Day 51 Pine Grove Pa to Roanoke Rapids NC 385 miles

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

We thought that by the time we drove more than halfway through Pennsylvania we’d break through the cold front and rain. Wrong. It was cool and rainy when we left the KOA at Pine Grove Pa.

The rain, not good for travel, has certainly blessed this agricultural area. The area is beyond lush. The streams and rivers are full and the crops look good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen greener corn….it’s not too tall yet, but green! There are so many valleys between the mountain ridges and the farms are plentiful. The , old stone farm houses over a century old, if walls could talk…

We knew we were to run into some heavy rain today. It seems hard to believe, but this is the first heavy rain we’ve driven in. The only other severe storm was during the night in Hot Springs at the beginning of the trip. Although the clouds were thick and menacing, the heavy rain period lasted less than an hour.

We traveled I81 through the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, through a small portions of Maryland, and West Virginia and finally Virginia. We like to take a route to get over to I95 and avoid the dreaded Beltway around Washington DC. A few years ago we began to take I66 at Front Royal VA, which runs east/west from I81 to the Beltway. We take it for about 20 miles, then drop down to US17, avoid the Beltway and emerge on I95 just below Fredericksburg VA. This one hour drive is absolutely beautiful, through rolling pastures and thick forests. The farms are from the Civil War period. You can almost imagine Union or Confederate troops marching over the next hill. And avoiding the Beltway is good for the nerves too!

The clouds and showers traveled with us to the border of Virginia and North Carolina. I may go blind when I see bright sunshine again. We are staying in a new campground in Roanoke Rapids, NC. Once here, we started trying to decide exactly where we want to end this trip. We were thinking Hattaras but it’s so far out of the way and the weather is iffy…if we want head home, it’s a long drive. Then we thought of Morehead City, which is very nice, but still a good drive from Charleston. Thought of Wilmington, then finally Myrtle Beach. That’s only two hours away from home. Jim was REALLY pushing Myrtle Beach. They have huge camping areas there but it took several calls to find one that had an open spot. This is the first time on the entire trip that we had to make more than one call for a site.

After all this time and all the different campgrounds I found a couple of ticks on the dogs. Actually, I think it was from the place last night, there was a wooded path at the dog walk. Of course, I should have not mentioned it to ‘city boy’ because he immediately started to swat imaginary insects all over his body while driving down the interstate. Sheesh.

We had a simple take- out meal here in the RV. When we went by the plaza near here to pick something up, we noticed the Applebee's was closed. There were several flower bouquets at the front door. We were told that the 29 year old female manager was found dead inside on Tuesday morning, apparently she was murdered late Monday evening.

Tomorrow we head to our home state…we’ve made a pretty big circle, eh? Hopefully, we can get some beach time in before we return to the real world!

Stay Away from the Chez KOA

Narragansett RI to Pine Grove, PA 348 Miles
Day 50

Tuesday June 16, 2009

Cold and damp as we awoke on our last morning in RI…we’re so outta here! We were paid up until check out on Thursday morning, but the weather was not cooperating. Wednesday is reported to be fairly nice, but we didn’t want to suffer through today to enjoy it.

We were almost ready to leave when we hit a little snag in our plans. One of the last steps is to pull the slide-out room in and secure it with two stabilizer bars. Today one of those bars snapped as he tried to lock it in place. Stop, unhook the Jeep and find someone who can weld this thing before we hit the road. Luckily, this is an area with many large boats so we just traveled down the road until we spotted a welding shop. Luckily the man was able to weld it right away. We only lost about an hour of travel time. Plus a little bonus, while waiting for the welding I turned on the lap top to write the blog on Live Writer and discovered I had a WIFI signal. Yippee, I got to surf a little!

Traveling all day, we never saw the sun. Heavy clouds, but no rain. Apparently the entire northeast has had a very rainy, cool and damp spring. We thought that by the time we drove all this way to southern PA we’d hit the warm weather….not.

Campgrounds are few and far between on I81 in Pa. We found a KOA, six miles off the highway. Most KOA campgrounds are much closer to the highways, but there’s nothing else around.

Dreary afternoon at the KOA in Pine Grove, PA

It’s a nice place. They have a large restaurant by the office. We went to at 6:30 and no one was eating there. That should have been a clue…but noooooo, we ordered anyway. I mean…how bad can it be? Oh Lord.

I ordered 1/4 barbecued chicken, green beans and corn bread. I asked the girl for dark meat (thigh and leg) what I got was a wing with about 2 inches of breast meat attached and it was dried out and ice cold on the inside. I ate a piece of the wing and took the cold chicken home to the dogs. The dish of green beans was RAW(not just crisp -RAW, and the corn muffin weighed about half a pound… Never eat anything that is way heavier than it should be, the extra weight is usually grease.
Jim’s sandwich was just okay. Well, there’s a meal I won’t have to worry about gaining weight!

We walked around the campground, which is on a hill so we, at least, got some exercise. WIFI is only at the office….which is quite far down the hill. I don’t need the internet badly enough to make the effort tonight. We’re tired, long ride today.

Tomorrow, hopefully we can find some sunlight! By the look of the weather map we should. We would like to spend our last few days of this trip at the outer banks of North Carolina, or somewhere on the ocean. BUT, if the weather is not cooperative, we may just head on home.

Seems like we’ve been gone forever!