Natural Chimney Regional Park - Harrisonburg, VA

We have been here before.  There are no little driveways to indicate where to park.  If you can reach you utilities, you are in your spot.  After our lengthy hike in the mountains, we are ready to just sit and relax.  Do some e-mails, read some internet posts...participate in our interconnected world.  But no, not even a snippet of internet.  All we have for entertainment is each other...that only goes so far!  At least we have television, and tonight is the final Biden-Trump debate.  So at the logistics meeting...AKA dinner, we discuss the options.  We decide to watch the news, enjoy a fire till 9:00, watch the debate, go to bed, get up early and drive 38 miles to the closest interstate rest area for showers, breakfast, and of course, Internet.  But there is a flaw in our plans.  This could be our last outing, and we would be dumping our waste tanks BEFORE our showers.  New plan...shower tonight.  Everything is set.  After dinner, we watch the news, Deb takes a shower and I start the fire with the left over wood from last night.  The fire is lovely, until it isn’t.  I tried to restart the fire by blowing on it, without much success.  Finally, I took Deb’s hair dryer out to blow on the fire.  Wow, that created a roaring fire...sort of like a blast furnace, until I turned off the hair dryer, then the flames just went out.  Somewhere in the middle of all this Deb quietly snuck inside.

We watched the debate, went to bed, up at 5:30.  Off to the scenic rest area for a beautiful sunrise over the foggy valley, with coffee, breakfast, and internet.  And so ends our 2020 RV season!

Loft Mountain - Shenandoah National Park

 Note to self: a no generator area is quiet only if you are not the first site in the no generator area right next to the generator area.  

This was leaf peeping at it’s finest.  The Shenandoah Parkway was just radiant with colors.  Our site was a tad funky.  A pull through site with the door toward the road.  We put our chairs around back, got some wood had a lovely fire (I bought two bundles of wood, but Deb wanted to save one for the next night).  

We are seasoned campers and usually discuss logistics at dinner.  Deb has picked a hike that has a vertical drop of 1,200 ft, and the hike starts a mile away from the campground with another 500 drop to get to the trailhead.  Checkout is 12:00. So the plan is to drive to the trailhead and start there...good choice.  After dropping the 1,200 ft, visiting two waterfalls on the way, we have a choice...return the way we came or continue to follow the stream as it flows down through the valley.  Returning the way we came is a 3.5 mile hike.  Continuing on is an 8 mile hike.  We chose to defer the climb and opted for the 8 miles.  Deb marvels at my stamina.  She doesn’t know that she has to stop to catch her breath about two steps sooner than I do.

There is something quite exhilarating about returning to your vehicle with the feeling that you might not have been able to make it even another fifty feet.

Kiptopeke State Park - Cape Charles, VA

 This is our final stop.  It’s a strange park with a reef made up of 300 feet of partially submerged old WWII concrete liberty ships.  The park used to be the terminus of the ferry going to Norfolk before the bridge was completed.  There are remnants of the start of a housing development. The  campground is just a couple of the old streets.  

We hiked some of the trails which were lovely.  We even found a wildflower garden that needed to have a few seeds removed and a shore that needed a few shells removed.  I found several boardwalks that didn’t really need to be boardwalks, but we walked them anyway.

Since the campground is nothing exciting and our home is only a few miles away (as the crow flies) e have decided to spend the night there.

First Landing - Virginia Beach

This is our final outing of our VA State Park challenge.  We have visited all that we really wanted to visit, and did lots of hiking in each park.  Of course, First Landing is an old favorite, we have hiked the trails before, but it’s always nice.  And the beach is just an added joy.  All our favorite sites were already reserved so we got to try a new site.  By driving in instead of backing in, we got to surreptitiously monitor our strange neighbor...a pastime that has been lost in these COVID times.  

Our water faucet did not work properly which meant we had to use our own water pump.  Deb was concerned that the noise might upset our neighbors, but I tried to point out that the Blackhawk night-ops from the Navy base next door was probably more disrupting.

From here it’s off to a Kiptopeke on the eastern shore.  A total of 34 miles of which 27 is the bridge.

Sea oats 

Staunton River State Park - Scottsburg, VA

The only other time we were here was in late fall, around Halloween.  Some campers near us, we strolling the campground for trick or treat, but they were the ones handing out the candy.  Somehow, we snagged a pull-through site.  Not too level, but yech, close enough.  Lots and lots of hiking trails.  We shared one with about ten equestrians, who kept say “wow...you’re walking!” as they passed. After three or so miles, we headed back to our own stable.  With a little chill in the air, I got 14 sticks of wood ($.50/stick) for our campfire.  By midnight, the rain came and continued through the morning, so we left quietly and headed home.

Occoneechee State Park - Clarksville, VA

 So the big question of the day was...have we been here before.  Doing a search on our blog reveals that indeed, we have been here.  The blog entry is humorous, but the entire entry is about another park.  As we pull into the campground, several retired synapses kick in and I know that we have been here before and had wanted to make sure that if we ever came back, we wanted to be on the water (fortunately, we are).  We are in a lovely site (#30) and #29 is also lovely.  So we should have that information for posterity.  

As usual this year, which is unusual that anything would be usual, the remnants of Hurricane xxx are heading our way, so it will be rainy soon. Knowing this we are adjusting our hiking schedule to accommodate the upcoming rain.  We are doing some short hikes and then moving on to Staunton River to do some hikes.

Claytor Lake State Park - Dublin, VA

 With the pandemic in full swing, many people have turned to RVing as a way to get out of the house.  Many don’t have the luxury of going out during the week, the way we have been doing.  Because, the parks we are visiting are in the far western part of the state, we extended our normal two or three days out, to four for this trip.  I was able to snag a spot at Claytor Lake (there was one left) on a Saturday night.  There are some nice back-in spots here, but our spot was in the area that Deb referred to as a COVID cesspool.  Here, “social distancing” is how far people come from to see family.  The only face mask we saw was, literally, a man with a small gift bag over his mouth.  

It has been getting colder, which was Deb’s excuse for not going outside.  I did get out for about five minutes, but she quickly returned to the interior comfort of the RV.  I could tell she was thinking about spraying the door with Lysol.  The next morning, while the COVIDers slept, we snuck out for a quick little trip to see the lake before departing for home.