OK, we are tired of hills. We are REALLY tired of hills! The pictures below show some of the topography that we passed through in the last few days. The really steep and twisty roads have no pictures because we were busy hanging on to the truck, although Sandy did get some video that is good. The other pictures are of a small pond where we are camped currently. It is deep, clear, and full of large bass, catfish, and crappie (so the owner tells us). I saw a few, caught none.
The last few days have been….. memorable! Two camps ago, we parked in an RV park by backing in at an angle into a grass site. We backed in slightly downhill. When we wanted to leave the next day, we had to pull out….. yes, UP-hill, on wet grass (dew). When the tires started spinning, we used the orange plastic leveling blocks to put under the tires and in front of them to get traction. It worked! …for about 4 feet. We then moved them in front of the rear tires again, and got another 4 feet. Then we hit a slightly more uphill section, and got zero feet. We had to go about 30 feet more to get out. I was about to call for a tractor to pull us out when Sandy noticed that the guy parked below us had left. She suggested BACKING out. Of course, it worked perfectly!
Next camp, we parked in a very level spot with packed gravel (can’t fool me twice!). When we got up, no power! … but there were rabbits everywhere! Black ones! We noticed them when we drove into this park. They were everywhere, calmly nibbling grass. One guy had about 50 of them around him because he was feeding them something. When we got up early the next morning (after Sandy noticed that the power had gone out sometime in the night), we opened the door and about 10 bunnies ran towards us… I guess they thought we would feed them! FAT CHANCE OF THAT!!! After they finished the carrots we gave them, we went ahead and hooked up and left… about 6:30 am.
The next camp we headed for was in the middle of some very tall hills in northern West Virginia…. At least I think so, because we couldn’t find it! We turned up the correct road that was indicated by the GPS… and it wasn’t the park. It was, however, a very steep, very narrow, very gravely road up a hill up to a housing area. I was committed, and couldn’t back out because the road behind us was too narrow and totally blind to traffic, with ditches on both sides. When I finally got to the top, after some extremely discouraging tire slippage on the gravel, I got out to consider what to do next. The bottom had a culvert drop off on the left side, and the right side had large potholes. I walked down the drive and ascertained that I could not make a left turn. The road we had turned off of was a single lane blacktop. Now understand, when I say single lane, I don’t mean single lane each direction. I thought I could make a right hand turn if I did it “just right”. I turned around by backing into a house driveway/front yard. We went back down the gravel hill, and as I prepared to turn right a pick up truck was preparing to turn onto the gravel road I was on. He gave us an odd look but simply drove just past the entrance and stopped, allowing us to leave. Needless to say, my attention was drawn to the ditch on the right and I hoped I could make the turn without getting stuck in that ditch. It worked. Now we were on the narrow blacktop, headed back to the “highway” that was itself, extremely narrow, curvy, had no shoulder, and was heavily traveled by semis going in both directions. Our nerves were a little shot. Sandy called me her “hero”. I felt I need to clean my shorts.
Then we got here. We are in West Virginia. We went 320 miles in the hills, chasing elusive RV parks on Tuesday. I took Wednesday off. Tomorrow we go into Ohio. OK, we didn’t do an exhaustive look-see in West VA, but like I said earlier… we are tired of hills. I am afraid that tomorrow isn’t going to be much better though. We will keep in touch the best we can as WiFi becomes available to us.
By the way, I wrote this whole, long documentary for today directly into the blog. When I went to post it, I was informed that the WiFi had dropped us, and I lost it all. This post was done in Word first and posted by cut and paste the next morning. Like I said earlier… fool me once…
Dutch and Sandy
The last few days have been….. memorable! Two camps ago, we parked in an RV park by backing in at an angle into a grass site. We backed in slightly downhill. When we wanted to leave the next day, we had to pull out….. yes, UP-hill, on wet grass (dew). When the tires started spinning, we used the orange plastic leveling blocks to put under the tires and in front of them to get traction. It worked! …for about 4 feet. We then moved them in front of the rear tires again, and got another 4 feet. Then we hit a slightly more uphill section, and got zero feet. We had to go about 30 feet more to get out. I was about to call for a tractor to pull us out when Sandy noticed that the guy parked below us had left. She suggested BACKING out. Of course, it worked perfectly!
Next camp, we parked in a very level spot with packed gravel (can’t fool me twice!). When we got up, no power! … but there were rabbits everywhere! Black ones! We noticed them when we drove into this park. They were everywhere, calmly nibbling grass. One guy had about 50 of them around him because he was feeding them something. When we got up early the next morning (after Sandy noticed that the power had gone out sometime in the night), we opened the door and about 10 bunnies ran towards us… I guess they thought we would feed them! FAT CHANCE OF THAT!!! After they finished the carrots we gave them, we went ahead and hooked up and left… about 6:30 am.
The next camp we headed for was in the middle of some very tall hills in northern West Virginia…. At least I think so, because we couldn’t find it! We turned up the correct road that was indicated by the GPS… and it wasn’t the park. It was, however, a very steep, very narrow, very gravely road up a hill up to a housing area. I was committed, and couldn’t back out because the road behind us was too narrow and totally blind to traffic, with ditches on both sides. When I finally got to the top, after some extremely discouraging tire slippage on the gravel, I got out to consider what to do next. The bottom had a culvert drop off on the left side, and the right side had large potholes. I walked down the drive and ascertained that I could not make a left turn. The road we had turned off of was a single lane blacktop. Now understand, when I say single lane, I don’t mean single lane each direction. I thought I could make a right hand turn if I did it “just right”. I turned around by backing into a house driveway/front yard. We went back down the gravel hill, and as I prepared to turn right a pick up truck was preparing to turn onto the gravel road I was on. He gave us an odd look but simply drove just past the entrance and stopped, allowing us to leave. Needless to say, my attention was drawn to the ditch on the right and I hoped I could make the turn without getting stuck in that ditch. It worked. Now we were on the narrow blacktop, headed back to the “highway” that was itself, extremely narrow, curvy, had no shoulder, and was heavily traveled by semis going in both directions. Our nerves were a little shot. Sandy called me her “hero”. I felt I need to clean my shorts.
Then we got here. We are in West Virginia. We went 320 miles in the hills, chasing elusive RV parks on Tuesday. I took Wednesday off. Tomorrow we go into Ohio. OK, we didn’t do an exhaustive look-see in West VA, but like I said earlier… we are tired of hills. I am afraid that tomorrow isn’t going to be much better though. We will keep in touch the best we can as WiFi becomes available to us.
By the way, I wrote this whole, long documentary for today directly into the blog. When I went to post it, I was informed that the WiFi had dropped us, and I lost it all. This post was done in Word first and posted by cut and paste the next morning. Like I said earlier… fool me once…
Dutch and Sandy
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