a place that had a rocky path and enjoyed the view. Very peaceful. We considered staying more nights, but we miss the satellite and we were hoping that as we got closer to the coast maybe the humidity levels would lessen a bit.

So, yesterday, Friday we got all ready to go and I pushed the button to slide the slide-out in and….yup, nothing. Larry did the whole routine again, another blown fuse. He decided the rails were dirty and they were dragging too much and stressing out the motor and blowing the fuse. They are exposed under the trailer and with all this rain they had gotten gritty. So they got cleaned off and Larry sprayed them with silicone spray. We got a later start, but it was still around 10:30.

We dropped down into North Carolina at Emporia, VA and continued heading east. Not too many places to stop so we made pretty good time. There weren’t a lot of towns to wind through. The place we were shooting for was north east of Elizabeth City in the upper north east corner of NC. We are way out away from “stuff”…five miles from the nearest convenience store so it is very quiet…no road noise. We traveled 184 miles and have finally seen diesel come down, it was $2.50.

The campground is open but is ringed with trees. It is another Passport America park and it is $12.50 a night for full hookups. It is called North River Ranch and the owners have owned it for 19 months and have put a lot into it in that time. They still have a lot to do, but it is already real nice. We are doing laundry today in the clean, brand new laundry room. When I opened the door, little green frogs rained down on me. We had gotten a lot of rain this morning so they were looking for a place to dry out I guess. We had to watch that we didn’t squish any of them.

The trees are just starting to turn. I can’t figure out why the northern New England states get all the credit for fall color. The entire eastern U.S. is loaded with hard wood trees and there will be tons of color everywhere! I hope we catch some of it. Two years ago we went through the south west portion of Utah and the fall colors in the mountains there were gorgeous!

The slide-out slid perfectly when we got in yesterday, so now we just have to get replacement fuses. I think we’ll venture into town later or tomorrow.

After all that rain we got this morning it is very humid again. I guess there is just no escaping it out here! I see why so many “westerners” that we have run into say they don’t spend a lot of time out east. This having everything damp all the time is yucky and it will be only 72 degrees outside but with 80% plus humidity you get all sweaty doing almost nothing. Just moving causes one to get “dewy”.

We thought the east would be just packed with people, but it is not as dense with people as it is in the California countryside. Of course the urban areas are packed, but the country is still country out here and not full of zero clearance cookie cutter homes. Now the one thing that there IS a lot of are churches. Huge and LOTS of them everywhere. So much money spent in the wrong places…oops now I’ll have to watch out for that lightning bolt!

Enough for now! Gotta go dodge frogs and put the clothes in the dryers.

This last photo is of the tobacco fields that we have seen since we've gotten south. Less corn now and more tobacco and cotton.

Don't forget you can click on the pictures to see them larger. Usually.