Monday July 23rd 2018

Today started very foggy. By the time I was packed and ready to leave the Charlotte area around 10:15 it was just a cloudy day. The sun came out briefly here and there as I made my way east to the Fayetteville area. I didn’t take the most direct route. I chose to stay on better roads and went southeast to Lumberton, NC. Then I picked up Interstate 95 north through Fayetteville to Wade NC.

Site 33 at the Fayetteville NC. The rain is moving in on the right side of the picture behind my RV.

I was an easy drive lasting about four hours including one stop for gas and an attempt to stop at a rest area. The gas stop wasn’t well scouted out ahead of time. The station had easy access, but the price was about ten cents a gallon higher than other stations on my route. I only put in one credit card run of a hundred dollars to bring the tank up to about the seven eights level. I’ll do a little better research for my next fuel stop.

The rest area stop just served to get me annoyed at unthinking drivers. North Carolina rest areas have separate parking areas for trucks, RVs and cars. I followed the signs to the correct area only to find all of the long RV parking spots filled with cars. The car parking area on the other side of the building had plenty of room. I waited as long as I could for one of the car owners to come out of the building and leave without success. It’s probably a good thing no one showed. I might have yelled a few things at them that wouldn’t do any good.

I managed to get set up on my site before the thunderstorms arrived. There have been three storms pass through the area since I arrived. From the TV reports, the Charlotte area where I came from is getting hit harder. The forecast for tomorrow is more of the same and flash flood watches are out for the area. I don’t move on until Wednesday.

Sunday July 22nd 2018

The potential for severe weather continues to keep me on my toes. Yesterday had severe weather all around the area, but it never came over this area. The only storm was rain without thunder and lightening around 1:30 in the morning. This morning we were back to sunny and humid with the look of a storm at any moment. Around the dinner hour there was thunder and lightning in the distance followed by strong winds. So far tonight it has only rained for a few minutes in this area. Other locations in the area are under severe weather warnings and flash flood watches.

ZMax Drag strip at the Charlotte Motor Speedway behind the campground. Notice the clouds in the northern sky.

I continue to watch the TV coverage of the tragic sinking of the Duck boat on Table Rock Lake in Missouri. The seventeen people lost their lives on the same ride I was on last month. I wrote about my experience in the blog post Branson Duck Tour. It is easy to understand how the tragedy happened. There is very little way the boat captain can know the water conditions before the duck is in the water. The entry is down a steep narrow ramp through the trees. The view of the lake is very limited. They also approach the water at a good speed to maintain momentum while the propulsion changes from wheels to props. The area where the duck enters the water is in a fairly protected cove. The duck boat makes a loop out into the lake to reach the exit ramp area. While out in the lake the duck boat must take the full force of the wind driven waves. The ride I was on didn’t have much wind to deal with, but it did have the wakes from other boats to deal with. Those wakes tossed the boat around quite a bit. The other thought I had was on empowerment. I wonder if the boat captain was able to cut the water portion of the ride out of the tour without getting hassled by management. After all if you don’t get to drive into the water you might as well take the land tour on a minibus.

Clouds to the southeast behind the Charlotte Motor Speedway. There was lightning in these clouds a little later.

And now we return to our regular blog post. I spent the day running errands. The biggest of which was getting the oil changed in the car. I noticed a Valvoline Instant Oil change place on Friday when I was grocery shopping. This is my preferred chain to use for oil changes and transmission fluid refreshes. The last time I had the oil changed was in Las Vegas in January so it was due. The place wasn’t busy on a Sunday, so that little chore is complete.

There were more people arriving at the campground today than I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been here. A drag race event is scheduled for Tuesday night, so perhaps that is the reason for the large number of people arriving. I’ll never know, I’m moving on east tomorrow.

Wildflower (weed) blossom of the day.

Saturday July 21st 2018

It was sunny humid day with a high temperature in the mid 80s. The weather forecasters have been warning about severe thunderstorms arriving in the area during the afternoon since Thursday. As of 9:30 this evening they are still warning about the storms. At least now they actually appear on the radar. When you live in a box on wheels this type of forecast gets your attention. Unfortunately, the TV weather talkers seem to over sell the issue. I’ve watched the sky all day.

Today was a routine day in the life kind of day. There are some things you have to do even when you live in an RV. I did laundry and cleaned inside the motorhome today. There is a small laundry with 3 washers and 3 driers in this campground. It is conveniently located about a hundred yards from my RV home. It was even inexpensive at a dollar seventy five per load. If this campground were full, the laundry wouldn’t come close to satisfying the needs.

For entertainment, while I was doing all of these routine tasks, I watched the “Open Championship” golf from the British Isles on TV followed by the Rugby World Cup coverage from San Francisco. Talk about contrasts. The golf is slow and peaceful while the rugby is fast and potentially violent. Both sports programs captured my attention away from my chores from time to time.

The flowers in this bed were partially covered by thick pine needle mulch. There are not many plantings around this campground. These were near the laundry and office building.

I didn’t get a lot of exercise today. At most campgrounds it is easy to get a little exercise by walking around the campground roads. The activity in the campground, glimpses of nature or the terrain itself are enough to encourage walking around. This campground is basically a wide open gravel parking lot with a few roads and fences to separate areas and the people staying here aren’t outside. They are either staying cool inside or away from their sites. I can get interested in walking around here in the hot sun.

Friday July 20th 2018

I spent the day working on a couple of issues that came up yesterday with two of the major systems in my RV home. My generator and satellite TV system are acting up.

Most of the evil weather was off to the east today. A cold front with severe weather is forecast for tomorrow from the northwest.

Yesterday morning as I was packing up for travel the generator came on for no apparent reason. The RV was connected to shore power, so there was no need for the generator to start. Normally I start the generator from a switch on the dashboard. I have an Automatic Generator Start (AGS) system that will start the generator when the battery voltage gets low or the interior temperature is too high, but it should never run when connected to shore power. After the ghost turned the generator on I turned it off from the dashboard switch and continued to pack up. It came on again before I got on the road and again while I was on the road.

After I got setup in Charlotte I checked a few things and made sure the AGS was turned off. The generator didn’t come on during the afternoon or evening. I assumed I’d fixed the problem, although I didn’t do anything that should have fixed it. Everything was fine until around midnight. The generator came on to wake me up. I made my way to the front of the RV and turned the generator off before it woke the neighbors. Given that my last “fix” lasted for more than eight hours, I went back to bed. The generator ghost struck again just before 3AM. This time I didn’t get back to sleep the rest of the night. The generator came on again around 7AM.

While I was up during the night I had time to search for solutions on the Internet. It turns out to be a fairly common problem. People describe the same random starting behavior. Some people even described burning through three quarters of a tank of gas while the RV was in storage. The generator can’t use the last quarter of the tank. The problem seems to be associated with water getting into the wiring harness connectors or a circuit board connector. After a couple of attempts this morning, I found the main connector for the starting circuit on my generator. It did have water in the plug and socket. I dried things out and re-wrapped it with tape. The generator didn’t start on its own for seven hours after I reconnected the plug and socket. I want to get a good nights sleep tonight, so I disconnected the suspect plug and socket for the night. I’ll continue testing tomorrow.

The satellite issue is another common problem according to the internet. The satellite dish control box is reporting “No LNB Voltage”. The dish can’t lock on to a satellite and the DirecTV box can’t get a signal. The solution to this problem seems to be replacing a three foot section of cable from the LNB receiver head to the base of the antenna. I bought the cable today, but I need to get up on the roof to do the work. Today was too windy and the sun was out bright. I’ll wait for a cloudy windless day to work on the roof. In the mean time I have to survive on over the air television. This campground doesn’t have cable.

In the middle of all this fun, I went to Lowes and Walmart for supplies. The Walmart trip also served as a grocery run. I’m now provisioned for the weekend. Let’s see what other fun repairs I can undertake.

Today’s flowers.

Thursday July 19th 2018

Tonight I’m in Concord North Carolina just north of Charlotte. I’m staying at the Camping World Racing Resort at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. I have a level site with full hookups for the next four nights in a gravel covered parking area with a few trees here and there. The campground really doesn’t deserve the title of “Resort”, but it is reasonably priced for what you get.

Site K85 at the Camping World Racing Resort at the the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The temperature was cool this morning as I packed for the move. It was in the sixties. I’m don’t think I’ve experienced that temperature since May. The altitude west of Asheville helped. There was some fog this morning and I drove through a few showers on my way to Charlotte. It was only in the low eighties in the Charlotte area when I arrived. It got a little warmer when the sun broke through the clouds late in the day.

I had one minor detour on the trip. I missed the exit off of Interstate 26 to turn east. About five miles down the road, at the first exit in South Carolina, I had proof I’d missed my exit. I got off the highway and back on in the other direction. There was construction in the area of the exit I wanted. Maybe that was why I missed it.

Charlotte is more of a metropolitan area than I expected. The road signs indicated that I was still over twenty miles from the city when I entered heavily congested roads, with industry, retail and housing developments lining the sides of the highway. I took the Interstate 485 beltway a third of the way around the outskirts of the city area. Taking Interstate 85 through the city was an option, but I’ll take less traffic and better road surfaces any day. It was a few more miles, but I didn’t have any problem finding the speedway on the north side of the city in the community of Concord.

The campground is across the street from the Motor Speedway. It’s on the road to the Drag Strip beside the Dirt Track. This is a stock car racing mecca. Before I booked this location, I checked to make sure there weren’t any races scheduled this weekend. I imagine this area can turn into a real traffic nightmare during those events. The campground probably fills up and I wouldn’t be surprised if they charged more.

Wednesday July 18th 2018

The humidity and the temperature were down today. I gave the air conditioner a rest for most of the day. The afternoon sun got the temperature up into the mid eighties. I put the air conditioner back on to cool the sun warmed interior of the motorhome late in the day.

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My plans to do more touring in the Asheville area changed. I got into planning mode this morning and started working on reservations for the next few months. It can be a real juggling game to get plans locked in. I try to find and lock in the longer most difficult places to stay first. This allows me to change direction if there isn’t any available space. Things get difficult when you can’t get commitments. I prefer to deal with campgrounds that have online reservations systems. You get immediate feedback on availability with online systems. Today I was dealing with two places that didn’t have online systems and I wonder what kind of system they actually have. I was on the phone for twenty minutes with one and another had to call me back after getting access to the office computer. It only took about half an hour before I got a call back followed by ten minutes on the phone. I was moving right along when the “boss” called me an hour later with a problem.

As of now I have a couple of travel nights left to book in July. They shouldn’t be a problem since they will be on the Interstate 95 corridor. I’m still working on the first three weeks in August. My first choices in the Civil War battlefield areas of Maryland and Pennsylvania aren’t working out. Now I’m looking at moving north through central or western Pennsylvania into New York State. I’ve booked the end of August into the Labor Day Holiday weekend on Lake Ontario in New York and I’ve booked the first two weeks of October including the Columbus Day weekend in Massachusetts. There are still travel stops of one to two days to book and a couple of additional two week blocks.

One thing I’m discovering is that the northeast campgrounds are expensive. When I lived in the area I didn’t believe the Internet chatter about the high cost of camping in New England. Now that I’m armed with two years of experience in other parts of the country I’m finding some of the rates unbelievable. The Columbus Day weekend at one place was going to cost $80 a night.

I’m moving on tomorrow. I’ll be traveling about one hundred and fifty miles to the Charlotte North Carolina area for the weekend.

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Tuesday July 17th 2018

My RV home is located in a campground very close to Interstate 40. Being near a highway or a railroad track is fairly common for campgrounds. The noise doesn’t usually bother me. Last night was the exception. They are doing night roadwork on the interstate highway a few hundred feet from my RV. It started around 8PM and was intense until near midnight. After that it was quiet most of the night. I woke up a couple of times probably because of construction noise, but it didn’t last long. The next really loud and prolonged noise from the highway was around seven thirty in the morning. How good a rest I got is questionable. So far this evening there hasn’t been any sign of a repeat construction performance.

The camera is level, the land slopes hard in this area.

I spent some time today driving around the area. The mountainous terrain was a little surprising. I always thought Asheville was on the edge of the Appalachian mountains. It’s really in the Appalachians. Keeping in mind these are eastern US mountain heights not western heights, there is a lot of uneven ground. What really drove the point home to me is the fact that the Blue Ridge Parkway passes to the east of Asheville.

I avoided the Biltmore area of town. Visiting the estate of George Vanderbilt is not on my list of must sees. It moved even lower on my list of “could” sees when I saw that they had turned a simple estate tour into an all day attraction with a corresponding large price tag. Most of what I saw today were everyday city sights like businesses and stores. It was a good familiarization drive.

Storms moving in during the afternoon.

Back at my RV home this afternoon I walked around the perimeter of the campground on trails cleared by the owners. It parallels the highway in some areas and cuts across streams and gullies in other areas. The trails are a nice feature of this campground that you don’t find at many commercial campgrounds.

A little pollen goes a long way.

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Monday July 16th 2018

The weather was not the best for traveling today. A cold front was approaching the area. Shortly before I got up this morning a brief shower passed through. It was very humid outside and everything was wet for my outdoor travel preparations. I took my time and was ready to travel just before eleven.

I only had two noteworthy experiences on my short 100 miles of travel. The first was at the gas station. Of the four possible lanes to access the pumps I could only use two of them because of the access angles. One of the two lines was blocked by a car that seemed to be parked. I had to wait for a motorhome and a truck pulling a trailer to finish fueling in the one available lane before I could take my turn. Overall I was there for close to forty minutes. About the time I was finished fueling a woman and three kids came out of the store and got in the car parked in the other lane. She was oblivious to the chaos she’d caused by not parking in one of the many available parking places.

Interstate 40 through the Appalachian mountains is a very winding road. I didn’t have any particularly steep grades but I needed to go slow for many of the twists and turns. In the middle of all this a thunderstorm moved overhead. The rain came down hard enough that I had to have the windshield wipers on high. Visibility was difficult. I was keeping my spacing with the tail lights on the truck in front when a little compact car without its lights on decided the space between a trailer truck and a motorhome was the place to be in a rain storm. The driver was mistaken. I backed off even more and the storm took pity on my situation and let up. The compact car took off as soon as the rain subsided. I think I out ran the storm.

Site F24 at the Asheville West KOA. This campground is still in the mountains at about 2400 feet elevation.

After I got set up at the Asheville West KOA another storm arrived. I sat inside and watched the rain wash down the gravel campground roads digging gullies in the dirt. The thunder in the area was loud, but I didn’t see any lightening. After the storm I had a big puddle in front of my door. I need to jump from the steps to dry ground until the water sinks into the ground.

I’m around ten miles west of Asheville North Carolina. I”ll be here for three nights. Tomorrow I’ll figure out what kind of touring I’m going to undertake.

Sunday July 15th 2018

After a couple of comfortable days the heat and humidity were back today. The sun was shining bright most of the day and there was very little wind. The temperature peaked in the low nineties. It would probably have gone higher, but dark clouds arrived with the threat of showers around four in the afternoon. An hour later it was back to sunny and calm without any rain falling.

The slow moving waters of the Little Pigeon River.

The campground was busy place this morning. All of the weekenders were packing up and departing. A guy driving the campground tractor was busy returning rigs from sites to storage and other people were gathering at the pavilion for the campground sponsored church service. It appeared to be anything but a relaxing Sunday morning, but that is exactly what I decided to do. The idea of battling the twenty miles of traffic to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park was not very appealing. Most of my day was spent watching people come and go in the park, watching the river slowly flow by and watching TV.

Tomorrow I’ll be moving on to the east. I’ll be in the Ashville, NC area tomorrow night. I haven’t come close to seeing all of the things I’d like to see in this area. Next time I will come in the spring or fall to avoid some of the crowds. I’ll also stay nearer to the park. This campground has nice amenities and the folks running it are pleasant, but it is just too far away from the national park. It is really better suited as an overnight stop for travelers on Interstate 40 or for people visiting all of the “stuff” in Pigeon Forge.

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Pigeon Forge’s main draw is the Dollywood theme park and water park, but it has plenty of other attractions to go with it. The main drag has dinner theaters, miniature golf, go cart tracks, novelty museums, nausea inducing whirling contraptions and many other things. They aren’t really my thing, but they are the cause of all of the traffic between this campground and the national park.

I’ve started the preparation for tomorrow’s travel. I only have about a hundred miles to go, so I don’t want to depart too early. Checkout time for the campsites is noon, so I’ll be aiming for sometime after eleven. I can always kill some time at the North Carolina Welcome Center.

Blossom of the day.

Saturday July 14th 2018

Today began with a surprise rain storm. It rained for about and hour. Checking the weather radar on my phone it looked like the storm popped up right overhead and didn’t move very much. There were scattered very isolated storms all over the area for the first two thirds of the day. Toward evening the conditions improved and the sun came out. The temperature was in the seventies most of the day only breaking eighty when the sun came out.

Cloudy view of the mountains in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The rain put a delay into my plan to head into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park before the crowds. I didn’t leave my RV home until ten in the morning. By that time, my prediction of heavy traffic was more than fulfilled. I was in heavy stop and go traffic most of the way to the park. In the park the traffic was moving right along, but the parking areas were all full to overflowing. The trail head for Laurel Falls that I was planning to stop at was so congested, a park ranger was on traffic duty. He was stopping people from parking along the road.

A view of the Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I continued my drive along the park road. The narrow curvy road followed the Little River closely. You were either flirting with a drop into the river or hugging a rock wall to allow oncoming traffic to pass. If I wasn’t driving, I’d have been fighting nausea it was so twisty turny. I stopped at several of the less congested pullouts along the way to watch the river flow. The river got faster and rougher as the altitude decreased and the water volume increased. Near the town of Townsend a national park authorized concessionaire was doing a brisk business renting tubes and ferrying riders along a slightly calmer section of the river. The river was full of people of all ages floating down the river on the tubes.

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After about twenty miles on the park road, I returned to the commercial world in Townsend. I still had a long drive back to Pigeon Forge on US 321. It was only slightly better than the park road. It was a little straighter with wider shoulders, but when it turned there was usually a building right on the edge of the road. Traffic was also heavy, but got much worst when I reached Pigeon Forge. Coming south into the park this morning the stop and go traffic was mostly go. Heading north back to my RV home the stop and go traffic was mostly stop for several miles.

View of one of the attractions in Pigeon Forge. I saw a similar fake piece of the HMS Titanic in Branson MO last month. You’d think one of them would have the back half. Many of the attractions in Pigeon Forge are the same as the ones in Branson.

I did more driving than walking today, but it was still a good touring day.

A little pollination.