Good Bye Lake Anna Virginia & Hello Lancaster Pennsylvania!

Well I'm typing to you from a campground so full it feels like its infested with people!  Don't get me wrong its a very nice campground, but very very busy.  I guess because its Memorial Day weekend and its the official start to vacationing for the northern states. 

We went to Fredericksburg one more time for some barbecue and ice cream before leaving Virginia.  I had started seeking out the barbecue joints in each town to try the different types. We left Lake Anna yesterday and we had the park with a beach practically to ourselves.  We met some really nice folks @ Lake Anna.  It seems like every place we stop the people are very friendly!  The trip from there to here was a long drawn out one through a lot of back roads and severe traffic around Washington DC.  We left the Lake Anna campground @ 2:00pm and finally landed here in Lancaster @ 8:30pm in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.  We only traveled 210 miles in 6 1/2 hours, but I was beat from hauling the monster through all the traffic and small back roads.  There was one part of construction that had us traveling down a bridge with concrete barriers only 10' apart leaving a measly 1 foot for error on each side.  Talk about a white knuckle ride. I think Karen was more afraid then I was. After finding the campground in the pouring rain, we proceeded to our site which was occupied by someone else so we took one of the open pull through sites for the night.

Today we awoke to sweet smell of cow poop, as we are right next to an Amish farm.  I have already gotten used to the smell and we already took a horse drawn Amish Buggy tour today.  The kids loved it and I think its really interesting to see how these people live and the farmland in which they do it is beautiful.

Houston...... We have a problem!

Well it wasn't as big a problem as we thought.  Last night we moved the RV to Lake Anna SP and while setting up for the evening Karen and I were on one side of the RV connecting the water hose and electric and Karen heard a clicking noise and asked me what it was.  I removed the panel where the clicking noise was coming from and found the back of our refrigerator.  The sound was the igniter trying to light the propane for the fridge, because we hadn't yet hooked up to electric.  Karen asked if we were out of gas and I thought we couldn't have gone through 60lbs of propane that fast but I looked anyway.  What do you know!!!  The tanks are empty!  Not because we used it all, but because one of the hose connections to the propane bottle cracked and all the propane leaked out. We found an RV parts store local to Fredericksburg so we went into town and replaced the part and $42 worth of propane!

After that stop, we went on into Fredericksburg and spent a few hours seeing the town and going through a tour of Rising Sun Tavern and Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop.  It was very interesting to hear how the people lived back then and the medicines they used.  Kaylee and Bryson really enjoyed the part where they got to touch the live leeches that were used for medicinal purposes.  They also had fun in the candy store where they found this 5lb gummy worm! All in all it turned out to be another great day!

Richmond Riverfront & Maymont park.

This morning Karen said she wanted to visit the city of Richmond and initially that made me a little uneasy as I used to go into the city for the last 3-1/2 years! My excitement for this trip was to get out of the city and the hustle and bussel. Normally, I grin and bear it through the city tours, because I'm the driver which tends to be stressful.  We are driving a Dodge Mega cab Dually - this is no small vehicle by any stretch of the imagination, as a matter of fact, its like a small land barge! There are also a lot of instructions that come last minute like "we need to make a left now" as we are in the right lane or we should of turned there. Today on the other hand went smooth as silk!  We started off going to the Riverfront in downtown Richmond where they explained to us, via a boat tour, the very interesting way in which goods were shipped inland through a series of canals and locks.  They went on to teach us that George Washington was instrumental in planning and building the canal system in which goods that came in, via the James river, could be transferred and shipped as far west as the Mississippi river!  While on the tour Bryson decided to pull out his front tooth and hand it to me! After the boat tour the family was hungry, and Bryson needed a container for his tooth, so we decided on a local hot dog shop called City dogs.  It was a great little restaurant right in the city on a cobblestone road with really good hot dogs and brats! 

From there we went to a park called Maymont Park, which turned out to be a diamond in the rough!  The park was like eye candy to everyone.  It had exotic gardens like you have never seen.  A beautiful Italian Garden, Karen's favorite, a Japanese garden with bamboo forests that had little trails through them, and coy ponds with stepping stones in the pond.   There were a many great climbing trees for the kids too.  There was also a zoo/animal rehab center, so there were many animals for the kids to see and a beautiful mansion at the center of it all! We spent a good 3 hours there and the best part was it was free to the public with a donation box if you wanted to donate which we did!  I would highly recommend this park to anyone as day trip with the kids!

Monticello

Well, I'm sitting under the awning in our campground after a full day trip to Monticello and the kids are making friends at the play ground.  Its neat to watch the weekend campers fill up the campground on Friday & then watch the mass exodus on Sunday afternoon.  We try to move the RV on weekdays to avoid any crowds at the dump station or check out counter. Sometimes its just nice to have the whole campground to yourself! Back to our trip.... We went to Monticello to visit Thomas Jefferson's plantation/home and then to the University of Virginia.  It was amazing to learn so much about such a talented man.  We toured the gardens and the house and then had lunch at Michie Tavern.  The kids had a good time.  Bryson bought a quill pen and ink, with his own money, so that he could write with a feather.  Karen is still getting used to the kids not wanting to see every nook and cranny of each of these places we visit.  I on the other hand am a lot like the kids!  Give me 4 or 5 hours of anything and I start to get a little crispy around the edges and need a break. With all that being said I would highly recommend Monticello to anyone traveling through the Richmond Virginia area!  Now to find a place to stay next weekend for Memorial Day weekend.  We have been calling all campgrounds for the last 2 days and everything is booked solid!

Good Bye Williamsburg.

Original wall and cellar where George Washington actually stood! 

The Dodge on the ferry.

Well, what can we say?  Williamsburg and all the surrounding attractions were so amazing we stayed an extra week!  Everyday we went into town we rode the ferry.  Sometimes it was a great ride and sometimes it was a 1/2 hour wait.  We managed to dodge almost all the rain storms for the most part.  The campground we stayed at was located right on the James river so we could walk the shore and look for fossils!  We found a Megaladon sharks tooth that we were told was between 2 and 5 million years old! They told us the entire park was once part of the ocean floor millions of years ago.  The campground hosts, Tommy & Barbara were very accomodating in helping us level the trailer and even lending a few tools needed for our center console modification!  I cut the console lid so its now a 80/20 split lid for easy opening for Karen and I can still leave my arm resting on my 20%.  It really is a marriage saver on trips like this!  We finished our stay at Chippokes by picking strawberries at a farm just  down the street.  We picked to small containers worth of strawberries and then proceded to have home made ice cream and strawberry pie!  I finish this post at the table of our camper in our new home for a few days, Pochohonas State campground. The wind is softly blowing through the screen door while Norman looks out to survey the campsite. Life is good!