Check-out at Cherry Hill RV Park is 11AM. Close to noon, we were finally ready for our inaugural exit. Striking camp is not new, but shutting down and getting Alpine ready for the road is a new experience and we are not yet quite familiar with all the various procedures or their correct order. There are hydraulic leveling jacks to retract, two slides to bring in, more top vents to close, and more drawers and doors to check and make sure all are securely latched. As they warn you while flying: it's important to securely latch the overhead bins while in flight. Likewise, we need to be mindful of securely locking all the bins outside. Perish the thought that my jam-packed storage bins should fall out as we are speeding down the highway!
Jokes aside, it's all still a new learning experience, it's different, and it takes us a little longer to get going for now.
We identified an RV park near Williamsburg, Virginia, as a stop for the night. With our new RV-friendly Good Sam Garmin programmed, we entered the highway, heading south along I-95. It was not too far to travel for the first time, and just far enough to get our feet wet with all the new and very different procedures.
So far so good. My driver expertly managed the turns in this 13 feet tall, 8 feet wide coach and onto the on-ramp. It was a non-eventful trip and traffic flowed smoothly.
The Alpine rides smoothly and with the engine in the back, it is also quiet. Sitting up so high and also so far from the driver takes some getting used to. But it's comfortable and our seats are too. My "buddy seat" also has a foot rest. Pretty fancy.
It's also rather far to the windshield which makes the GPS a bit difficult to read at times with incoming glare. To make adjustments means I need to get out of my plush seat and stand up to actually reach the GPS. The volume was not set loudly enough and in the process of trying to adjust it, I managed to turn the volume off completely. I guess I will need to learn all the different settings, and they are just a little different from our GPS we have at home for the car. So after inadvertently turning the volume off, I decided I wouldn't push any more options in case I messed up the route. We continued along in silence, reading the GPS prompts. At some point we will figure out how to mount the GPS on the dash and closer to us. And at some point I will learn all the various choices and buttons should I need to make changes while en route.
One more thing to learn.
Other than that, the only thing I find a bit unnerving still is that because we are so much wider than Rialta or a regular vehicle, when truckers pass us, it seems really close. Before, as we were overtaking a truck, I would look up into the truck cab. Now I am able to make eye-level contact with the truck driver. They smile at me and I smile back at them with a nod of acknowledgement, as I hope Michael makes sure he is far enough over so that our mirrors don't tangle.
At exit 104, we pulled off, heading to Flying J to fuel up. Flying J stations are popular truck stops and where we will be filling up with diesel fuel from now on. A 100-gallon tank will get some getting used to! You can do the math, at about $3.50 per gallon. Yikes!
Learning the ropes of how to tank up this monster is also a new experience because you have to extend the front panel where the generator is. The first attempt at filling up cut out at $100. Then we found out that is the cut-off max for credit cards. In future we need to get it set up with the attendant inside first, or join the truckers in their lanes.
Michael also wanted to check the tire pressure - it's something he is very particular about. We also discovered that we need to use the air pumps that truckers use, which are different than for inflating car tires. To give you an idea of scale, our Audi has a 14" hub and the Alpine has a 22.5" hub. Usual pressure in a car tire is 30 - 35 psi (pounds per square inch) while Alpine takes 100+ psi. As I mentioned before, everything is on a larger scale and we are still learning the ropes. It will take time, and more wrong turns before we become familiar with all the various processes.
I am hoping that all this new learning is beneficial to an aging brain. It certainly is keeping us both on our toes as we face all these new experiences.
This Flying J had a well-outfitted store. Michael took the opportunity to buy the right sized windshield wipers and tire caps.
Flying J is also a good place to pull over for a rest, use the bathroom and have a bite to eat. That's the nice thing about a motorcoach, because everything is accessible and available right behind the driver and passenger seats. We were also able to do the same in Rialta, but this is so much better.
While eating our sandwiches, I decided to figure out how to adjust the volume on the GPS. I managed to correct it so we could hear our GPS lady's directions. But in doing so, I couldn't navigate back to the original route destination. I did the next best thing, and though I did not have the street address written down, I did have the GPS coordinates for the RV Park, which I proceeded to type in.
We were off, back down the highway.
The remaining drive was good. Roads in Virginia are well taken care of. Traffic flowed smoothly, the sun was shining and the scenery was pretty. After living in the Northwest, it is a surprise at how flat the landscape here is. You can see for miles ahead, and because the trees are not as tall, you can see over their tops to the sky on the horizon. The foliage here has not started to turn color quite yet.
We crossed a few rivers. The one I remember best is the Ni River. I enjoyed reading the place names along the way. I presume they are Indian in origin and sound very musical, and also different from our Indian place names in the west. Names like Chicahominy, Tappahannock, and Appomattox roll off the tongue. Of course, there are names of British origin too, that the original settlers brought with them: Richmond, King William, Chesterfield, Isle of Wight and others.
Eventually the highway turned into a divided two-lane highway. Our exit was 231, to Croaker - strange name for a town and must surely have a story behind it.
Our GPS lady led us through some very pretty country. We passed cornfields, and a horse ranch in picturesque settings. Then we turned a tight corner down a road with homes. This did not seem right. We ended up in a dead end. The destination point obviously was not our RV Park. We discovered that a couple of numbers were incorrect! Luckily the road we were on ended in a large space to turn around. This could be a problem anywhere else. We did, however, have a scenic side-trip, seeing Virginia countryside and the pretty homes that are so typical of the east coast.
We reprogrammed the device. The RV park was just across the highway in the opposite direction.
All's well that ends well. American Heritage RV park turned out to be a pleasant discovery in a rather pretty and quiet spot. There was a pull-through site available which meant we did not need to back in to the site.
Soon we were leveled, hooked up, set up and the water was on the boil for a well appreciated cup of tea. Then I started dinner, in my new rather fancy, Alpine kitchen. I made a curried pumpkin-lentil stew which we enjoyed. Other than making our morning oatmeal, this was my first real cooking experience in Alpine. The other two nights we stayed in the coach,we had dinner with my dad in his dining room. I'm sure I will miss those fine dinners that I didn't need to prepare and cook while we were visiting him. But cooking in Alpine is not a bad deal at all. And it is a lot easier than cooking in Rialta.
We may not have driven very far today. We did, however, learn a lot: how to shut down and strike camp for the road, how to fuel up, how to check tire pressure and pump tires, how to double check the programming of the GPS lady. A few oversights and wrong turns could result in tight spots that could be a lot more difficult to get out of.
This is experiential learning at its best.