First Stop - Glen Maury Park, Buena Vista, VA

Our first adventure was getting the RV off of the farm property.  The farm is on a hill and has a tight turn at the bottom of the driveway, so we drove across the field to the nearly-connected medical complex to head out Friday morning.

We hooked up our car to our RV for the first time in the WalMart parking lot just down the road.  We'd been kind of nervous about doing this, but it ended up being pretty straightforward.  We tested out the light connections between the RV and the car and everything looked good.  Onward!

Our first stop, around 3 hours down the road, was Glen Maury Park in Buena Vista, VA.  The campground here was right on an old canal.  The campground itself was quite curious, a large open field next to the baseball diamond. In nicer weather I would have been worried about stray balls, but it was way too cold for any of that.  It took us quite a while to decide on a campsite...the first we tried (promising 50 amp hookups!) had the water supply too separated from the power for us to find a level place to park where we could reach both power and water; the second we tried right on the canal with a nice view had the water turned off for the season; and so we ended up at a third spot with limited canal viewing and 30amp hookups.  Overall the campground was good - very quiet, with a warm and clean bathhouse and friendly front desk staff.

We encountered a couple of problems right away - our refrigerator was popping the GFCI outlet every time we turned it on, and one of our gas furnaces wouldn't light.  The first advice on the internet on the furnace was to hammer the furnace to try to free the sail switch, and amazingly enough that did the trick.  While we were banging around on things the refrigerator decided to start working again too, though it continued to turn off every night at 2am (but without popping the GFCI).  Our current theory on the refrigerator is that it just doesn't like sub-freezing temperatures, or that all of the heaters turned on simultaneously overnight and caused the EMS (Electrical Management System) to load balance the refrigerator off.  So we'll keep tabs on both of these and work on better fixes once we get a little further south to nicer temperatures.  The good news is that we do have a second gas furnace, two space heaters, and a refrigerator with excellent insulation (things keep cold at least 24 hours even without the refrigerator running).

The main reason to stop in Glen Maury Park was to visit Aaron's sister's family in Amherst, VA - 45 minutes away.  Unfortunately we couldn't find a closer campsite - most things were already closed for the season!  We had a great time visiting with family for the long weekend before heading back on the road Monday morning.

Next stop: Williamsburg!

Snow Day!

When we decided to start travelling full-time in our RV, we heard so many other full-time RVers say you WILL encounter unexpected issues that mess with your plans, so plan to have your plans thwarted.  Little did we know we'd experience our first (admittedly very minor) dose of this before even hitting the road!

Our original plan was to come back from Disney World on Veterans Day, have a quick hybrid going away party/birthday party for my dad that evening, spend two days packing, and get on the road Thursday morning.  However, the weather had other plans!

In the coldest cold snap since 1950, the family farm in Princeton (where we had the RV parked while working on repairs) experienced snow on Tuesday:

It wasn't much, but combined with crazy low temperatures, we decided our planned activities for Tuesday would have to take a snow day.  Instead of cleaning and packing the RV, we spent the day doing some last minute shopping and LOTS of laundry while we had access to my mom's residential washer and dryer.

The rest of the week got just warm enough to allow the snow to melt - critical since the only way out of this spot was across a large sloped grassy area we did not want to attempt in snow and ice.  We couldn't quite stomach the early morning sub-freezing temperatures, so instead of two full days we ended up with two afternoons to get our last minute work done.  Thankfully my dad helped Aaron with some last minute repairs and my mom helped me with packing and organizing the RV.  We managed to hit the road midmorning Friday!  Adventure here we come!

Starting a New Life!

I'm about to hand this URL out to a bunch of folks, so I figured I should put at least ONE post up here!  We've purchased a new-to-us 15 year old 40ft Class A motor home - a Fleetwood Revolution.  After a few months of fixing things up, we're finally ready to take it out on the road and see the country!  Stay tuned for future posts about our travels!