Still in Fredericksburg

Well, the predicted heatwave to follow the wet season has arrived.  While the above picture is of a a cool, fall day, we're hot...and humid.  It's Memorial Day weekend and the campground is filling.  We've continued to visit friends & family, get some walks/hikes in, and Donna goes swimming at the "Y".    Regrettably, we've been unable to connect with a few people.  Hopefully, we can do that on a future return trip.

We'll continue over-eating, visiting, walking, swimming, etc until Thursday when we plan to move to Shenandoah Nat'l Park for five nights.  After that, we're on a somewhat slow trip to Copper Harbor, MI and a weekend visit to Isle Royale Nat'l Park (Lake Superior) the latter half of June.

Until then, everyone enjoy the holiday and drive safe!  David

Fredericksburg, VA

We've had a mostly rainy first week here in Fredericksburg.  In late April the Weather Channel posted a video on its app indicating a wet May for this area.  So far, they're accurate.  May dry out next week.  Or it could be no one knows, and they're just forecasting the norms.

Donna's getting out and visiting.  I hang out at the trailer.   Between rain showers we've washed the trailer (took three days plus we washed the back of the trailer twice due to how dirty we got it traveling down here), gotten the truck detailed, took care of some truck maintenance, and managed to walk a couple of walking/bicycling trails in the area.  The pictures are from yesterday's walk along the Rappahannock River.  I think we go to a musical at Riverside Dinner Theatre tonight.  So we're not too stuck due to rain.

So we're still here.  Fortunately, we still got friends we need to see.  Stay dry!  David 

Pokagon State Park (Angola, IN)

Hope everyone had a great Mother's Day!

Pictures here are of a nice state park just north of Angola, IN and just off I-69.  Nice trails, horseback rides and a campground with electric-only hookups.  Some with 50 amp service.  Most sites were medium to small, but we did see a few pull-thru sites and one large tow-hauler.  So the bigger rigs can fit.  It's also an all-season park with cross-country ski trails, tobaggan and lodge with restaurant.  We'll go back the next time we're in the area.

We've had a wet trip down to Fredericksburg.  I figured we'd travel in rain all three days. However, we lucked out and managed to travel on Monday with no rain. Unfortunately, that wasn't true for Tuesday & Wednesday.  Every campground we pulled into was saturated with water.  The Fredericksburg KOA had it's 15th consecutive day of rain the day we arrived.

It's rained every day since we've been here, too.  Truck and trailer are the dirtiest they've been in over a year.  We plan on getting the truck detailed, but I guess we'll clean the trailer in sections in between rain showers.

Anyway, we've settled in here at Fredericksburg.  Donna's got a month pass at the local "Y", so she's back swimming, again.  Finally broke down and got a new portable satellite antenna (Pathway X2) so we can receive signals on the eastern arc satellites when the roof antenna (western arc, only) is blocked.  The carryout continued from the day we bought it to it's last day to be a problem child. It was the perfect example of chaos - doing the same thing over and over, again, with a different result each time.  I finally just threw it into the trash bin when no one was looking Wednesday night.  Pathway X2 worked straight out of the box the first time we hooked it up.  We'll continue to be satellite TV oriented until they make 300GB data plans affordable so we can live-stream what we like to watch.

So here we are at Fredericksburg.  Donna's setting up schedules to visit with everyone.  Her calendar's not full, but she's working on it!  Stay dry (unless you're swimming).  David

Shipshewana/Lagrange, IN

The pretty sunny day you see above seemed elusive this visit to the Shipshewana/Lagrange area to have our trailer serviced.  We arrived early to avoid moving in the rain.  Then we moved a day early to the service center in Lagrange, IN to avoid moving in the rain, again.  After that, we watched it rain.

We got a couple of walks in.  The bicycles were serviced - Donna got new tires.  We both got new accessories: new front lights for the bicycles - good for being seen in dark tunnels - and I got a new flashing taillight for my bike.  We did manage to get some Ben's Pretzels, one meal in at Boundary Waters Cafe (Sturgis, MI) and found a new frozen yogurt shop to indulge at.  Otherwise, we watched it rain.  As of this morning, I was convinced that if you weren't on a paved road, you were in mud no matter how much grass you were walking on.  This part of the country is saturated!

New for us is that we've probably pulled our trailer at its heaviest that we ever have.  When we decided to move a day early to the service center, I set the holding tanks up so we could dump the day of the move.  Once that was done, I filled the freshwater tank to, maybe 80 to 85 gals of freshwater (100 gals max).  Unfortunately, the evening before we were planning to move, the campground's sewer system failed & we were told not to dump or drain our holding tanks.  So the day we traveled to the service center we were carrying an almost full freshwater tank, a full black water tank (toilet) and an almost full gray water tank (shower & sinks).  We were pretty heavy for the eight or so miles to another campground to dump the two holding tanks.  Couldn't tell any difference in handling before or after we dumped the two holding tanks, but we were overloaded!

As of this afternoon, trailer service is done.  Everything we moved out of the trailer into the truck bed to make servicing the trailer easier is now back in the trailer.  We still need to review all the work that was done and pay the bill.  So we'll get a late start tomorrow and move to Angola, IN for the weekend.  After that, and if all goes well, it appears we'll be traveling three rainy days down to Virginia for a few weeks stay there.

As least that's the plan! Everyone have a great weekend. David