Thanksgiving Trip to VA 2019 days 1 and 2
Posted 11-23-2019 at 09:07 PM by MEWright
11/22/2019
Trip to Winchester VA
Night before we leave;
This will be the longest trip we have taken. We have the puppies with friends, so it is just us. Leaving the house around 9am, daughter gets counted as present in school at 9am so we take her out and leave at 9:15..Not sure of the weather so what do we take? It’s a 40G, take everything plan for all weather patterns short of blizzard. If we see a blizzard coming, we will Tac and head to FL.
We are off to visit old friends so they had a shopping request, 6 gallons of Bluebell in 6 different flavors, Chicharrons(fried pig skins), spicy and BBQ, Peach salsa, Rudy’s BBQ sauce, I smoked 4 - 12LB briskets for them, some TX wine and beer and Whataburger ketchup. We’ve got the room so what the heck. Since this trip will be more of a visit friends and site see trip, I unpacked the lower bays from the usual “camping gear” to free up space in case we decide to relocate treasures to the homestead. Out with the big grill in with the little one, no hammocks or tables, no yard games or split wood for campfires, just the basics, chairs and tools.
Double checked the TVs (we had an issue with one last trip out), fixed the short in the dash, got my dash cam working and mounted, checked everything twice and still 99% sure I missed something but I went through my checklist and there are no boxes unchecked so I think we are ready to hit the road. We just had friends return from the East Coast and they recommended getting 2 NY EZ Passes, 1 for the bus and 1 for the jeep. Got them both. Pretty easy to get and should be very helpful since we plan on returning to the east shore several times. Still have a short in our inside power step cover but I will work on that once there. Something just came unplugged. Drained the fresh water sanitized and flushed the tank and re-filled it so the co pilot can have coffee with water she likes. Yep, she can tell the difference. I don’t drink the stuff so what ever makes her happy.
We are planning on driving 10 hours on day one from our house to just east of Little Rock. Hopefully we make it that far.
Day 1.
We left our house at 10am (we e already I hour late) planning on having a 10 hour drive. This in fact turned out o be a 12-hour marathon. We lost an hour in Dallas Traffic and another hour in the usual stuff (stopping at Buc-ees, getting sodas, stopping for lunch, snack etc..)
We arrived at Delta Ridge RV park just West of Memphis. It was farther from Little Rock than I expected but it turned out to be a nice break. Arrived at 10P to a reserved spot. They are crushed granite/road base spots, no showers, very simple little park but it was just fine for sleeping and not a Walmart parking place. The next morning, I spoke with the owner and he told me that 80% of his business was travelers just dropping in for the night. We did not even hook up water or sewer, just power and we were gone by 10am. The space was $33.00 and that was a deal by my calculations. Everything we passed, truck stops, rest areas, parking lots, were all full of everything RV, car sleepers, semis etc.. ) 33.00 was a deal for power and security.
1/23/2019
DAY 2
Left Delta Ridge at 10a (once again great plan, poor execution and we are 1.5 hours late already lol) planning on today being a 6 hour leaving a 6 hour for day 3. Well this went wrong also. Google calculates you at the post speed limits with no stops. We drove 60-65 not the posted 70 to 75 and we had a few stops, a redirect by WZE to get off i40 for some very bad traffic that it rerouted us around (YES it worked fine) but was still an added delay. We had planned on stopping in Nashville and hitting a few tourist attractions but NNNNOOOOOO… Traffic was bad, construction in Nashville was horrible and the Walmart we planned to stop at was so crowded that they had a cop directing traffic into the parking lot. We could barely get turned around to leave much less try to park, unhook the toad and feel safe enough to leave the coach there. So, we abandoned this endeavor and got back on the road to our RV park for the night. Soaring eagle somewhere farther east off I 40.
We were blissfully unaware that it got dark here so freaking early it was actually a great thing that we could not do anything in Nashville. We ended up getting to Soaring Eagle RV Park at 7p but it was pitch black, and did I mention that it started raining/drizzling the minute we entered ARK so now we are almost 2 days driving in the rain, ---Where was I,,, Oh yeah, Soaring Eagle RV Park off I 40. Seems simple enough, call the park, get reservations, ask them to give direction and presto, bobs your uncle we should be fine.. NO, NADA, NOT EVEN CLOSE. We take the correct exit and proceed to make a wrong turn following the verbal directions provided, end up on a dead-end street with not enough room to turn around while connected. We unhook the jeep and I send my DW off to locate Soaring Eagle RV Park which turns out was across I 40 on the exit we took. 1 simple turn instruction would have fixed that but nope, they left that part off. Once I spun the coach around, headed back down the hill, crossed I40, followed my wife to the spot we powered up, threw out the slides and headed into a local burger joint for a drink and burger.
So here we are in Eagle Roost, landing, nest, what ever planning on getting out by 8am that will end up being closer to 10 for the 6 hour that will actually end up being closer to 8-10 hours to get us into Winchester VA tomorrow evening.
3 days was the plan, so we are still good, but I planned on running closer to 70/75 but fuel here is higher. Diesel is 2.99 to 3.15per gallon here. In TX it was 2.48 at Buc-ees on I 40. 2.51 in Spicewood, not much difference until you need 100 Gallons. That .51+/- per gallons starts to be painful but whatchaguna do about it.. So since we are running slower and stopping more the trip is taking longer than anticipated. OH well, slow down enjoy the rain.. LOL… Really it has been awesome so far and the best is yet to come.
Tell ya more about it tomorrow. Happy Travels.
Trip to Winchester VA
Night before we leave;
This will be the longest trip we have taken. We have the puppies with friends, so it is just us. Leaving the house around 9am, daughter gets counted as present in school at 9am so we take her out and leave at 9:15..Not sure of the weather so what do we take? It’s a 40G, take everything plan for all weather patterns short of blizzard. If we see a blizzard coming, we will Tac and head to FL.
We are off to visit old friends so they had a shopping request, 6 gallons of Bluebell in 6 different flavors, Chicharrons(fried pig skins), spicy and BBQ, Peach salsa, Rudy’s BBQ sauce, I smoked 4 - 12LB briskets for them, some TX wine and beer and Whataburger ketchup. We’ve got the room so what the heck. Since this trip will be more of a visit friends and site see trip, I unpacked the lower bays from the usual “camping gear” to free up space in case we decide to relocate treasures to the homestead. Out with the big grill in with the little one, no hammocks or tables, no yard games or split wood for campfires, just the basics, chairs and tools.
Double checked the TVs (we had an issue with one last trip out), fixed the short in the dash, got my dash cam working and mounted, checked everything twice and still 99% sure I missed something but I went through my checklist and there are no boxes unchecked so I think we are ready to hit the road. We just had friends return from the East Coast and they recommended getting 2 NY EZ Passes, 1 for the bus and 1 for the jeep. Got them both. Pretty easy to get and should be very helpful since we plan on returning to the east shore several times. Still have a short in our inside power step cover but I will work on that once there. Something just came unplugged. Drained the fresh water sanitized and flushed the tank and re-filled it so the co pilot can have coffee with water she likes. Yep, she can tell the difference. I don’t drink the stuff so what ever makes her happy.
We are planning on driving 10 hours on day one from our house to just east of Little Rock. Hopefully we make it that far.
Day 1.
We left our house at 10am (we e already I hour late) planning on having a 10 hour drive. This in fact turned out o be a 12-hour marathon. We lost an hour in Dallas Traffic and another hour in the usual stuff (stopping at Buc-ees, getting sodas, stopping for lunch, snack etc..)
We arrived at Delta Ridge RV park just West of Memphis. It was farther from Little Rock than I expected but it turned out to be a nice break. Arrived at 10P to a reserved spot. They are crushed granite/road base spots, no showers, very simple little park but it was just fine for sleeping and not a Walmart parking place. The next morning, I spoke with the owner and he told me that 80% of his business was travelers just dropping in for the night. We did not even hook up water or sewer, just power and we were gone by 10am. The space was $33.00 and that was a deal by my calculations. Everything we passed, truck stops, rest areas, parking lots, were all full of everything RV, car sleepers, semis etc.. ) 33.00 was a deal for power and security.
1/23/2019
DAY 2
Left Delta Ridge at 10a (once again great plan, poor execution and we are 1.5 hours late already lol) planning on today being a 6 hour leaving a 6 hour for day 3. Well this went wrong also. Google calculates you at the post speed limits with no stops. We drove 60-65 not the posted 70 to 75 and we had a few stops, a redirect by WZE to get off i40 for some very bad traffic that it rerouted us around (YES it worked fine) but was still an added delay. We had planned on stopping in Nashville and hitting a few tourist attractions but NNNNOOOOOO… Traffic was bad, construction in Nashville was horrible and the Walmart we planned to stop at was so crowded that they had a cop directing traffic into the parking lot. We could barely get turned around to leave much less try to park, unhook the toad and feel safe enough to leave the coach there. So, we abandoned this endeavor and got back on the road to our RV park for the night. Soaring eagle somewhere farther east off I 40.
We were blissfully unaware that it got dark here so freaking early it was actually a great thing that we could not do anything in Nashville. We ended up getting to Soaring Eagle RV Park at 7p but it was pitch black, and did I mention that it started raining/drizzling the minute we entered ARK so now we are almost 2 days driving in the rain, ---Where was I,,, Oh yeah, Soaring Eagle RV Park off I 40. Seems simple enough, call the park, get reservations, ask them to give direction and presto, bobs your uncle we should be fine.. NO, NADA, NOT EVEN CLOSE. We take the correct exit and proceed to make a wrong turn following the verbal directions provided, end up on a dead-end street with not enough room to turn around while connected. We unhook the jeep and I send my DW off to locate Soaring Eagle RV Park which turns out was across I 40 on the exit we took. 1 simple turn instruction would have fixed that but nope, they left that part off. Once I spun the coach around, headed back down the hill, crossed I40, followed my wife to the spot we powered up, threw out the slides and headed into a local burger joint for a drink and burger.
So here we are in Eagle Roost, landing, nest, what ever planning on getting out by 8am that will end up being closer to 10 for the 6 hour that will actually end up being closer to 8-10 hours to get us into Winchester VA tomorrow evening.
3 days was the plan, so we are still good, but I planned on running closer to 70/75 but fuel here is higher. Diesel is 2.99 to 3.15per gallon here. In TX it was 2.48 at Buc-ees on I 40. 2.51 in Spicewood, not much difference until you need 100 Gallons. That .51+/- per gallons starts to be painful but whatchaguna do about it.. So since we are running slower and stopping more the trip is taking longer than anticipated. OH well, slow down enjoy the rain.. LOL… Really it has been awesome so far and the best is yet to come.
Tell ya more about it tomorrow. Happy Travels.
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