The 110-mile trip to Front Royal was uneventful. Front Royal is located at the Northern entrance (near Dickey Ridge) to Shenandoah National Park, which is an amazing 100 miles long (but very narrow). Our RV park is well-equipped and the people are nice, but, since the park is old, the spaces are small and very difficult to get into. They're also quite uneven and sloping. It took us several attempts to get our trailer situated properly. We finally gave up trying to get it level. And there are so many trees we get no satellite TV reception. Bummer!
The day we arrived, we went to the park to get a small taste. What a beautiful place, with spectacular views.
It's nice to be near mountains again. Where we've been lately has been very flat. On Saturday we did a 100-mile loop including Mount Jackson, the home of Route 11 Potato Chips, where we took an interesting tour of the plant (and bought a shirt), and Luray, another of the innumerable historic towns in the South, which was actually quite nicely preserved. On the way to Mount Jackson, we had to go through one of those neat old covered bridges.
Late Saturday afternoon, Bill and I (and a third gentleman, a regular at the RV park) acted as judges of a contest to choose the person to sing the national anthem at the July 4 fireworks display at the RV park. The contest was directed at youngsters. There were five signed up for the tryouts. The first, Christina, was a 10-year old who was actually very good. The next three were successively less qualified, and the fifth decided not to sing at all. We unanimously picked Christina. The person running the contest made certain that we had no prior experience with Christina or her family because she was concerned that people might think the "fix" was in. (Her older sister won the previous three years.) The fireworks display Sunday night was terrific, and Christina did a good job with the anthem.
Sunday was an incredibly hot day, and there were several power failures in our area of the RV park. We had to turn off one of our air conditioners in an attempt to reduce the power demand. It didn't help. We still had to call maintenance time after time.
On Monday, we went back to Shenandoah NP to meet to meet with Dana Quillen, an old friend from Los Angeles who is now the marketing director for a resort in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia.
It was great seeing her. When we returned to the RV park, there was a note on our door offering to let us move to another site---with a much better power setup than the one where we were then located. The offered site was one we had requested the day we arrived, but which we were told was available only to "members" of only that park. We immedately agreed to move. The new site was an easy pull-through, quite level and flat, with access for our satellite dish. We had TV again. Yea!!!
On Tuesday, we all went to Winchester to visit Camping World, to buy little goodies for our RV. On Wednesday, Becky and I went back to Camping World to buy a new electric cooler (to supplement our loaded refrigerator). It's the fourth electric cooler we have bought in the last 11 months (the first three failed after varying lengths of time) and the first one from a new manufacturer. We'll see how long this one lasts.
No comments:
Post a Comment