It’s been a while since my last post here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting at home, not having adventures,. If you have read previous posts, it’s not news that we have been thinking about purchasing an RV for several years. We spent that time thinking, learning and trying out different rentals. After our trip abroad last Fall we were planning to get more serious about purchasing. The process took longer than we thought for a number of reasons, especially some of the economic events that gave us pause. We rented one more time in May for our 41st anniversary trip.
By that time we had narrowed down the style and features of the van that “checked all or most of our boxes”. It had to be 20 feet or less for my personal driving comfort. It needed a shower and toilet with a black tank, then of course a sleeping area, kitchen and decent size refrigerator. It seemed that vans made by Roadtrek, specifically their SRT models which are 19’6” long were a great fit.
Discovering a Facebook group of Roadtrek Zion and Simplicity owners, was a lucky find. We started to learn the ins and outs of these vehicles. It seemed every other post was about a problem someone was having with one of these quirky vans. The posts in between were about the wonderful places owners were visiting and the enjoyment of life on the road, whether full or part-time. Their wisdom kept us from going into our eventual purchase clueless, but more later about how the group has saved us since.
As I mentioned in May we rented a local van from someone who had converted his van with a unique build. He was local and we found him through “Outdoorsy”. Before we committed, he allowed us to come and check out “Chaser” and taught us about its workings. Chaser didn’t have a shower and the fridge was small but we decided to make it work. Being able to load our supplies directly from home was a plus from other rentals we had done. Our overly ambitious goal was to visit some friends in North Carolina and make a loop back to eventually hook up with our daughter for one of her largest craft events of the year.
On our trip we learned many lessons. One day one, we tried to stop in Baltimore for lunch and found it was way too difficult to park, most of the city parking is garage parking, with low clearance, thus inaccessible to us.. If we had planned ahead, we might have found a lot but with all the traffic we decided to pass. We wound up at ZiZa Kebob in a suburb. It was so-so. They weren’t very clear on ingredients and we had to have them remake our platter. The food was okay, but not the best Mediterranean we’ve had.
The second lesson we learned was an EZPass lesson. On the beltway through D.C. there are express lanes which cost a little extra to drive on. The problem was they only show you the amount from one point to the next and then they keep adding amounts the further you go, we didn’t see how much it cost until we got back. Let’s just say it wasn’t worth it.
We stopped in Richmond to take a walk in Maymont, Park.
Then we made up for our not-so-great lunch with an amazing dinner at La Playa , where we had our favorite, ceviche! There were lots of other options and friendly service as well. We spent a night in a campground at Pocahontas State Park and then headed to our friends’ place the next morning.
Our friends had scouted out a vegan restaurant near by their home, Pure Soul, although they had never been there. The food was not only very good but a lot of the dishes were Southern Cuisine, done gluten free and vegan and even our friends who eat all kinds of food really enjoyed it.
Next we went to explore the botanical gardens at Duke University. The different areas were lovely, diverse and being visited by or celebrated in with people of all types. We saw a Quinceanera party and a wedding with an Asian flavor.
When we grew tired of walking, we headed back to our friends’ home and hung out until we were hungry for a late dinner at Tasu Asian Bistro.
We had the option of sleeping in the van or using our friends’ guest room, it was really a toss up, but we finally decided to stay in the house near the shower.
The following day we visited the North Carolina State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh. It is a massive complex with all kinds of vendors and indoor stalls.
Having purchased the items we wanted we had lunch at the State Farmer’s Market Restaurant. The fact that their website is realbiscuits.com tells you something about the food. It wasn’t easy for our dietary restrictions but we were able to find a few items that worked for us to cobble together a meal with some of the sides.
Later after some more hanging out we had a fun dinner at the Farmside Kitchen in Durham.
The next day was a travel day, heading to Hungry Mother State Park in Virginia. Along the way we found ourselves passing Mayberry, from The Andy Griffith Show. It really isn’t Mayberry, but Mt. Airy, North Carolina, the town the show was based on and that has made a tourist business of the legacy. It was a fun De Tour.
Hungry Mother State Park was lovely, but unfortunately the weather there was not. It rained most of the time we were there, so the second day we got a short morning walk in and then spent the day driving around looking for interesting places to visit instead of the intended canoeing or such.
We puttered a lot, looking for items for our daughter’s art business in thrift stores and such. We went to a winery, but it was next to deserted and the one employee told us they were sold out of most of their wines, so there really wasn’t even something we were interested in sampling.
The next day we also did a lot of driving, though that was more planned to move us north. We stayed at Lazy A, a nice little campground in an out of the way location in West Virginia. There was a stream that ran right behind our camp site. We got there late and left early, never even meeting the hosts.
The last parts of our trip were to visit our grandson, then about 4 months old in Huntington, Long Island and of course his parents. We stayed for the first time at Battle Row Campground, about 15 minutes from our family. We’ve been back a few times since. It’s not spectacular but it meets our needs for a nearby place to stay. As always it was great to spend time with our family. Leaving Long Island and remainder of that day, was the least enjoyable part of our trip. Getting through NYC (even on the outskirts is always bad, especially in the Summer).
We learned some more van lessons. We knew we could travel the Long Island Expressway, but none of the Parkways, which all have height restrictions. We somehow went the wrong direction to get on the expressway following a stop and wound up needing to take a local (stoplight every block and filled with traffic road) for a lot of miles. Then when we finally got on the expressway the GPS kept trying to take us ways we didn’t want to go like the Lincoln Tunnel. Fortunately we knew enough to get where we had to be.
Escaping from New York was not the end of our bad adventure for that day. We were now running late for checking in at the Campground we had booked for our last night, near Asbury Park, where we needed to be the next day. We called and asked if we should come before we went to get dinner or if we could come later. They asked us to come sooner instead of later, so we did. That’s when things got ugly. We had made reservations on the phone a few weeks before. They asked about what type of site we needed and we said, “water and electric”. We assumed that we could use their dumping facilities in the morning, as we’ve done many other places. We never received rules, information or even a confirmation on our reservation in writing. When the women checking us in asked again about the type of site, we told her what we needed. She said, their dump station was not functional, so we would need to upgrade to a site with sewer. Then she asked if our tanks were empty? We said they were not and she told us it was policy that we couldn’t dump outside sewage. We had never heard of such a thing and later sharing with others they never had either. We were willing to pay extra, but the option was not offered at that point. We figured we’d manage to dump the tanks after our stay, but expressed our displeasure of not seeing their policy in writing or having had it communicated to us ahead of time. Their map still showed an active dump site. We resigned ourselves and after a few other nasty warnings about their showers and such headed off to have dinner. On the way to dinner we got a call from the grandmother of the young lady, who was even more nasty to us. By then we had had enough and said we would not be staying, as they had offered to refund our money (which fortunately we got). We found a local motel and spent the night there. Later at home when Steve went to write a review of our experience we found many complaints in their ratings about the nastiness of the staff. So lesson there, read reviews more carefully.
The other main lesson we learned from this last trip before buying our own vehicle was not to over plan the driving. We spent way too many hours on the road and not enough exploring places. Despite that, we obviously still enjoyed ourselves, hence our going forward with trying to find our own RV for future ventures.
