Our five-week stopover in Brunswick, GA was over in a flash. We had a wonderfully busy time visiting with friends and family, taking the dog to the vet, getting our teeth cleaned, and doing some much-needed RV updating. Despite a lot of rain and some colder-than-expected weather, I was able to play in a tennis tournament at the Jekyll Island Tennis Club during our last weekend. It was so great to see a bunch of my favorite tennis people and a perfect send-off as we set out on the road. Our ‘plan’ was to spend a few weeks traveling like real, full-time RV’ers for a few weeks as we made our way to our next camp hosting position. We had reservations at parks in Williamsburg and would then head to the DC area, then spring skiing in Mansanutten (Shenandoah) followed by a little time in Tennessee. Little did we know that our plans were going to become tentative at best.
Breakdown 1 - We almost made it to Williamsburg, in fact, I had made it to our campground in my car when Jeff got a flat tire on the RV. I was in the process of discovering that our site was actually not what we expected and our name was not on the reservation list when Jeff called to let me know that he would be an hour later. Thankfully, I am still driving separately in my car and I was able to work out our campground situation while Jeff changed the flat tire. After unsuccessfully calling the camp host number and spending 20 minutes talking to a ranger who did not have much information, I decided to try and find another campground. I called the first one that popped up in my Google search and the young lady who answered my stressed-out call was so helpful. She gave us the last site available that would fit our rig and even gave me a discount to make it just a little more than the county park I had originally booked.
Stop 1 - Anvil Campground ended up being in the middle of Williamsburg, just 5 minutes from the Colonial area. It is tiny and our neighbor’s slides almost touched our awning, but our site was completely level and we were close to everything that we planned on doing while in town. Jeff did not arrive until after 8 o’clock and we quickly set up in the dark. One of our rear stabilizers was not working but we decided to worry about it the next day and go get a late dinner. Thanks to our new location we found a restaurant around the corner that stayed open until midnight. Crisis averted and all is well.
The next morning we slept in and then got busy getting the camper stabilized. This is when we discovered that the piece of tire tread that blew off of the RV tire actually ripped the housing off of our stabilizer motor and pulled all of the wires out. This explained why it was not working. Jeff was able to redneck-engineer everything back together and we held our breath while we started the leveling process again. Miraculously, it worked, and after some cleaning and metal bending you can hardly see where the tread flew across the fender well. We looked around for something to cover the stabilizer motor and the exposed wires and this koozie was a perfect fit!
After scheduling an appointment to get new tires on our way out of town, we got back to vacationing and headed to Colonial Williamsburg. Jeff and I took the kids there when Ivy was 6 months old and we were so excited to experience it with the girls now that they are big and enjoy learning so much. Boy were we disappointed when we arrived and discovered that, thanks to COVID, 90% of the shops, restaurants and demonstration areas are closed. It was like a Colonial ghost town. Even the tour of the Governor’s mansion was uninformative and brief. We enjoyed the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg though and could have spent a whole day there.
Colonial Williamsburg/Freedom Park
The next day we checked out Jamestown and discovered a really cool point on the Colonial Parkway. We explored it for #free as we drove along the isthmus and read all of the information signs about the area. Lucy Pearl was tasked with being our tour guide and she did a wonderful job finding interesting and #free things to do during the rest of our visit. We took a ferry from Jamestown across the James River and saw the settlement from the water. On our last day, we took a picnic to Freedom Park where we played some games and explored a small botanical garden. All-in-all we had a lovely time in Williamsburg. Some friends from Jacksonville were there the same week with their family and we were able to have dinner together. There are a lot of wonderful restaurants and we enjoyed eating out quite a bit. Ivy stated at one point, “One of my favorite things to do is eat out.” I have to agree!
Jamestown/Colonial Parkway
Yorktown
We left Williamsburg on a Saturday, headed for Lorton, VA. My sister Nancy lives in Reston, VA and we planned to visit her family and tour all of the outdoor memorials in DC. Nancy even planned a tennis night with her team with dinner and everything. We got up really early so Jeff could head to the tire shop and get 4 new tires on the RV and the girls and I took the dog and headed into Yorktown for a quick look-see. We saw the battlefields and trenches, a monument to the fallen, and drove through the quaint waterfront town. I was anxious to get to Lorton so I headed north before Jeff was finished with the tires. About an hour north of Richmond I got a call from Jeff. The truck had stopped moving and he was sitting on the side of the road with a state trooper. It took me a few minutes to calm down and realize that I needed to turn around and head back to find him. Jeff was busy trying to call AAA, who canceled and said they did not have a big enough tow truck. The state trooper eventually called someone for us out of concern for highway safety.
Breakdown 2
As I drove south to find Jeff, I could not calm down and think straight. This could not be happening again. We are supposed to be on vacation and this is turning into a nightmare! I called my favorite Aunt Lora (Jeff’s aunt really, but she is mine now) and asked her to pray. Almost immediately I started thinking of all the things I needed to do in order to get my RV family settled for the night. It was already past two on a Saturday afternoon and our truck problem sounded significant, so we needed to find a place to park our RV. First I called my sister and told her we weren’t going to make it in time for the tennis party (I am still upset about that.) Next, I started calling RV dealers that I was seeing along the highway to ask if they had overnight parking with electricity. We have a residential refrigerator and can only go so long without shore power. None of them did, but a nice lady in the service department at General RV texted me the name and number of a campground that was nearby.
Stop 2 - Americamps RV Resort is located in Ashland, VA (exit 89,) which happened to be two exits away from where Jeff broke down. I called and explained our situation and Emily calmly assured me that they had room for us for Saturday and Sunday. Not only that, she promised that her husband would move our camper to our site with his truck after the tow truck dropped it off. The tow truck arrived and within an hour we were on our site and had three men helping us get set up. The manager and his wife rolled by in their golf cart shortly after we were settled and brought us snacks and offered us dinner if we needed it. They charged us for one night and said that we could stay as long as we needed. What?!!
We spent Sunday recuperating from our travel trauma. On Monday we called around and eventually found a shop that could look at the truck on Tuesday. We called AAA and this time they showed up and took Big Betty over to Blaine’s Auto Service. On Tuesday we found out that we had a broken transfer case, a critical part of the transmission in a 4x4. The closest replacement was in Texas and they hoped it would arrive by Friday so that they could fix it Monday. This meant another week in Ashland, VA, just outside of Richmond. This also meant a lot of canceled, rescheduled, and new camping reservations. Americamps said we could stay as long as we needed and I was able to make a new plan that allowed us to still see the Shenandoah area, but DC was out.
Ashland ended up being the perfect town in which to break down. The girls and I were able to cross another state capitol off of our list since we were just twenty minutes from Richmond. We also visited the Richmond Metro Zoo and the Virginia Fine Arts Museum. My sister and her family were also able to visit us in Richmond and took us out for a lovely dinner. It was great for the 5 cousins to be together again after quite a long time apart. My sister and I had 5 kids over the course of 5 years, like stair steps, and it was cool to see the teenagers (18, 17, 16, 15, 14) come together and get along like they did when they were little.
Another cool part of our unexpected stopover was a great little brewery that was stumbling distance from our campground. The Center of the Universe Brewing Company has an excellent beer list and we will definitely make it a pitstop the next time we are close. These are the kinds of things that we love discovering when we travel and can only be discovered when we slow down. Having our plans change the way that they did was extremely frustrating and expensive, but God provided every single penny that we needed to get our repairs and we had a wonderful time exploring a new area.
Big Betty was fixed earlier than expected and after 10 days we were ready to get back on the road. We left on a rainy Wednesday morning and crossed over the mountains into the Shenandoah Valley and the most beautiful blue skies. Stop 3 - Our next campground is a private RV park called Shenandoah Acres Family Campground. As it was still March, we had an entire loop to ourselves except for two days on the weekend. Everywhere we looked there were cows on the rolling green hills with mountains in the background. I kept exclaiming as we drove along and the girls started making fun of me. I don’t care, it was truly breathtaking everywhere I looked. We stopped at one farmstead and bought fresh cheese, butter, and honey from their honor store. I kept waiting for someone to come out of the back door and make sure that we paid but no one ever did!
Shenandoah Acres/Farmstead Butter
Shenandoah National Park
Our campground was a perfect middle point for exploring the area. March weather turned out to be too warm for spring skiing, so instead, the girls and I drove about 90 minutes north to the Shenandoah National Park and did a four-mile hike. It was beautiful and strenuous and a very good day. Jeff kept talking about taking us to Monticello, he has always been fascinated by Thomas Jefferson, so we headed 45 minutes south to Charlottesville. It is a beautiful college town, which boasts the first public university (UVA.) We drove through on our way to Monticello and Jeff took the girls over to admire the Rotunda that was designed by Jefferson on the UVA campus.
Monticello
I was not so excited to visit Monticello after our disappointing visit to Williamsburg, but I am so glad that Jeff insisted. They have done a beautiful job creating a way to tour the house and grounds while maintaining social distance guidelines. The virtual tour that is accessed by QR code was also very informative and I learned so much more than I think I would have from a tour guide. There were also several guides available throughout the property to answer more in-depth questions. But the most impressive part to me was the inclusion and celebration of the histories of more than 600 “enslaved peoples” who lived at Monticello.
I cannot adequately describe how strange it was to read about the impressive accomplishments of this man who was instrumental in the founding of our free nation, while reading about the people that he enslaved for his own advancement. I read the words of freedom on the original copy of the constitution framed on his library wall, then read how he only freed 9 of his 600+ slaves. I traced the family lines of his slaves and in-laws and discovered that Sally Hemings was his wife’s half-sister, born to a slave and her father. I also learned that Sally made a choice at one point in her young life. She had traveled to Paris as a maid to Jefferson’s daughter when he was an ambassador to France. Sally was just 16 and, when faced with staying a free woman in France or returning to Virginia as a slave, Sally chose to return. She used what must have been her considerable influence with Jefferson to negotiate an agreement that, if she returned to slavery, her future children would be freed at 18 and she would have special rights and privileges.
I know that this information has been discussed and written about for years, but I was ignorant to it; even our homeschool history curriculums were silent on this part of our American history. I stood there reading Sally’s story, reading the words written about her by a few of her children, wishing I could fully understand what made her choose to return. Did she love him? Did she feel like she even had a choice? Were there opportunities in France for her to thrive? His authority and power over her would have negated any claim that this was a consensual relationship. The age difference alone, in this day and age, would land him in prison. I do not speculate about these things for the purpose of rationalizing the behavior of an accomplished man, but rather to understand the heart of an enslaved woman. I will never know the answers, but it was a beautiful day in a beautiful place where I felt my mind and heart open to understanding another side of our American history. Before we left we walked over to the African American graveyard. Careful exploration has revealed a few dozen graves with very few grave markers. I walked into the site and was overwhelmed by the emotion that flooded through me. I also felt peace. This was hallowed ground and, despite the lack of headstones and historical records, the people who lived and died on that land were loved, and every single one of them is known to their Creator. I highly recommend a stop at Monticello, but be prepared to face some painful history and learn a lot about yourself in the process. I know I did.
Natural Bridge State Park
After 5 eventful days in Shenandoah, we set off for southwest Virginia. On our way, we decided to stop at Natural Bridge State Park to explore and have a picnic. I first became aware of Natural Bridge when we were in Richmond. The Virginia Fine Arts Museum has an entire exhibit for Natural Bridge. Interestingly, it was once owned by Thomas Jefferson who bought it from King George III for 20 shillings. One wall of the VMFA exhibit is designed to look like a wall at Monticello. The week after seeing that exhibit we all stood in front of that wall at Monticello and a week after that we saw Natural Bridge in person. It was a fantastic build-up and it did not disappoint. It is a short hike from the visitor center to the bridge and words cannot describe how impressive it was when I rounded the corner and saw it for the first time. Stunning! It is higher than Niagara Falls, has been visited by tourists since the 1800s, and was referenced by Herman Melville in Moby Dick.
Stop 4 - No campground at Natural Bridge so we headed to Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield, VA to camp in our first state park campground (not as a camp host) in the 5th wheel. We prefer state parks for camping, always have, but we knew when we bought this rig that it would probably not fit at most state parks. Big Betty and The Prancing Pony (our RV’s new name) are an impressive duo measuring in at over 60 feet long, 42 and 22 feet respectively. State park campsites rarely fit RV’s over 40 feet and full hook-ups with sewer are unheard of, so we have to keep those visits short and conserve our water usage. Natural Tunnel was the perfect driving distance as we headed west and we were thrilled to discover the most beautiful campground, gorgeous views, and a huge pull-through site. We were able to park both vehicles and the rig with ease and were walking distance to the hiking trailhead and the bathhouse.
Natural Tunnel
The Natural Tunnel that the state park is named for is in a large ravine at the bottom of the mountain where the campground sits. Jeff and I took Zeke with us and hiked down to see the beautiful river that chiseled out the tunnel that is still housing an active railway. It is a moderately difficult hike but the paths and stairs are very well maintained and we were able to walk practically into the tunnel once we arrived at the bottom. There is also a trail that leads along the river and while we were exploring the Carter Cabin (circa 1830,) a train came through the tunnel. I was so excited but Jeff looked like a little boy on Christmas. We both started waving and hollering and the engineer opened the window to wave back and blow the train horn. It was awesome and our lazy teenagers missed the whole thing!!!
Virginia Creeper
Next on our agenda was a ride on the Virginia Creeper. Jeff had been telling me about this ‘Rail to Trail’ area in VA for years and I planned our route to be close. Jeff was insistent that the girls and I ride our bikes on the trail so we looked for the best place to access it. Our research revealed that it is a 34-mile multi-use trail that allows for bikers, hikers, and horseback riders. It begins at the most northern point in White Top, VA, midpoint is in Damascus, VA and it ends in Abingdon, VA. Jeff loaded up our bikes and drove to Abingdon but the Visitor Center was closed. We asked some locals out walking and they said that the best section was the uppermost, as it is mostly downhill and very scenic. Jeff headed north to White Top and after we had been on a small two-lane road for over 45 minutes we turned onto a dirt road, then we started hearing banjos. Finally, we made it to a parking lot with a family unloading their bikes and we were mostly sure that this was the spot. The girls and I jumped on our bikes and headed south on the trail. It did not take long for me to realize that this was going to be the coolest bike ride I had ever been on. We told Jeff we would call him when we got tired but 17 miles and two hours later we met him in Damascus. The entire upper section is completely downhill. We barely had to pedal except to get going again after stopping to take in a waterfall or a family of deer on a hillside. Ivy would speed ahead and LP and I would catch up to discover her down the bank of the adjacent creek climbing on a huge boulder. Every curve in the trail revealed another glorious view, the weather was perfect with cool breezes keeping us from getting too hot in the sunshine, and we would have kept going if we had started earlier.
Our stay at Natural Bridge was a perfect ending to our unplanned and wonderful vacation across Virginia. After three nights we packed up in 32 degree “winter mix” and headed to our next camp host position at Cloudland Canyon State Park in Rising Fawn, GA. Our travel troubles were left behind us in Richmond and we made it safely to blue skies and warmer temperatures. Stop 5 - Our campsite here at Cloudland is absolutely beautiful, with pull-through access, room for both vehicles and a view of the woods. We have a family of chipmunks entertaining us every day and birds building a nest in the camper hitch. Life is good. God is good. All the time.
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