Starting Our 2017 Road Trip...A Little Early...

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Headed to St. Cloud, Fl to have an early Christmas with the boys and their families.  5 of our 7 grandbabies are over there, Trinity- 15, Tyler-9, Cayden-5, Lyla-3, Lucas-1 mo.

Parking at Brent & Ashley's.   They have 5 acres & 50 amp service.

Going to head out on December 22nd.  Making our way to Quartzsite, AZ before January 1.

While we were in Bradenton, Fl  (October 1-December 17) we had a new roof put on at Elite RV in Palmetto.   It's called RV Armor.  It comes with a lifetime warranty.

We also had solar installed.  3-160 w panels, 6-6v deep cell batteries, 3000 w inverter as well as a charge controller.  Hoping to spend 9-10 months boondocking  (dry camping).
We tried it out the other day and had several interior lights, 2 32" TV's & 3 Fantastic fans on. With all that on we were only running a 6% load.  We turned the air conditioner on with no problem but figure it would drain our batteries in a couple hours.  Figure we could go 5-7 days with no sun charging our batteries.  We also have a 5500 w generator if we need it.  We're so excited to be able to live "off the grid"!

Had a nice surprise when we got to Brent’s!   Josh Halligan, one of Brent’s best friends growing up, was parked out in the street.  He drives for Swift & just happened to be in the area dropping off a load.  Was really nice catching up!  He was a fixture at our house!

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Left Brent & Ashley’s this morning headed to Arizona.

Ashley, Lyla & baby Lucas

Brandon & Trinity came over.  He was on gate duty!

Had a great time as always.  Christmas last night at Brandon's.

Tyler, Trinity,baby Lucas, Lyla & Cayden 

This is all for now.  (Going to try to keep this updated better than before)

Luray, Viginia...What a Gem!

September 26-28, 2016 

 

Before I get started...VIRGINIA HAS A HELMET LAW!

 

We only stayed 2 days (at Jellystone RV Park http://campluray.com/rv-tent-campsites/#RVSITES, just outside of town).

We unloaded the Harley's & decided to take a little ride through town.  This is definitely a 1 stop light town.



 

As we're cruising through town at 25 mph we passed a cop sitting in a parking lot off to the left.  We didn't think anything about it.

We were almost to the end of town, which took less than 5 minutes, and Georgie noticed he was behind us.  No worries. 

We get to the end of town, pull in a parking lot to turn around, and the cop follows us.

We stop, turn off the bikes and get off.  He stops and gets out of his SUV.  Georgie asks, "Can I help you?"  The cop is smiling and says, "I saw you ride by me and I noticed you didn't have helmets on.  I was sure Virginia still had a helmet law but thought maybe I was wrong.  I called the station to double check.  Yep, we still had a helmet law."

Our faces drop, mouths wide open!  SHIT!  We had been so good about checking each state.  We had only been riding in states that didn't have any helmet laws. (We don't own any helmets any more)

The cop asked us if we can call someone to bring us helmets.  We explain that we were just visiting.  We didn't know anyone here plus we didn't own any helmets, that we were staying at Jellystone RV Park.

The 3 of us kind of chuckle.  He asked the same thing again.

Georgie asks him if he can just give us a warning. 

He takes our drivers licenses back to his car.  He comes back in a couple minutes.  He asks us the same thing...again.  Nope.  Nothing changed in the last few minutes.  We hadn't met anybody in the last 3 minutes.  We still didn't have any helmets.

He hands us our licenses and says, "I'm going to the station...this way (pointing to his right).  You go to your campground that way (pointing to his left).  I'll leave 1st."

Talk about luck!  We were damn lucky we got stopped by a really nice cop!

 





 

We rode straight back to the campground and immediately loaded the bikes in the rig.  Done riding in Virginia.

 

And now...the reason we stopped in this little town.

 

This is the little town of Luray, VA. (population 4,895)

http://www.townofluray.com/visitor-information.html

It sits in the Shenandoah Valley at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 90 miles west of Washington, DC, 10 miles east of I-81.

  

We traveled I-81 coming & going to Pennsylvania more times than I can count.  We never even heard of Luray or their famous caverns.  Guess we were always in a hurry.  Now that we are retired we have all the time in the world to pay more attention to all the sites...both well known and hidden gems...like Luray Caverns http://luraycaverns.com.

 



It took us about 1 1/2 hours to go through the caverns.  It was hard to pick just a few pictures so I didn't even try.  This is a MUST SEE if you are in the area.



 

 

They also had this really nice antique car museum.  These aren't all the cars by any stretch of the imagination, just some we thought were pretty cool!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

NOW we're headed to Florida...but this was a stop worth making!