Thursday, November 21, 2019

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!

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