More Travels

It’s time to leave West Virginia and begin to think about getting underdway again.  From here we are heading to the DelMarVa peninsula on the east side of the gorgeous Chesapeake Bay.  My older brother and his wife retired to this area some time ago.  Sadly, he is deceased but my sister-in-law is still kicking around in an assisted living facility in Salisbury MD.

We found a state park not too far from there at Pocomoke, on the river of the same name.  When we arrived, it was essentially deserted so we got the pick of spots.  I wasn’t expecting it to be as heavily wooded as it is, but it is in a dense new growth forest.  For a few days, we had the park pretty much to our selves.

Then we had some really great family time with my sister-in-law and one of her sons and some of his family.  I should have known, but this is the best part about being retired:  I get to spend time with people who have been important in my life over the years, and in my wife’s life, that we just would not have had the time to do without the freedom.  It’s these little moments, not so big in themselves, but really big when I consider how little time I have actually taken for these events over the years.

And we are finding ourselves spending time in some really interesting locales that we would not have seen had we been doing the usual quick car, or even quicker airplane, trip for visiting places.  We would never have picked Pocomoke State Park just as a place to visit, but it was convenient, and turned out to be a very nice spot for a couple of days.

After, a truely too short visit, we moved on and started on our trip back towards “home”, or at least our home base for the last 20+ years.  We plan on taking several days along the way with a plan to travel a day, stay a day, for the first few days at least until we get almost home.  We have a scheduled stop to go camping with our oldest and her family over Veterans’ Day weekend at a state part in Texas, so we do have one of those pleasant deadlnes on our calendar.

I kind of mapped out a rough itinerary to travel through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas on the way home.  The first stop, Richmond.  The first change, not stopping in Richmond.  Instead, we decided to go to Williamsburg.  We have been to Colonia Williamsburg, and it should be on everyone’s places to visit list, but we decided instead to go to Jamestown, the site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

It was a very nice stop and full of some forgotten history (at least I had forgotten most of it).  We were in a park on the night they did their Halloween Trick or Treat.  Where we had lived for the last few years was out in the sticks and we never had anyone come to the house for candy, so we had gotten out of the habit of buying any.  We were unprepared for this evening, so we just stuck a sign on the door about, Sorry no candy.  It was a great evening all in all, but we’ll be more in tune with this next year.

Next stop was Greensboro NC.  No offense meant to the good things to see and do in Greensboro, but we decided that the Biltmore estate in Asheville was more inviting, so we only spent the night in transit in Greensboro, and headed on to Mama Gertie’s Mountain Hideaway in Asheville.

We’d already spent time going up and down mountains in West Virginia, and were now going through the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, so the RV and the Jeep in tow were getting used to climbing hills, but on at least major highways.  We were not exactly prepared for the trip to the top of Mama Gertie’s.  This was one of the steepest driveways I’ve seen.

I checked with the guy who was going to guide us up the hill about disconnecting the Jeep before going up, and he said it wasn’t necessary, that it was a relatively easy trip.  The RV was able to make it up in first gear and I was able to navigate the turns OK, and once we got to the top, the view was breathtaking.  We had planned on staying two nights, but immediately decided to stay a third night.  We called the office and extended the stay.

And when I talked to our guide to the top who told me it was so easy, he has never driven an RV up that hill, with or without a vehicle in tow.

It turned out to be a very good decision because of the beautiful spot and campground, but also we really needed to spend two days at Biltmore to explore even part of it.  That was a great visit.

Somewhere in North Carolina

November 2016