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Early travel trailer trips
Early travel trailer trips
While getting used to our travel trailer and truck, we went on several shorter trips to places like Dewey Beach, DE, Asheville, NC, Claytor Lake, VA, Greenbrier, MD, Watkins Glen and Long Island, NY. The overall goal of our travels is to figure out where we want to live next, but these early trips were mostly practice and not serious contenders for a landing zone. Still, I gave some thoughts below about why we wouldn't want to live in these otherwise-perfectly-nice areas.
Brunswick, Maryland
Our very first trip in the trailer was to Brunswick Family Campground in Brunswick, MD. We camped near the trailer dealership in case we had problems. We ended up having our first and only flat tire (so far). It was a slow leak so we limped back to the dealership and they repaired it in short order. The river in the background is the Potomac. There was no wi-fi, except possibly much nearer the entrance. Some of the sites had a sewer hookup, but ours did not--just electric and water. As I recall, Verizon signal was usable but not great there.
Would we live in Brunswick? Probably not. It is a nice, small town, but unless you love the Potomac, or being in the country while not quite impossibly far from Washington, DC, it doesn't have a lot to recommend it for us.
Dewey Beach State Park, Delaware
No wi-fi. (For the record, most state parks don't have wifi in our experience thus far--the one exception being Hunting Island, SC.) They did have a sewer hookup, along with electric and water. Verizon LTE signal was good.
We're scared of living on the ocean now--particularly on this coast. On the West Coast, you can be fifty yards from the sea and already a hundred feet above sea level. Here, the land rises more slowly, so you constantly contend with the ocean trying to eat your land and your house. Also, we think we'd like milder winters, though we're kind of flexible on that point.
Greenbrier State Park, Maryland
Although this area had the benefit of being near Frederick, MD, which is a cool town, it's not a place that otherwise attracted us. Our campsite was nice. This odd picture was taken at night in Frederick, MD. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what's happening.
Greenbrier was a nice campground with some fun bike trails through the woods, but the main attraction was Frederick, MD, which has a surprisingly attractive town center. They've done really cool things with the canal that runs through the center of town, with great restaurants overlooking it on one side and good-looking apartments or condos on the other.
Seneca Lake, Watkins Glen, New York
This is a photo album of our trip there:
https://goo.gl/photos/KXBcirUS6Aw3MVTeA
The last picture in the album is our campground up at Indian Island campground on Long Island, which was the final destination of that trip. Something must be wrong with Seneca Lake--maybe harsh winters? If not for some fatal flaw, I would be unable to figure out why there's not a thriving lake-side community rather than the current rural scene that exists there now. Of course, there's the Watkins Glen racetrack and I suppose the character of the town changes dramatically during big races.
Staunton River State Park, VA
Staunton River State Park is an official Dark Sky Association dark site: http://www.darksky.org/idsp/parks/stauntonriver/. Surprisingly, despite the hazy weather, on one of the nights we were there the sky cleared up and the milky way was prominent in the sky. We camped here on our way to a little town outside of Asheville to see the solar eclipse of 2017.
This is the Roanoke River. The Staunton River is on the other side of the campground. The state park is on a point created by the confluence of the two rivers.
Here, we are trying out our inflatable kayak for the first time in the wild. We had earlier tested it out on our local lake, of course.
I don't recall specifically what the Verizon signal was like here--I'll have to check my notes. I recall text messages worked, so there was at least some signal.
Great state park, but the location is a bit too far from anywhere of cultural interest to us. I suspect the winters are pretty cold, too. I like cold winters, but only if there are bigger mountains to ski on nearby.
Rosman, North Carolina
We viewed the solar eclipse of 2017 on a farm just outside of Rosman, NC, which is near Asheville. A friend's family allowed us to park our trailer on their farmland, and I'd imagined a soggy field with cow patties. Instead, we got what you see below, which was wonderful.
Claytor Lake, VA
We really enjoyed our stay. It was a bit isolated for us to view it as more than a great vacation spot, though. It is near Virginia Tech, so that's a plus.
There's a small but feisty sailing scene here. I didn't hear anything good about the windsurfing here. Based on my research, it looked like sufficient wind may be rare outside of the deepest winter months.
The campground was nice. There's no view of the lake, except maybe if all the leaves are off the trees, but it is nice. A bit crowded, but that's just me--the density seemed to be a bit above the norm for state parks (which so far seems to be better than private campgrounds that we've experienced)
The Verizon signal was weak to the point of not even being able to complete a voice call--I knew this beforehand--so I had brought a signal booster that I planned to test there. After much flustercating to making sure the signal booster's signal wasn't oscillating with the main antenna, it worked great and we had good LTE signal for voice and data.
Inland Virginia doesn't really appeal to us, but having said that, it's a nice place. And for culture, it's got Virginia Tech.
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