The trip…..

Jon pushing the ice off the slides so we can pull away.   Note he is standing on the TOP of the ladder which was sitting on a thick layer of ice

The day before we left Virginia the side roads and pretty much everything were still covered with a thick layer of ice.  We pulled out of Dam Neck after removing ice from everything.  The dog lead was buried under two inches of  packed snow and ice…..I dug it out for about 20 minutes by jamming a broken broomstick into the ground over and over and over again.  That was fun.  A random act that is burned in my memory.

We parked the RV in Aunt Judy's driveway that night so that we could pick up Jon's guns (which we ended up leaving behind) and say our good-byes.  It was BITTER cold.  The next day, Jon took the RV back to the trailer place to retry getting all the lights and whistles working on the tow dolly.  This could have been completed earlier in the week had we not had the weather that we did.  So that took us until about 5pm.  When we finally hit the road, it was still day light.  We took off out of Suffolk and headed south. It was awesome to watch the snow go away.

Our first stop was "South Of The Boarder"!  The giant "Pedro" on I-95 just south of the North Carolina boarder.  It was late when we got in and the sign in the office of the campground office there said "OPEN" which they were intact not.  (This sort of negligence becomes a problem when someone driving an RV and towing a car on a dolly that can not go in reverse, pulls up too close to something and has to unhook everything to get out.  Luckily this only happened once 2 hours into the trip at a truck stop but Jon decided to reverse anyway….. the sound the dolly made was horrifying and it only moved about 3 inches.)  So Jon pulled around and got me as close as I could to the hotel on the property where I was to get the access key to the campground and check in.  It was cold but I was wearing my new running shoes and got to try them out:-) As I approached the hotel lobby it looked very inviting.  Retro style, sheik furniture, fire in the fire place…...I secretly hoped that we wouldn't be able to get into the campground and would be forced into a hotel room for the night.  (Which would never happen) Then I opened the tinted glass door.  The smell hit me.  The furniture was definitely vintage retro.  Certainly the original as was the carpet which as you can imagine smelled pretty bad.  I checked in, it was about 10pm and the dude at the counter insisted on seeing my military I.D. as I requested a military discount on our space….. I had left my Purse in the RV that was park 1/4 away because Jon couldn't get too close for fear of having to unhook the dolly if there wasn't enough space….. Off I ran again in my new shoes.

We got in the campground, spent the night, and got up the next morning heading to Atlanta or bust!  Our first night down went well.