Making Progress

So on to Waynesville and the Creekwood Farm RV Park, a park we have stayed in quite a few times, nice park, good location, and willing to receive packages and mail.  Something we have been having an issue with as we needed a bunch of things and our mail.  I, and Jan for that matter have been getting back into cigars this year and the only way to buy them affordably is online, and that was one of our shipments being sent ahead, along with a very critical item, a new coffee maker, something that comes before all else, even my meds:-)

Looks like a ton, but sales are sales.

We had a nice site, and since the evenings were cool, we had a lot of fires.

And, of course, we accumulated a few dead soldiers after our week there:-)

As I said we could still easily get to Wild Ginger from this side of Asheville, and we did, in fact two more times, yes it is that good.  We knew we both wanted to have pho our last visit so this time we ordered two different interesting dishes, a rare Thai beef salad and Tanghon, a bean thread and egg noodle stir fry, both were oh so good!

As it turned out we met old man winter a little earlier than we expected, we had 25 degrees several nights with highs only around 40!  The entire east coast got this blast of cold air.  It was refreshing but prevented us going out several evenings, so since we were holed up anyway Jan made another awesome dish, Taiwanese Beef Noodle soup, full of rich simmered beef with bok choy and vermicelli noodles, oh so good and a welcome warmup on a cold night.

We didn't do a whole lot while we there, I shouldn't say it cause it will jinx it, but our step seems to be working at least for now, and no, we haven't installed the new motor yet.  It's just waiting to trip us up coming out the door.

Once it warmed back up some we went over to Lake Junaluska and did a nice walk around the lake about 2.5 miles.  It's on a paved path and just beautiful.

We did get over to Wild Ginger one last time and had our delicious pho, even nicer with the cool temps.  But then our week was over and we planned on moving to a brand new campground for us, Deer Springs, outside of Franklin, NC.

We were really looking forward to this.  It is a small only 8 site park west of Franklin, NC.  Each site has a concrete patio, a gazebo with a sink and refrigerator, at least one fire pit and all the free wood you want to burn and several have a Solo fire pit at your disposal as well!  Sites are large with views, the couple that own it, Jim and Trish have 50 acres.  It is an awesome park which we highly recommend.  We also were met by the hosts, Buddy and his wife who both made us feel welcome and part of a little community.  We can't recommend it more highly.  BUT, if you think you might want to partake, make your reservation soon, it is full now and stays full most of the time!

We ended up using the Solo fire pit every night, it was just perfect outside, the weather really cooperated.  Funny, we have heard all the hype about the Solo's and were looking forward to giving it a whirl.  What do we think?  It is a nice unit, mostly smokeless, easy to use, but the only fault we could find was you really don't have a good view of the fire, being it is down in the cylinder.  It is too big to carry around for us, but it was fun and cool to use.

We didn't have any real goals here, we have been all over this area of the country many, many times.  The fall leaves are waning here now, but still beautiful.  The Nantahala river above the lake is only a couple miles from here so we wanted to check that out and of course sightsee a bit.

So out for our Solo fire, happy hour, and cigars for our last evening, then all the way over to Murphy, NC for another week, 40 miles:-)  Then farther south to Blue Ridge, GA for 10 days or so.  But starting there we do have errands and things to do, we are planning several trips down to the Atlanta area for a couple dental and doctor appointments and hope to see some friends.  We have decided not to stay at the campground we used to go to in Acworth any more.  After years and years, they have made things harder and harder, and with new management that is no longer welcoming or accommodating, we made the decision to just drive down instead.

Moving Through North Carolina

Our wash job lasted less than a week!  We even left a campground a day early, for other reasons, but we also thought we'd beat some rain coming in, but no......  Oh well, we know the roof is pristine:-)  We really liked the park in Galax, VA, Cool Breeze, so peaceful and quiet and dark.  Two more pictures.

We moved down to another new campground for us that we were really looking forward to, Mountain River in Newland, NC.  It turned out to be a mixed bag.  First was the drive to get there, they had specific directions which we followed, but the last 13 miles was harrowing, and especially the last 3 miles, it was narrow, winding, up and down with all the locals zooming by, and always right in the middle of a tight curve where I had to be oh so careful not to cross the middle line too much, or drop a tire or the truck off the side of the road which usually had a foot drop or so!  So when we finally got there and negotiated the narrow entrance, and saw this beautiful campground we relaxed.  I peeled my hands off the wheel and we moved into our very nice, large site overlooking a nice pond.  We took a walk around and half of the campground is right on the Toe River and the other half where we were, backed up into the mountain overlooking the pond as I said.  They have lots of notices and rules saying how they enforce quiet hours, don't tolerate lights on all night, etc.  Stuff we really appreciate.

They had also advertised they had a stellar wifi system that even allowed streaming, okay, cool, but what we missed evidently was there was no cell service at all, my AT&T was completely dead, and although Jan's Verizon showed 5G service it didn't work, and at first their wifi was all it was promised to be, all good we thought.

So after a very pleasant evening, we went inside and as the sun went down, we were anticipating that wonderful darkness they talked about and much to our surprise, the bath house and laundry room right across from us was lit up like a Walmart parking lot!  And on top of that they had 2 intensely bright LED streetlights on also.  A bit frustrating that the park that sets the rules breaks them, okay we can live with that I guess, so getting up in the morning doing our routine of coffee and computers, there is no wifi:-(  Our phones don't work either so no news, no email, etc, wow.  I will say by about 9am, 4 hours since we got up, the wifi started back up again.

It was pretty though, we did take a few rides on the BRP, and around the countryside, but honestly it wore us out, it was too far to get anywhere, no nearby grocery store or restaurants, it just didn't ring our bell.

But it was beautiful, the leaves were nice, not as bright as we had hoped, but nice.

So as I said starting this post we looked at the weather, and as our frustration level was going up, more and more lights were on at night, hard to enforce a rule that you don't follow yourselves.  Rain was coming in the day we were supposed to move, so we pulled stakes and left a day early headed down to Marion, and the Tom Johnson/Camping World RV park.  We stayed disconnected as it was only 28 miles, the first 3 winding, winding narrow miles, followed by the slightly better 10 narrow miles, finally opening up, and unfortunately also raining on us.  We were early to get to the campground so we pull into a parking lot for lunch, go to start the generator and........it runs for 4 seconds and shuts off!!  I check this and that, and remember for the last several starts it had been a bit reluctant, I had to prime it, but this time no go.  There is a built in code reading system, so I take a look and it is throwing a code 12, go to the book to see what that is, over voltage, solution, take it to a Onan dealer.  Oh no.  This is hard to believe since it has been running fine and now all of a sudden on start it is broken?  Have to look into this later, oh yeah and our step, even with the new auto reset breaker is dead as well.  Not a good day.  So we have lunch and press on to TJ.  We get into a great site, a murky day, but nice nonetheless, have a fire, cocktails, cigar, and will worry about these problems the next day.

Jan made a wonderful stir fry for dinner, you knew there had to be food, Mongolian Beef.

So the next morning we messed with the steps again, confirmed they were clean, checked the connections, linkage, everything we could think of, but I couldn't even get the fuse in without it blowing.  So we monkeyed around some more, I thought it must be bound up because there shouldn't even be any power going to it if it isn't moving or being asked to move, so I wiggle and wiggle and it seems to loosen up, something it had never done before, but we did get them to come out.  We even ran them in and out a couple times, but after much research, I believe the linkage is worn out, and the motor isn't acting correctly, so we have a motor and linkage ordered, more to follow on this.  So with that done, one of our favorite Vietnamese restaurants is nearby just south of Asheville, Wild Ginger.  Off we went and had a wonderful lunch, pho for me, and a banh mi for Jan.  We highly recommend this place!

So the next day I began researching our generator problem, and although most everything I could find indicated a big issue with the inverter and having to go to a dealer, there were a couple references to a fuel problem, perhaps a clogged fuel filter, hmmm.  So I first replaced the air filter, and it was quite dirty, must have been running in a lot more dust than we thought, and then replaced the fuel filter, this is a good reason to always carry extra filters, checked the coolant, was going to change the oil and filter as well, but I didn't have the necessary container to collect the oil.  We'll wait until later to do that.  Got it all done and started the gen, it started right up and I let it run for a few minutes, nice and smooth, so hopefully we dodged a big bullet, time will tell.  So to celebrate Jan made an awesome dinner, Crispy Chicken with Special Fried Rice!  It has bok choy and chinese sausage in it, absolutely yummy!

Crispy chicken

Chinese sausage

Bok Choy

The happy chef

Egg going in with the sausage

Coming together

The final luscious dish!

So later today we move farther south and west to Waynesville, still within striking distance of Asheville and Wild Ginger:-)  

We have heard news our park in Florida is going to open soon, amazingly quick after all the damage they incurred.  They have been working hard cleaning things up, cutting down trees, working on damaged buildings and amenities, and we are happy to hear they are succeeding.  Our park made out so much better than many south of us which will probably not open at all this season to say nothing about all the folks that lost their homes and businesses entirely.

On The Virginia/North Carolina Border

First I want to say our hearts and prayers go out to all the folks that were impacted by hurricane Ian.  It hit just a few miles south of where our winter park is, they were very lucky overall, although our park is still closed, a lot of damage to park models and RV's, tons of trees down, and although the power and water have been restored, no one knows when it will reopen.  Even so, it is so much better than the areas absolutely wiped out farther south.

After a wonderful last evening in Maine, we headed south, first to get fuel, then to a campground in western Mass.  We had planned to fill up in Greenland, NH at a T/A, but for some unknown reason the trucks were backed up and even out on the road, thankfully we had plenty, and after making a questionable U-turn we got back on the road.  As we were making our way to Shelburne Falls, MA, we stopped at a light and noticed a station that had separate diesel pumps, and a decent price so we popped in and fueled.  Point of interest, when we started our travels this year, our first fill up was $3.31/gal, later we hit a high of $6.06, and when we filled this time it was $4.31, better but a long way to get back where it should be.

It was a pretty drive, and the longest we had done in months:-)  All of 193 miles.  We stayed at Country Aire which was adequate for our 2 nights.  We decided to do something the one day we were there that was a little bit crazy.  I had mentioned the wonderful farmers market in Woodstock, VT where we had gotten great veg, fish, meat, and awesome homegrown pork, and since we didn't have anything planned to do, and it was quite cool out, we decided, why not drive up the 94 miles?  Then we said on the way back we could veer off to Orvis, store and outlet in Manchester, VT, for a round trip of 225 miles, and it would have been that far except our GPS took us off kilter for awhile unbeknownst to us trusting folks, so we ended up doing 250 miles instead!  We need to pay more attention to the GPS.

It was a pretty day with the leaves just beginning to turn

Then we made our way down into Pennsylvania, to a campground, Twin Grove, in Pine Grove.  A nice spot where we had stayed once before several years ago.  It was a fairly murky ride which eventually turned into a steady rain, and this was a really long day, 350 miles.  We started down quite a hill into Adams, MA through several hairpin turns just to get the blood flowing.

We spent a rainy night there and launched in the morning for Natural Bridge, VA.  Also, I have to share that our entry step that I told you we, Jan, had cleaned so well and had worked for days, has now decided to quit now and then.  Always while in, so going out the door without paying attention can bite you bad.  It seems to have something to do with the interface of turning on the key which drives the step in with the door shut, and then when in, it quits.  It seems quite jammed, so I have tried to wiggle it, then replace the fuse it blows and most of the time it will then operate both in and out until we repeat the whole process again.  Aggravating.  I am going to try an auto resetting fuse to see if that will help until I can figure out what's wrong, motor or controller?  

We had our very last lobster roll on the road.  Enjoyed it so much while wishing it wasn't our last for such a long time.

Homemade, the real deal:-)

We stayed at the Natural Bridge KOA, a park we had never been to before.  It was a nice place, BUT, it is built on a serious hill, and the roads around the campground getting to the sites go up and down big time, with very sharp turns, we made it but don't think we'd go back, there were a few moments where the trepidation almost overwhelmed us.  The site itself was nice.

We wanted to do some more of the Blue Ridge Parkway that we missed last year, so off we went, only to find a section closed off, with no warning, so we detoured around, and found yet another section closed off.  Evidently they had had some severe weather that had closed the road, we did see lots of trees down along the way, was this the remnants of Ian, I don't know.  Nonetheless, we still had a nice ride although this section wasn't as impressive as the more northern or southern sections we had been on.

Next we moved farther south to Galax, VA, and Cool Breeze campground almost right on the VA/NC border.  And once again our GPS' in the coach waylaid us.  We run two, yeah I know, anal, but it usually works for us.  We had checked the route, but once we left the interstate, without us noticing it tried to take us on the Blue Ridge Parkway!  We couldn't find a place to make a U-turn this time so ended up going miles out of our way to get back.  Cool Breeze is a very nice no frills park, with mostly owned sites, huge sites actually, with no amenities, but full hookups.  It has nice views, very quiet and dark with friendly folks.  Very nice, something we both very much enjoy, and it turns out you can wash!  I looked it up and we haven't been able to wash since July!  To say we were dirty is an understatement.  So we woke up on our 49th anniversary and celebrated by washing the motorhome, including the filthy roof, and the truck:-)  Happy Anniversary!

We did celebrate later with shrimp cocktail, Blanton's for me, an excellent wine that Jason and Joanne had given us, a great cigar, a nice fire, and then dinner, a wonderful filet mignon with a Hasselback potato!  Yummy, and the weather was perfect!