First stop... Greenville, VA

On our way to our next stop, we couldn't decide whether or not to take the exchange around Richmond or not, and at the last moment we decided to take it.  BIG MISTAKE!  A couple miles in, Shane ran over something in the road, something metal, he managed to miss it with the truck but hit it with the trailer tire, all i heard was a loud POP, and I saw stuff flying out from under the rig, yup, it blew out a tire...  Shane managed to get safely to the side of the road, where we could examine the damage

 

NOT COOL!!  We just bought these tires in October, and they are not cheap!  We also noticed that whatever the debris was that we hit also hit our drain pipe, and tore off our "Flush King" and the cap

At least it didn't damage the pipe, that would have been really bad.  So we dropped the spare tire, jacked her up, and swapped it out.  Only set us back about an hour, no major damage done, and we got through it safely so, i guess it was better than it could have been.



We arrived at our first stop, Stoney Creek campground, in Greenville, VA.  We had some crazy small, curvy roads leading into the campground, and once we got closer, a terribly bumpy gravel road, but we made it, and got set up in a pretty nice spot.

The campground was small, and needed some TLC, but it did have a pretty nice lake, and a bit of room to stretch our legs in, but we just weren't quite feeling it.

 

We took Jemma for a long walk, and then went into town to fill up on gas, and grab a bite for dinner, then back to camp for showers, a campfire, and some wine to celebrate successfully completing our first rally.  It was a good evening, but we stayed up way to late :)

 





Last days in Virginia

Saturday June 14th
This morning we got up, and lounged around a bit, then i get ready and headed out to a luncheon for "The Heartlands baby blessings".  A heartland member put together this luncheon to accept baby items donations that they will be giving to a local organization that helps out single mothers (and fathers).  I got a couple of onsies, a blanket, and 4 pairs of socks to donate, and thanks to pinterest, i wrapped them to look like cupcakes :)  They got TONS of donations, i think they said over 300 items were donated.  Many of them hand made

Here's mine, but its kind of hard to see how cute they were, and I forgot to take a before picture :(

 

It was a good lunch, I chatted with some of the women at my table, then headed back to the camper.  We have 1 truck coming by to get weighed at 2:30, and Shane headed across the street to watch a seminar on sanding down counter tops to get rid of scratches.  After all that, we got ready for the final dinner with the "Heartlanders"  They certainly provide some great food at these dinners, and we meet very nice people.  We went to dinner and stayed for a couple hours afterwards, they had a small band playing some beach music, and we were enjoying ourselves.  Eventually we headed back to camp, and settled in for the evening.

 

Sunday June 15th

Today we have 4 rigs leaving that want to get weighed, and a couple more trucks to take care of, so we got up and got a pretty early start, of course nobody ever shows up when they say they are going to, so we had to do a bit of waiting around, but we got em all in.

After our last weighing, we headed down to the ice cream shop to grab a cone, and get Jemma a pup-cup, she has become addicted to these.  Every morning when Shane takes out to go potty she tries to b-line it for the ice cream shop, she LOVES her pup cup!!

That's about it for today, we have a busy day tomorrow, so early dinner, and bed.

 

 

Monday June 16th

LAST DAY HERE!!!  And it will be a VERY BUSY day, we have 16 rigs to weigh today between the hours of 8am - 12 noon.  Plus, check out is at noon, so we have to pack up and head out also.  We were hustling the whole morning, our first one showed up at 7:30am, even though we told everyone 8, we went ahead and got it out of the way, and they rolled in steadily after that.  Since most everyone was slightly over one rating or another, they took a little extra time to explain.

 

We did pretty good, at one point we had a line of 4 rigs, but they all got out and started chatting while waiting, so nobody got upset about waiting.  We finished up with our last one around 12:45

 

The were late getting to us because they had bought a brand new rig while at the rally, and were having some difficulties  maneuvering the new mechanics.  Once we finished with them, we packed up our stuff, and hit the road, putting Urbanna in our rear view mirror, we found a place to stop at about 4 hours away.



 



Still in VA, at Heartland Rally

Wednesday June 11th
Today we have 8 rigs coming in, and scheduled to get weighed.  We slowly got up and got around, starting setting up around 10:30.  The weather has been steamy here, another 90 degree day today, but we pushed through it.  We had all of our scheduled rigs weighed by 4:00.  We grab a little dinner, then headed down to the ice cream / mini golf place to enjoy a refreshing cone.  The place is very neat, the inside has seating and is set up like an old fashioned ice cream parlor, and the outside has some seating along with the cool little mini golf area

 

Shane can never have too much ice cream ;) and Jemma is following in his footsteps.... They give the dogs a free "Pup-Cup" here (it's frozen yogurt, but all the same to her

 

Good to the last drop!!

 

We sat and enjoyed our ice cream, and then headed back to the rig, just in time as the storm clouds were rolling in





Thursday June12th
We had only 2 scheduled weighing today, and a bunch of just trucks for the way out departures, and of course we woke up to rain!!!  Nothing like standing in the rain ;)
It wasn't to bad, we geared up with our rain coats, and braved through it, then awaited the arrival of our boss, who was flying in to make sure things went smoothly with Shane's first seminar, and to make sure we were getting off to a good start.  He got here, and we went over some paperwork, and asked him some questions, then he went back to his hotel, and we had dinner.  Then we went down to the rally hall for the "Welcome Presentation" they provided drinks, and desserts, and we chatted with some folks, then headed back to our rig.


Friday June 13th
No weighing today, thank goodness because it was another raining day, but Shane has to give his seminar at 2:15, and is quite nervous about it.  Walter, our boss, encouraged him that it was no big deal, and he would do just fine, as i have been telling him all along, but he was still nervous.  We had a couple trucks to weigh, then we headed over to the rally hall to listen in on the seminar before ours, it was about propane, blaaahhh, but i did learn a couple things :)  We were supposed to have a 15 break in between seminars, but the propane seminar ran over, and we had NOOO time, we actually had to push the gentleman out so that we could get set up, YIKES!!  Then poor Shane had microphone issues, and couldn't get it to work, so he started out with no microphone, then they handed him a headset, and that was sounding crackly and bad so he just took it off.  In spite of those small issues, he did a WONDERFUL job with his seminar!!!  He seemed calm, cool, and collected.  He talked about everything he was supposed to (except for one minor detail) and he didn't say "UM" once!!  I was so proud of him!

He was a SUPER STAR!!!

 

After the seminar, he got kudos from our boss, then the boss left, and we got ready to attend the catered dinner.  Since its Friday, by now our nice quite end of the park has begun to fill up with the "weekenders" so it ought to be an interesting weekend.  It was rally shirt night, so everyone was to wear the shirt that we got for attending the rally, and it was comical i thought

 

It was a nice dinner, we meet new folks every day, and get to know some we have already met more, so its been nice hanging out at the functions.  People are always very curious, and interested in how we are able to do what we do at such a young age, as always we are the youngest of the bunch, but we have gotten allot of "Good for yous" so that helps us feel like we fit in.  They also gave away a ton of gifts tonight, and we ended up winning a $10 gift card to Chipotle, YUMMMM!!  How exciting!

 

Back at camp it was busy with people, the cool thing to do here is cruise the campground on golf carts, and there are a wide variety of golf carts here, anywhere from your standard campground rental up to ones lifted up with big tires, and a jamming stereo system.  The rain had stopped for a couple of hours so people were out everywhere in full force.  Luckily for us, the rain came back, and drove everyone back to there sites, AHHH, quiet again, but only for a few hours.

 

 





Made it to Virginia!

Sunday June 8th, 2014

We left our beautiful spot in North Carolina, and headed to Urbanna, Virginia, to the Bethpage Camp Resort, where we will be attending the North American Heartland Owners Group rally.  We are here representing RVSEF (RV Safety & Education Foundation), we will be doing RV weighing, and presenting a seminar on RV Weight & Tire Safety seminar.  This place is definitely not a place we would have come to on our own (mainly due to the price, $74.95/night), it is a resort, so it has a water park, mini golf, ice cream store, and over 1,000 sites, most of them cram ya in like sardines, but a very nice place if you are looking for a "Family vacation" place http://www.bethpagecamp.com/welbody.html
Thankfully, they put us on the outskirts of all the hustle and bustle so that we can use the street to do our weighing on, and they were very accommodating by not putting anyone around us, so that if we get a back up for weighing people can pull off onto a site near us

So, here we are, all set up, we have full hook ups here, that's a plus, now we can catch up on laundry, and anything else that we had to put off without having the hookups.
We had dinner, then took a short walk down to the ice cream store, and finished preparing paperwork for tomorrows weighing.

Monday June 9th, 2014
Today we got up, and went over to one of the rally attendees campsite for a light breakfast.  It was "Nelly's Muffins", she has a big bowl of muffin mix, then you pick items from her list that she will add to it, then microwaves it for a few minutes, and voila!!  They were great!  I had mine with blueberries and walnuts, and Shane had Peanut Butter and chocolate.  We chatted with some of the nice people, and then headed back to camp to get ready for our weighing.

Here is our weighing site, I used the tailgate of the Toyota as my office station for all the paperwork and such.  We have 5 rigs scheduled to be weighed today, starting around noon, and going until about 4:00.  We ended up only weighing 4 of them, one of them had a suspension part break, so we are gonna have to catch him after he gets that fixed. 
After all our weighing, we rushed around to make it to a potluck dinner for the Southeast region members of the Heartland Owners group.  We made it but we had to sit way in the back because we were kind of late, and there were LOTS of people there

It was good food, and we chatted with a few people, we didn't stay too long, I needed a shower after the long day of weighing, so we headed back to the rig to settle in for the evening.


Tuesday June 10th, 2014
Today we slept in a little!! YAY!  We only have 3 weighing today but we will also have quite a few  of the people that we will be weighing when they leave, bringing their trucks by, so we can weigh just the truck.  We leisurely got around and got set up.  We had a visit from a couple of the members of Heartland rally, informing us that we missed the breakfast this morning :( Bummer, I had read about it in the schedule, and meant to go but just forgot that it was this morning.
We left Florida thinking that it would be a bit cooler the farther north we went, but we were way wrong, it is HOT!!!  It's 92 degrees today, what the heck?!?!?!? 
Anyways, we did our 3 weighs, and weighed 6 trucks.  We are supposed to go to another potluck dinner tonight but I don't think I'm feeling up to it.  After a long day of sweating in this heat, and the sun beating down us, I'm feeling pooped.  We will probably just go out, and hit a grocery store, then come back and shower, and chill, as tomorrow we have a busy day.

AHHH, Cell signal again

June 4th, 2014

We found a place to go where we would have cell signal, only 1 bar, but it is a strong enough bar to do what we needed to do.  We chose Kerr Lake Recreation area, in Henderson, NC (http://www.ncparks.gov/Visit/parks/kela/main.php), they actually have like 4 or 5 different campgrounds in this area, but we only drove through two of them before we found "A PERFECT spot"!!  We first drove through the JC Cooper campground looking for a spot, while there we spotted.....

A white squirrel, pretty cool, I guess they are all over in this area of North Carolina
Anyways, we were about to settle for a tight, crowded spot in this campground, but then we decided we drive 4 miles up the road and check out the Nutbush campground, this is where we found the spot.  This campground was not as full but had small, tight camping spots, then we headed into the back 40 where they have some tent sites with no electric, we picked out a spot with no visible neighbors, and plenty big enough for our rig, and 2 vehicles.  We are not worried about no electric since we have the solar and the generators.  We paid for 3  nights, we will stay here until we head on into VA for the rally.

And this is our view

Beautiful!!!  We were so happy to have found this site, and we have cell signal, and we have no neighbors (for now anyways).  We set up camp, and I made us some dinner, and we ate outside enjoying our awesome view

Shane practiced his seminar again, the we called it a night early tonight, we went inside and watched a little TV, then went to bed.  The next day we got up, and went into town, I needed a couple groceries, and Shane decided it was time we pick up some fishing poles, since we are in the perfect little setting to do some fishing.  Then I stopped at a small Farmers market and picked up a watermelon, and some strawberries (over priced, but fresh) then back to camp.  When we got back we took Jemma for a walk around the loop the are camped in, it was nice, we didn't have to have her on a leash because there is not a sole here :), then back to set up our poles, and do some fishing

Shane was looking purty country in his hat, holding that fishing pole ;) he was having fun with it too

We fished for a few hours, it was the middle of the day, so not much was biting, but in the end I prevailed, and caught a prize fish....

Ok, Ok, so maybe not a "prize" fish, but it was the only fish we caught, so I was excited about it.  I actually caught 2 that size... Winner, winner, big fish dinner!!!
After fishing we had dinner, and then a fire, and some wine :)  Then on to bed
Today we were feeling a little rough after last nights late hours, and flowing glasses of wine, so we slept in, we woke up to the neighbors, some of the most serious rednecks i have ever "heard" in my life!!!  They were fishing and catching catfish, and soooo excited about there catches, whoa!  Anyways, after breakfast Shane wasn't feeling all that spunky so took a little nap, and I worked on a couple projects, did some computer work, then took Jemma for a walk down to the boat ramp

She just loves being able to play in the water, now that we are out of gator country i can allow her to do it, she runs in the shallow, splashes, and jumping, chasing sticks, digging at rocks she can see, she is having a ball at this campground!  Then we came back, and I have been working on these blogs ever since ;)  Shane got up from his nap, i made him a sandwich and he is feeling better now, so he is working on cleaning the rig.  This will probably be the extent of our day today, cleaning up, catching up, and getting prepared for the rally.  Tomorrow we will head out to Urbanna Va, where we will start our journey as a weigh team, wish us luck ;)

P.S.  I didn't proof read any of these posts, so hopefully I didn't screw anything up ;)

Hollister, North Carolina

June 3rd, 2014

we moved on to Hollister North Carolina, to Medoc Mountain State Park (http://www.ncparks.gov/Visit/parks/memo/main.php).  When we arrived at the office we realized we had NO cell signal whatsoever, yikes!!!  Normally this wouldn't concern us to much, but beings that we are closing in on the rally dates, and I have been returning emails in regards to attendees wanting to get weighed, and I have the Bubba Rope Facebook page obligation, it is a must we have signal.  But we were here and we were going to stay for just one night.

 

 

It was a nice little campground, we chose site # 4, and got settled in.  It was scorching hot out, 93 degrees, and we had evening sun in our faces, no breeze at all, so we got out a gift from Candy... The awning screen, and it helped out A TON!!!  Kept the sun off from us, and supplied us with slight relief from the heat.  This park had a few hiking trails, but due to the heat we didn't go check them out.  Shane did a few practice runs of his seminar (he is a little nervous about his first time speaking in front of a group of people, that's why he has been practicing every day) and we had a little dinner, then we headed inside for dinner.  After dinner it was a little cooler, so we had a small fire, and a couple glasses of wine, then called it a night.

The next day we got up, had some breakfast, and headed into town to get gas, and signal so we could game plan on where to go from here.  We decided to head an hour Northwest to Kerr Lake Recreation area, so back to camp to pack up and hit the road again.

Santee, South Carolina

June 1st, 2014

We had a looonnnggg drive today, but we finally made it to Santee, South Carolina.

 We are staying at Santee State Park (http://www.southcarolinaparks.com/santee/introduction.aspx).  We had site # 12, and it was, again, the best site.  We had to do a little maneuvering as we wanted to get in it backwards, so to speak, so that our door was facing the woods, rather than the road, but we did it pretty easily

 And this was our view, nothing but woods, and water, ahhh, nice

 

This park is right on the Lake Marion, big lake, and we could could down to the water in some spots but not many as it was pretty rocky. 

 

We settled in for the evening, and a little campfire, that was when we realized that we were now over run with stray cats.... they prowled around at night, and you could hear them screaming close by as they were fighting with each other, or coons, or something, it was creepy, and they would try to creep right on up into our campsite, looking for food i guess.  We heard something big rustling through the leaves so we got out the spotlight, and found that a heard of deer used that area also, that was kind of cool, as there were many of them that came through but startling when you hear them go running by.

 

The next day we went out for a hike on the bike trail, it was 7.5 miles long but there were cutoffs you could take if you didn't want to do the whole thing, so we took the first one, and come across....

YUP, more deer, 3 or 4 of them, right in front of us, in the middle of the day, it was nice to see nature again.  We ended up hiking 3.5 miles on this trail, so we were pooped when we got back to camp.  We rested for awhile, Shane practiced giving his seminar, and I started preparing dinner.

 

We finished up with dinner, and Shane practiced his seminar again.  Then we headed inside to watch a little TV, then went to bed.

The next day i got up and did some yoga, it was the perfect setting for it, then we did some computer work, and headed into town for a few supplies.  We decided to treat ourselves to an ice cream cone while there :) It was delicious!

We stayed an extra night here cuz we liked it so much.  we walked some more trails, and just hung out relaxing, Shane got more practice in on his seminar.  It was a good stay :)





Hitting the road again!!!!

May 30th, 2014
Well, we seem to have most everything in order, and have decided to try to hit the road a few days early.  We have some things left to do with a rental house, but my Mother & Father-in-law, Candy & Kenny, have so kindly agreed to help us out so we can leave early,  THANKS A BUNCH GUYS!!!!
So.... we are all packed up, and ready to hit the road again!!  First stop is in St Mary's GA, at Crooked River State Park.  Here's some along the way pics

 

 

We made it to Crooked River State Park (http://www.gastateparks.org/info/crookriv/) around 4:30pm, and picked out a spot we thought was perfect!  Site # 11, we had plenty of room, and quite a nice site

 



It wasn't long after we got set up that we realized we were being invaded by deer flies!  Yikes!  That was unpleasant!  But we loaded up with bug spray, and headed out to walk the campground.  We saw some wildlife along the way

 

All in all, it was a nice campground, we just couldn't spend much time outside due to the biting flies!  This campground is right on the Crooked River, where we were camped it was a cliff down to the water, so we didn't get to get down there, but a nice view still.  We called it a night fairly early.

 

The next day we did one of the hiking trails, it was only 1.25 miles, but it was hot out, so it took us awhile to do it, Jemma was getting overheated, and we had to stop a few times and let her cool down.  After the hike we took a drive into town for a gas fill up, and stopped at a little park on our way back i to the campground, it was a pretty interesting little ruins

 

When we got back to camp, I prepared dinner, then we had campfire, and a few glasses of wine, stayed up waaayyy to late, but we enjoyed ourselves!  Tomorrow we will be packing up and heading to South Carolina.

 

 





About that time again.....

May 21st, 2014

Well, here it is May 21st, and we are getting ready to hit the road again.  We got back to Florida around Halloween, and have been very busy, here is a short breakdown of whats been going on:

Shane went back to work for the Plumbing company, and was working 40 hours a week, while I did some odd jobs here and there, hung out with friends, and got a little bored.  I ended up picking up a little job with Bubba Rope (www.bubbarope.com), a company that my Dad works for.  I am doing their Social Media Marketing, basically I am managing the Facebook page for them, I can do it on the road, and I get paid a little bit for it, I like it so far, gives me a little something to do.

We also picked up another rental house that needed a total renovation so that has kept us extremely busy for the past month, but we are close to finishing that up, so we have a tentative leave date of June 1st.  We will be headed to Urbanna VA, for a rally that we will attending to give a seminar, and do some weighing for the company we started with, RV Safety & Education Foundation (www.rvsafety.com).  In case you are unfamiliar with this, last year in October we met up with Howard & Linda Payne, in Atlanta to begin our training, and basically we have become a weighing team for this company, which means we will be traveling to different RV rallies, and giving a seminar on RV Weight & Tire Safety.  Along with the seminar we also provide the service of weighing RV's, we are equipped with 4 portable DOT scales, that we use to acquire wheel by wheel weights, and advise on safety issues, and tire pressures.  We are really excited to be doing this, as we feel it is a huge opportunity to be informing fellow RV'ers, and educating them on the importance's of these issues.

So for now, that is the plan, and I will be doing my best to keep up with the blog.