Back in Virginia; Watching for Hurricane Florence

It has been a crazy last week!  I’ll try to provide an update here, although we did nothing too exciting except to dodge major storms.  We are currently at an RV shop awaiting some upgrades and then decide where to go to escape Hurricane Florence!

From our stop at Harrisburg Pennsylvania, it was just over 150 miles to Shenandoah River State Park.  We actually left our stay in Harrisburg a day early due to heavy thunderstorms were predicted on our travel day.

We arrived at this beautiful Virginia State Park near Front Royal after driving in some light rain most of the day.  In fact it was very overcast and misting rain for most of our three nights at the park, so our exploring was unfortunately, very limited.  We did laundry and little else.

The other issue at Shenandoah is the lack of any Verizon cell phone signal.  No phone or data and the park only had WiFi at their office.  Very challenging.

Our reservations were for a four night stay, but on the third day we received notice that all Virginia State Parks would be closing on Tuesday Sept 11th and everyone must evacuate.  Well darn, the weather did not look too bad, except for the Cat 4 hurricane churning way out in the Atlantic.

Decision time.  Either hightail it another 500 miles to the west to avoid the storm or keep going back to the New River Valley area (home) to keep our doctor, dentist, and RV appointments.

After talking to a few people and weighing risk options, we drove the 200 miles south to our old hometown area through some heavy rain.  Not the hurricane yet, just heavy rain on the interstate.  The kind where you have to squint to see anything.

The truck and 5th wheel camper survived the drive to pull into the RV shop at about 6 pm on Tuesday.  The shop owner graciously let me plug into their 50 amp electric, so we went out for a bite and spent the night there.

The RV modification work should begin by today sometime and be finished by Thursday or Friday.  Our next stop for two weeks was to be the Claytor Lake SP, but they also are closed in anticipation of the storm.  So, we booked a place somewhat further southwest at Fort Chiswell VA.

At that point, I will be watching the storms path, wind speed, and rainfall.  We will need to either decide the ride it out in the very western edge of VA, or else move the few hundred miles even further west.  The expected storm arrival is now this weekend in our area.

We are staying in here for about a month for all the appointments, our son Bryan’s wedding to Jennifer, and visits with family and friends.

The miles from our summer destination to back down here in VA is over 1,100.  A long way driving the big rig.  Only 1,800 more miles to our winter destination in Texas.

Stay tuned for more updates.