Dang RV

Looking for my next stop, I spotted the Shenandoah Valley on the map. I felt a terrible ache to see it though I didn’t know why. Happily, there is a C2C campground there in Front Royal, VA so deciding to go there was very easy. I stayed at the Skyline Ranch Resort in Front Royal. I found it to be an excellent campground with full amenities and friendly staff. They have a petting zoo, stables, very large pool, jacuzzi, clubhouse with snack bar, games, putt putt golf, and fabulous adult lounge. The theme of everything in the resort is western which is fun and the country porch on the cowboy and cowgirl bathrooms is a nice touch. The “treehouse” design of all the rental cabins is certainly interesting. The only issue I had was no satellite TV there due to all the trees. Oh well. Again on the plus side is the excellent location just down the road from both Skyline Caverns and Shenandoah National Park with Skyline Drive across the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Trail. Luray Caverns is not far either.

I managed to get a lovely sunshine day to go to the north entrance of the national park and drive Skyline Drive. The views up there are stunning. I very much enjoyed the twists and turns of the drive through mountains filling up with spring color. My GPS came in pretty handy as it showed me each turn coming up. There are a lot of hikers and bicyclists there so you may want to bring some extra water to help out a fellow traveler.

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If you are an American, like a pilgrimage to Mecca, you should try to visit Washington, D.C at least once in your lifetime. It is incredibly inspiring and does affect your life every day.

There are many ways to tour Washington. I don’t recommend driving it yourself. The traffic there is nuts! If you camp at Cherry Hill RV Park, Grayline tour buses and the local metro buses come right to the park to pickup all during the day. It is not cheap to camp there though. From The Wilderness/Presidential Resort in Spotsylvania, I was able to arrange a private tour in a van with just one other couple via US Tours (1-800-863-6333). Our tour guide was very very friendly. She picked me up at the campground. She knows the area and stories well. She gave us plenty of time to see everything and ran around getting us tickets into the monuments while we were sightseeing. I highly recommend this tour for only $38. For Arlington, you will need to pay around $7 for their own tourmobile bus as no others are allowed to drive around in it.

We saw the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, toured the Office of Engraving and Printing and got to see how money is made as well as $1 million dollars in a case, the Vietnam and Korean War memorials (I touched the Wall), Ford’s Theater, the house and bed where Lincoln died across the street, the reflection pool (no Forest Gump or Jenny in it), went up in the Washington Monument by elevator (they closed the steps years ago), Arlington National Cemetery, the Kennedys’ graves, Audie Murphy’s grave, the memorial for the Challenger astronauts and their graves, a memorial to the men who died in the failed rescue of the American Embassy in Iran, the mast of the Maine (sunk to start the Spanish-American War), the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the changing of the guard there, the memorial for Military Women in Service where I looked up my own record with picture and helped the other couple find out how to register the wife’s mother’s service. We also drove by the Capitol, the Whitehouse, Library of Congress where my registered copyrighted materials are stored , the Supreme Court, Kennedy Center, the Pentagon on the side that was hit, over the Potomac river, and more. Our tour guide dropped us off at a little grill in town for lunch and souvenir shopping.

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I found Spotsylvania to be an excellent location in the Washington D.C. area. It is in amongst several major civil war battlefields and close enough to scoot into D.C. for sightseeing as well. There is a wonderful private tour operator in Fredericksburg nearby who will pick you up right at your campground or motel. There is also every kind of food or shopping near there you could want not to mention a Walmart and TGI Fridays.

I stayed at The Wilderness/Presidential Resort. Because of everything just outside it, I won’t say I would never stay there again but it was the worst campground I have been in this trip. Oh it has tons of amenities you expect in a membership/timeshare park. It has 3 pools (1 indoors), a clubhouse, store, gymnasium, volleyball, baseball, lake with rental boats, full-time security gate and guards, cafe, etc. However, the office staff are not particularly friendly, it looks like a trailer park with people allowed to build on to their trailers, the camp site utilities are in the worst possible positions and in fact the sewer connection was unusable, and the neighbors were ridiculously noisy and callous. The electric and water required me to add extensions in order to reach them. The sewer connection was at the front of the site on the wrong side. The neighbor decided to blast me out of bed with his radio in the early evening while he had a campfire gathering. I called security and they were very nice about it. They came up immediately and got him to stop it. About a half an hour later though, someone new joined them and the radio went back on very loud until I called security again at 11:30pm.

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Yorktown is where the end of the American Revolution began when Washington cornered Cornwallis and his british troops there, forcing them to surrender. British ships sent down from New York to help Cornwallis failed when they were met at the harbor entrance by French ships sent to help the Americans. I found it interesting that soldiers from many nations fought in this war on both sides and both sides offered freedom to negro slaves and indentured servants if they would join their armies when more men were needed. Unfortunately, those on the losing side did not all get what was promised and likely met harsh punishment from their masters. Many were driven out of the british lines during the war when smallpox appeared and the former slaves were found to be particularly susceptible to it.

You can tour the entire battlefield and encampments for both sides as well as the final place of surrender by car. There is a museum there with a partial replica of the inside of a period ship, Cornwallis’s portable war table, and Washington’s actual sleeping and dining tents. Yes, they still exist and look pretty good. I got to stand inside Washington’s dining tent. How cool is that? The tents were handed down through Martha’s relatives and ended up with the wife of Robert E. Lee, the famous confederate general. They were well protected by the family and during the civil war were protected by the patent office then eventually returned to the Lees. You will also see a LOT of cannons there of all different makes. One cannon in the museum was identified as actually having been used during the revolutionary war there at Yorktown by General Lafayette during a return visit. He could tell by a distinctive mark where it was hit.

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Off to another Coast to Coast campground, Indian Cove. It is very clearly a membership campground, especially on the weekends when the staff start towing lots of trailers and golf carts out of storage and set them up on sites for their owners to whip in for the weekend. The facilities are very nice with 3 large outdoor pools, adult lounge, gym, lots of group picnic shelters, wifi at an extra charge, 24 hour security gate, playgrounds, organized activities, boat launch, and canals weaving through the campground that lead to the James River. If you like kayaks and canoes, or even small boats the place is wonderful! I met one lady who said she lives nearby and I didn’t understand why she would spend so much money to be a member of a park but after a week there, it makes perfect sense. The pools, gym, and boating are certainly worth it.

Nearby is the boardwalk, the excellent ocean beach area, lots of museums, even more shopping and food, bridge/tunnels such as the Chesapeake Bay bridge/tunnel which takes you underwater, and the naval air station. You have to LOVE the Navy to live in Virginia Beach. They fly sooo many sorties with take-offs and landings nearly every minute during the day that it is very noisy in town. The campground was much quieter.

I didn’t do the Chesapeake bridge which charges a huge toll but I did go over/through another which was a lot of fun to get to Yorktown and Jamestown for a day of siteseeing. Another cool thing to do is take a boat tour of the harbor to see all the Navy ships and other ships since this is near the port of Norfolk.

No tour of North Carolina would be complete without seeing the Outer Banks or the OBX as the locals call it. The Outer Banks is the home of legends; Kittyhawk and the Wright Brothers who first proved man could fly, the Atlantic ocean and the Intercoastal Waterway, so many shipwrecks they are nearly on top of each other, the famous Cape Hatteras lighthouse, Uboats, Blackbeard the pirate, Albermarle historic highway, the lost colony of Roanoke and Virgina Dare the first English child born in the new world, the wreck of the ironclad The Monitor. It is also the home of fun where water sports abound, tour boats, fishing, camping, kite flying, etc.

Getting out onto the islands is a bit scary. Following my GPS, I drove out there on Highway 64. It brings you up to a 2 lane bridge that rises up a bit so you can’t see what is over the top. As soon as you get over the top, you find yourself driving on a bridge that goes on forever over water with no land in sight! Even my GPS screen was solid blue (water). You are left to hope there actually is land out there somewhere, that the bridge is fully intact all the way over, that a storm will not suddenly pop up. This is the Intercoastal Waterway. When you have a 7,000 pound trailer attached to you that is sure to drag you to the bottom in the water, it is a very sobering experience but one I would not have wanted to miss.

When you finally reach Roanoke, stop at the visitor’s center on the right. They have all the info you could possibly want on the area. Grab lots of brochures and coupons there before proceeding.

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Waited a long time for this one. I’ve always heard it was quite a great seaside community and playground. It IS! If you ever get the chance to vacation here, take it. You will not be disappointed. There is plenty to do and see for both adults and the wee ones with watersports such as parasailing and wave runner rentals, boat tours, the beach, bunches of dinner shows and other shows, Broadway on the Beach, plenty of camping, miniature golf places on every block, beachwear and souvenir stores, great places to dine, 2 state parks, etc.

Camping here can be pretty expensive especially with an accomodation tax on all camp sites and hotel rooms which is very high. I stayed at the Myrtle Beach State Park which was the cheapest at $28/night total. It is a forest on the beach. Great combination! I went without reservations but I highly recommend not doing as I do, call first or book online. At least one of the restrooms was still the old state park community shower type which I detest but others were more modern and they do have a laundromat. No wifi there but my Sprint aircard worked perfectly even among all the trees. There are some sites where a satellite TV dish will work. Don’t ask them. They don’t know which. I got it to work on the back row of sites. Watch your stuff in the park. Someone stole my yellow wheel chalks when I was moving from one site to another.

If you are only going for a weekend, then you might also consider the other area RV parks which have indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a lazy river at Pirateland, ponds, golf cart rentals, etc. I believe there is a golf cart rental service that will deliver to the state park as well. Another great choice, if you can get an open date, is the Coast to Coast park there for only $10/night if you are a member of C2C.

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