The Winnie Has a Summer Job

So, why no blog posts since April?  That's because the Winnie has a summer job this year - campground hosting at West Thompson Corps of Engineers campground in CT.

So, as bad luck would have it, my parents were on their way up from Florida to host again this summer and were about an hour away from Thompson when they were in a fender bender on the highway.  Luckily traffic was moving slowly and nobody was hurt, but their Fleetwood Bounder got crunched and will be in the shop for at least a few months.

Since we had a pretty light spring and early summer camping season scheduled it was kind of a no-brainer to cancel the handful of reservations offer the Winnie to salvage their summer and allow them to fulfill their summer commitment.

So the Winnie is full-timing it as a host, with the bonus of having a certified RV tech living in her (my dad).  He's doing a few mods and upgrades for us in his down time! :)  Plus,we're finally getting to some much-needed garage and basement cleaning at home that has been too convenient to put off by heading out of town!

TN - Up the Creek RV Camp: Pigeon Forge and Great Smoky Mountains

Up the Creek is a great little campground in Pigeon Forge!  Off of the main drag, so it was nice and quiet and plenty of elbow room between the sites.  Very clean and well kept as well.  No bathhouse, so you have to be a full-up self contained RV and not tenting, and no pool or game room or anything, but nice and laid back.  We were in site #1:

It was rainy and overcast for most of our stay, but we still enjoyed the area very much.  It was so beautiful!

No luck seeing anything from Clingman's Dome, but it was cool nonetheless: 

We enjoyed driving Newfound Gap Road and stopping a few places to get out and explore: 

(I love when Google enhances the photos and makes them look cool!)

We saw a whole gaggle of Minis drive by us, like well over 20 of them in succession - very cool!

We also did a hike to the Chimney Tops, quite an ascent!  

 

The only critters we saw were centipedes, which were pretty cool.  

We also heard a Ruffed Grouse doing a wing thumping mating call, that was a mystery until we got home and Kevin happened to mention it to a birder friend!

Since it was rainy and wet and presumably pretty dangerous, Theo and I stopped short of the final peak (much to his chagrin...he didn't speak to me the whole 2 mile hike back to the car).  Kevin went a little further, but not much.  He snapped some great pics, though!

The peak at a distance: 

The view from nearly the top: 

We also did some touristy things like go karts, laser tag, glow in the dark mini golf, and the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner show, and a magic show - fun stuff and it made Theo happy since he doesn't love hiking as much as Kevin and I do...we all got a chance to choose our activities, plenty to choose from in this area!

NC - North Carolina State Fairgrounds in Raleigh

We stayed here last year for our visit to Raleigh and it worked out so well that we returned.  Nice and convenient for visiting Kevin's sister and brother in law and for running the Rock 'n Roll half marathon.

The fairground campground was definitely more full this year and the officer who came to check us in mentioned something about offering annual sites now, so it seems that this spot might be harder and harder to get into.  We got one of two open spots when we arrived on Friday evening, where last year we were one of maybe 10-15 in the whole place.

We definitely used the grassy field for running off steam:

We had great weather the whole time in Raleigh.  Great racing weather!

Theo got to try Cheerwine:

Theo and I got to ride with Aunt Kathryn on her Can Am Spyder:

We went to a cool motorcycle show:

We did a fun tour of the city with an activity called Crazy Dash: 

Had some good 'ol Southern cooking at Big Ed's: 

And we hit the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and the NC Museum of History, both free and very nice museums!

PA - Hazelton Walmart

Well, we are officially "those people" - stayed overnight at a Walmart...twice in one trip even!

As it turns out the Walmart in Hazelton, PA is a great distance from home for the first and last night on the road and there's more grass than at the Pocono Downs casino for walking the puppies.

On the way out of the northeast in early April we had a ton of company on Thursday night.  We counted 13 rigs when we woke up in the morning!  Lots of snow birds headed back north I would guess.  We saw a few Canadian plates, a fellow Nutmegger, and a few others.  It was a rainy, crummy night:

Much nicer weather on the way home, less company but there were still 5 or 6 rigs: