Lots to Learn!

(I tried to post this last night, but my internet kept timing out. So hopefully this morning it will work.)

I could have entitled this post “what a day” AGAIN, but I guess I’ve used that one enough in recent weeks. We were heading out this morning for our next stop, Shenandoah Valley KOA in Virginia. We were both nervous about our first solo experience hitching up. But that turned out to be the easiest part of the whole day.

The weather forecast for today was a 30% chance of showers. Well, we woke up to downpours! This would have been a day when, if we had a choice about the matter, we would have definitely stayed put and waited for a nicer day. But unfortunately, we are on a deadline, since we have to get home this weekend. So I took care of the inside stuff, packing up and securing everything, while Harry unhooked all the outside stuff. He was soaking wet by the time he was finished, and then came in and changed his clothes before we hooked up the truck.

By this time the rain had stopped for the moment and it looked like we might be able to get going without being rained on. Nope, no such luck. The good news is that Harry did an awesome job hitching up. And we LOVE the auto leveling system. We just push one button and it retracts back to the height we were in when we unhitched. So easy.

So as I said, hitching up was the easy part. I don’t know if you can tell in this picture, but we are really close to that cement pad. It wasn’t by design, that’s just where we ended up. And because of our angle in the site, we had to go left, and also miss the trees at the beginning of our site. It might not be as difficult as we found it, but for us newbies, it was a huge challenge!!

As Harry came forward with the truck, the tires on the rv got way too close to the concrete pad. If it was an inch or two, that was it. So Harry did the back and forth maneuver a few times and finally got the fiver maybe three or four inches from the pad, and to the point where we could take the left. I was the lookout, and oh, did I mention that while we were doing all this, it was POURING. What a morning.

We finally managed to get the fiver out of our site, and headed out towards Virginia. It was a gloomy morning, and we were just glad to be on the road.

Also Harry had discovered that the fiver’s tires weren’t quite at the air pressure he would have preferred, so during the course of our trip, I believe we stopped at a minimum of 7 truck plazas trying to find a working air station. With no success, I might add. Harry has a small compressor with us, which he has used tonight, and a larger one at home. I’m quite sure we won’t be hitting the road without that compressor again after the day we had today.

Then we finally had the KOA campground in our sights – only 3 short miles away. Let me rephrase that – 3 long, winding, curvy, narrow miles away.

It’s a beautiful area, and our site is very nice, but I can say with quite a bit of certainty that we will not be coming back to this park.

Let me show you around some of the natural features here.

This is the left we had to make as we were traveling to our site.

 

And from this corner, you can see the right turn we had to make immediately after the first left.

 

 

And then finally one more left to get into our site. Whew!!

And finally, here we are – all settled and comfy for the night. We even have our satellite tv! Yay!!

Tomorrow we head for PA, and another pull through site, but I hope the roads to that one are a little wider and straighter!