Today was a tear-down/travel/set-up day! We were pretty efficient with getting everything packed away and disconnected – it all went smoothly except those darn sewer hoses are really hard to disconnect from each other. Mark had bought a tool at the camp store to help give him leverage, but even with that, it was really tough to turn them to separate the pieces. Eventually it worked!
Our drive wasn’t too long – about 2.5 hours from College Park, MD to Luray, VA, located just a few miles from Shenandoah National Park. Since our plan has always been to visit as many (or all!) of the National Parks, this will be the first official RV visit to one (and it’s one we’ve never been to…even better!). En route, the rain started (and we knew it was in the forecast all afternoon, unfortunately). We stopped briefly at the Manassas National Battlefield Park to learn a bit about the two Civil War battles that happened there (aka Bull Run). Because of the rain, we only went to the visitor’s center; we didn’t walk the battlefields or tour any of the park. After a quick lunch in the RV in their parking lot, we were back on the road to Luray.
The last few miles of road were curvy mountain roads just like we’re used to from past National Park trips…but it was the first time driving roads like that in the RV. Mark did a great job, and the RV handled very well even on the hairpin curves. There was almost no traffic, so it was a good opportunity to ‘practice’ that kind of driving! And, good news, all that tape and cardboard worked – the touchscreen did not budge during the entire trip!
We arrived at the KOA in Luray around 2pm. It was a steady rain, but fortunately wasn’t too heavy. Took a little maneuvering to pull into the site and get the RV leveled, and then Mark made the connections outside (his old Home Inspector rain gear sure does come in handy in the RV to keep him fairly dry while he’s doing all this outside work!) It’ll be a quiet first night here in the rain, with a mediocre Wi-Fi signal…good thing we brought some good old-fashioned games!
We’ll be here three days/four nights, and this will be very different – each morning, we’ll have to disconnect everything and take the RV into Shenandoah; there’s no other way for us to get around. Then, back to the campground to re-connect. We’ll see how it goes…it’s definitely part of the reason we want to tow a car in the future, to avoid the setup/disconnect routine! Fortunately, there’s very little chance of rain for the next three days, so it should be dry for all this outdoor work!
(with all the rain, sadly, no pictures today!)