Virgina

We received some great news today - our thousand trails park on the Chesapeake Bay is reopening later today. They received minimal damage from the storm so we finally get to go to our Virginia destination -woohoo!

Kelcey has already left for Los Angeles - she is attending & presenting at a psychology convention there. We will catch up with Scott, my brother Andy, and Andy's brother Mike over the weekend.

Drove over tho the park - this park is really nice. It is big - we took Henry for a walk and the outer loop is 2 miles! We are camped on a river that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, but the park also has two lakes for fishing and boating. As we walked the riverbank we saw a group of university rowing teams practicing (racing) - they are fun to watch and man can they go!

Not too many people here - but the few that are here are doing clean-up around their sites. The storm did minimal damage - just a few tree's down and some minor flooding. The water crested the river but has since receded. There are lots of annual sites here. Our membership in these parks also include the ability to lease annual sites at a particular park for a particular price. We have found lots of parks we would like to stay at for a year - but keep going back to the idea of leasing an annual site in Santa Barbara.

Andy flies out in the morning for a meeting so we get everything set-up before he leaves. We take a run into town to the post office - Andria has mailed us our ballots for the election and we need to get them filled out and sent back so our vote counts. Thankfully Oregon is mail-in only - we may have forgotten to get absentee forms before we left as the summer was so hectic with the wedding and all! Thanks Didda :)

Hurricane Update

We are thankful that we were not hit by the storm.

On Monday we woke up to a cold rain - a telltale sign that the weather was changing. While walking Henry we met another couple from Oregon (Burns) who were also waiting out the storm. They too are on a year travel adventure.

There is snow to the south and high wind conditions to the east - so we are staying put for the time being. We watched CNN and The Weather Channel to keep up on the ever changing Hurricane Sandy. The worst looks like it will hit later this evening.

Talked to Kelcey on the phone and Richmond proper wasn't getting much of the hurricane weather. She said they had rain and wind - but nothing excessive. So happy she & Scott have missed the brunt of this one. Sending our prayers to everyone in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and all other impacted areas.

Tuesday:
It was lightly snowing this morning, the temperature topped out at only 39 today. It's another day of nasty weather. Not complaining - it certainly could be worse. Andy is on conference call after conference call - but I'm catching moments of the news between phone calls. Feel so bad for all the people that were in the path of the storm. The snow here melted pretty quickly, but it is bone chilling cold.

The park we were supposed to go to is still closed, so we will need to amend our plans. Talked to my brother Andy who lives in Spotsylvania, VA - we are going to meet up with him on Saturday - yay!  Really looking forward to seeing he & Tina and the girls. It's the first good thing to happen from this storm!

Running from the Storm

We pack up and leave in the dark – as do many of our fellow travelers. Everyone is anxious to get going before the weather changes. We are trying to get as close to Kelcey & Scott in Richmond as we can – but are going to stay out of the high wind area. As I’ve stated before – wind is the mortal enemy of RV travel! We travel south on Hwy 81 from Hershey toward Virginia.

We quickly motor through four states today - Pennsylvania, Maryland (all 10 miles of it north to south) West Virginia and then Virginia. Roanoke looks to be out of the high wind area and as close to Richmond as we dare, so that is our destination today. Traffic is heavy - much more than we anticipated. The heavy northbound traffic consists of hundreds of utility trucks, tree trimming trucks and tractor trailers carrying industrial generators. We presume that they are traveling to staging areas so that they can be prepared to jump in and help with whatever emergencies the storm brings. Everyone seems to be taking this storm seriously - and the traffic reflects it.

Andy loves reminding me of why we bought this coach. We owned an oceanfront house in Galveston, Texas until Hurricane Ike destroyed it in 2008. We were deciding whether to rebuild our vacation house or not when Andy came up with the idea of getting the RV ( I was reluctant – I wanted my house back). His reasoning was that if we ever encountered another hurricane – we could simply drive away from it. As I look over at him behind the wheel  – he has a constant smile on his lips - and he keeps emphasizing that this exact scenario is why the RV was such a good decision. He loves it when his plans all come together! 

We call ahead to find a place to wait out the storm - they are filling up with other travelers trying to get out of Hurricane Sandy's path. The brunt of the storm will hit tomorrow and Tuesday. We finally find one that has a spot available - not ideal - but any port in a storm! We land outside of Lexington, VA. This park has fuel, food and shelter - everything we may need for the next few days. We unpack, take Henry for a walk between raindrops and hunker down for the storm.

Amish Country & Chocolate World

I’m a procrastinator by nature and I am way behind writing this blog – so I’m going to start again writing about today's activities and I will backtrack as soon as I can. I have learned that if I don’t keep this blog updated that I fall too far behind and then can’t remember what we did!

We left Danbury, Connecticut and made an unscheduled stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania today. While traveling I called ahead to our Thousand Trails Park on the Virginia shore and found out they were evacuating due to Hurricane Sandy. We were told not to arrive. Plan B – make a plan B! 

I had always wanted to see Amish Country - so we drove to the Lancaster area. I just love the idea of a simpler, less complicated lifestyle. As we travel through Lancaster (the oldest inland city in the US) we admire it’s architecture and beauty. It’s a very diverse city – as well as brimming with activity. Andy gets sleepy from today's drive – so we pull over into a park and he takes a quick 10 minute nap. I google the area and come up with an itinerary for our visit. Andy awakes and off we go. I had wanted to visit Central Market – built in 1889, it's the oldest, continuously-run farmers market in the US - but as we arrive they are packing up their wares, we had just missed it. So we head out to discover Amish country. We pass lots of horse & buggies on the side of the road. I’ve had 3 horses in my life – I know how skittish and unpredictable they can be. I’m amazed that the horses pulling these buggies aren’t freaking out in all this traffic – yikes!

We head from town to town – stopping in the quilt and craft shops along the way. This is a very commercial area – and it is a MAJOR tourist attraction! Tour buses are everywhere – it takes a little of the magic away from this so called simple life. We stop in the town of Intercourse, PA and Andy has to stop and get his picture taken in front of the city sign – he loves it! He makes me check-in on facebook from here – funny, funny Andy!

We get tired of fighting the crowds so we head out on a rural road to (here it comes) Blue Ball, PA. Sorry folks.

Now this is the Amish country that I've wanted to see – forget about the towns – the scenery from the rural road is stunning. The enormous dairy barns and quilt-like farm plots are so beautiful. We pass a couple of young boys driving a team of draft horses in a field. We see a farmer moving his herd of cows to the milking barn. Young girls in their bonnets are riding bikes on the side of the road. Charming. The landscape is so appealing – it is like a painting. Can’t say enough about how pretty it is here – and to see all the Amish out working the land by hand – priceless.

We now head to Hershey, PA to take a tour of  Chocolate World. Can't go to Hershey and not see the factory. I'm a fan of the special dark chocolate. Never expected what we walked in to – its like Disneyland for chocolate lovers! There are a couple of different tours – lots of chocolate buying opportunities– and a Disney like adventure park (which we didn’t go to). There is an enormous sports stadium on the property – and a minor league soccer team was having a game. The entire town seems to be funded by the Hershey family – and they have been very, very generous to this area. We drove through a beautiful campus that we thought was the local university but we found out it was a private K-12 boarding school for low income children paid for by the Hershey Foundation. Very generous Hershey is. And delicious!

It was a great day in Lancaster and Hershey. When we got back to our park we found they were having 'haunted woods by hay wagon' tour – but we opted out. I’m not a fan of haunted anything. Lots of people were milling about and it was a beautiful night – didn’t even need a jacket. Several campers had decked out their rigs for Halloween and lots of kids were running around in costumes. There had been a Halloween party for the kids earlier in the day. Sorry to have missed it - I do love Halloween. Walked superdog around the park and called it a night. We'll worry about the storm tomorrow.