Luray Jellystone 2020

We decided that going home Thursday would be totally lame so at the last minute we hopped online to look for a place to stay until Sunday since Paul didn’t have to go back to work until Tuesday. We looked at Harrisonburg KOA and Cherrystone as well, but they didn’t have any vacancy. So, we set out at 930am to make a 6 hour drive to Luray. We stopped right outside of Roanoke to get fuel and everyone decided they were hungry, so we made an unexpected stop at the Cracker Barrel right down the street and stayed much longer then we wanted to. When we stop with the dog and the bunny we leave the leave the key we start the truck and leave the key in and take the key fob with us so they have the A/C on. We try hard to not stay in the restaurant to long so they don’t get lonely.  When we picked the site for the KOA we put that we only had slides on one side. When we picked both sides it limited our selection. We don’t usually do that but the sites we had to choose from with the option slides on both sides really sucked so we took our chances. When arrived, they took us to our site and I was very pleased that our site had plenty of room for our camper on both sides, and bonus we were in the woods!! Score. Funny story we were right across the street from the same people who were next to us in Harpers ferry at the beginning of our trip, what a small world. We relaxed for a little while set up the trailer while the kids played and went to bed around 11.

The next day we chilled at the campground I got up at 730 am had class studied for a couple of hours until Paul woke up around 10. He’s been cooking more often since we bought the griddle, so he cooked us breakfast. This is another campground where you have to sign up for pool time so we had a 530 to 730 pool time. The kids were out most of the day, Paul whooped me in 500 rummy and then we went for a walk to find the kids. We had a couple of drinks and I had two glasses of wine that I bought in Tennessee. We made friends the family across the road the Ladd family from up state New York. They are retired Navy and are now both teacher now so they get all summer off. They have taken their travel trailer all over the country, last summer they went to San Diego and once took a 45 day straight trip. Very nice people Paul and John talked for a while a couple of times, exchanged tips, showed off innovation and talked shop. John was a F16 mechanic in the Navy and his wife handle cargo on planes. His wife came over and we talked for a little while and her grandson came over with another little girl and gave the dog and bunny some love. We went to the pool to meet the kids, they were able to get in early because there was extra spots so we chilled there for an hour and went back to the camper and made campfire nachos for dinner and afterwards Paul talked to John for about an hour, while I blogged. I love hearing other peoples stories, campers are some of the nicest people you’ll talk to. They are always willing to help, always up for a talk, and always ready to show you something that will almost always make life easier. I am not above walking up to someone and asking “hey do you mind showing me…” or “hey where did you get that?”. I was once at Harpers Ferry and asked a question about the camper that we have now, but we were looking to purchase, and the women was like “come on in let me show you”. John, Paul and I stayed up until midnight just shooting the shit.

Saturday, we got up ate breakfast a drove to Skyline drive where I was finally able to take my pictures after not doing so for like 3 years. We stopped at a couple of the overlooks and enjoyed the view. It was overcast and the clouds were pretty low to the point where we drove through them a couple of times. Kenzie said she felt close to Jesus we were so high up. We stopped briefly at the welcome center then went on a hike to a water fall where I was quickly left behind my entire family and when I finally got down to the water fall they were no where to found so I snap a couple of pictures and walked back to the truck alone stopped a couple of times so that I didn’t die and dipped my hat into some water. The water here wasn’t as cold as the water in the smoky mountains but it was so refreshing. I waited for the rest of my family, whom had all the water by the way, for about a half hour. They said they took a trail further down past the waterfall where there were less people and got in the water. I wish that I would have been able to get in the water to but the waterfall where I was just had to many people it wasn’t worth it to me. When they finally met me at the start of the trail they told me all about it and I finally got my drink of water. We drove to the next exit in the park about 20 min and took a detour to get ice cream at a place that we have always wanted to stop but it’s never been open. We came back to rain in the campground and stayed in to cook dinner. The kids could care less about rain, as a matter of fact they would rather stay out and play in it with their friends then stay in the camper and be bored. We had no WIFI at all in the campground so they would have had to watch TV or a movie. Paul was making his ,as JP would say, “famous fried chicken” for dinner. The kids made friends pretty fast here and they really weren’t at the camper much. Paul and I took a couple of walks around the campground and the kids watched movies at the outdoor theatre a couple of times to, they played Frozen, the Grinch stole Christmas, and Home Alone. I was really not looking forward to going home the next day, I really enjoy our camping trips but our tame had run out and it was back to reality for us. The next day we woke up did the last couple of things to pack up with zero help from our kids because they were going to “say good bye to our friends” which apparently took an hour because we drove to the front part of the campground with the camper to look for them. They got a lecture about helping pack the trailer up and how it goes faster with more people and saying goodbye to friends means ok bye were leaving and then coming home.