We came across a bush with these bright purple berries, ones I have never seen before, and will need to find out what they are.
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| love the trees which are so different from our tall evergreens |
When we arrived yesterday afternoon, a fellow-RV'er approached Michael as he was hooking up our water and electricity. It turns out that this gentleman and his wife also owned an Alpine and loved it. Well, at least until they had some issues with it and needed to be towed 100 miles. Theirs was a much newer model, a 2008. We have heard that newer models past 2003 began having issues. Hopefully our older, tried and tested coach will live up to its reputation.
It was, however, a wake-up call that problems can and do arise when living the itinerant life. And it's something we need to keep in mind and be prepared for, should it ever happen. Stationary homes also have problems that need to be fixed. This is no different, except that we are also living in the machine that pulls our home along to different locations. At the moment we do not have a tow-vehicle so are more dependent on the coach.
And in the process discovered that the hose he bought to be able to inflate tires using the diesel engine, has the wrong connector. He went off to the Alpine gentleman who gladly lent his hose. Folks in campgrounds look after one another and are always helpful if a fellow traveler is in need. The couple was heading to town, and simply trusted that Michael would return the hose once he was finished with it. Which of course he did.
The moral of this tale is that folks in RV's like to watch out for one another in a neighborly way. We will always have friends on our travels.
Striking camp was a little easier today now that we had done it once. But I did forget to shut the fan vent in the kitchen, which our neighbors pointed out as we were about to leave.
In time, I suspect we will have a routine, like with Rialta, and it will become second nature.
There were two surprises today. GPS lady wanted to lead us to the north bound on-ramp for some reason. This time it was not me programming the information in. We knew the prompt was incorrect, and followed the signs for the southbound on-ramp instead. I unstrapped, stepped up to the GPS and in trying to get it off its holder, cracked a nail - boy, do I find it difficult to uncouple this GPS. I will need to get used to how to do it in a jiffy because as you are driving along and on-ramps are appearing, there is no time to dally. I entered the destination address, having learned to write it down from yesterday's lesson. I suppose I will never fully trust anything electronic, not until I am a lot more familiar with how the device was programmed in the first place. There are probably specific steps to follow and I need to learn them.
GPS lady readjusted to the new data and we continued along with the stream of traffic, heading towards Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for today's destination.
All was going well, until something began beeping. The sellers had warned that every so often for no apparent reason, the alarm for the hydraulic jacks goes off. If any of the jacks were actually down, this could be serious. There was only one way to find out if the beeping was simply the same erroneous signal the sellers also experienced or whether this was a real problem.
Traveling along at 60 miles an hour and making split-second decisions is not easy. We were approaching an off-ramp, but unfortunately it led to another highway rather than a gas station or shopping center. Michael did the next best thing and pulled over to the side.
It did turn out to be a false alarm after all. Thankfully. And we know the sellers had everything checked out and were told all is fine.
But what a scare, and a good learning experience yet again about how important it is to be prepared for all sorts of scenarios while traveling.
We were able to get back to our original route, and GPS lady did a fine job of returning us to I-64 south again.
Around Richmond, we noticed that our "fastest route" was about to take us through a tunnel. This was another new experience. We watched for warnings about height clearance (another new thing to be aware of) and hoped that GPS lady had factored that into the route. We did need to pull over to be inspected because of the restriction on gas and hazmat going through the tunnel and our refrigerator was running on LP gas while we were traveling. Michael dutifully pulled over and the inspector came out of his booth and watched him turn off the LP gas. The old guy was quite happy to chat with Michael for as long as he could. Folks in Virginia sure are friendly and helpful.
Off we zoomed, back on 64 south, and into the tunnel, under the Chesapeake Bay. We emerged back above water, and saw the navy destroyers across from us at Norfolk.
We continued on towards Chesapeake, making our way to route 168. We were now on a toll road and had our first experience pulling up to the toll booth to pay our $3. Even though there are six wheels on the Alpine, it is still a two-axle vehicle.
We stopped at the Welcome Center along the way. It was well past munch-time by now. How easy it is to have a bite to eat in the elegant kitchen. Michael also took the opportunity to turn the LP gas back on so our fridge could run. What a clever Alpine this is. In Rialta, while traveling, the small fridge ran on the Rialta battery. It was my job to remember to switch the battery on once we were on the road. It was important to switch it off again if we were stopping for a while, so as not to risk running down the car battery.
I made my way into the Welcome Center, but first noticed the van with Oregon plates. A fellow-countryman, no doubt, and as far from home as we were. There were no other vehicles other than our two so when I went inside, I assumed the gentleman there was the one from Oregon and approached him. He too was in the twilight of life, like we are, and he and his wife, both living in Portland, were traveling around the States, much like we did in our Eurovan camper over 12 years ago.
I was grateful to be doing this in a lot more comfort now.
I loaded up with all the free brochures. There is so much to see and learn about. Once again, I wished we didn't have to be on a schedule to be able to loiter and learn. We will definitely need to return.
The rest of the drive, I was occupied reading all the billboards along the way. And they lined the road, advertising everything from farm produce to crabs, tobacco and tattoos. We drove past many fallow fields, south along the peninsula.
OBX Campground is located in Kill Devil Hill, close to the Orville and Wilbur Wright National Memorial Park.
We asked what OBX stands for because we had seen it many times as we drove along - Outerbanks! Now we knew.
We pulled in to OBX Campground after 4, and the office was still open. The campground is also a quiet spot along the peninsula, just north of Roanoke Island, tucked back off the road and right on Currituck Sound.
The lady in the office was funny. She handed us the papers and the Campground rules, typical to all campgrounds regarding speed limit, check-in and check-out times, pets, campfires, and so on. Under the heading Quiet Hours, I was most amused to see that in bold capitals was listed NO PROFANITY ALLOWED followed by two large exclamation points.
That was a first for us and I asked whether profanity is an issue here in Kill Devil Hill. She replied in no uncertain terms that it can be and that she had in fact evicted a cussing camper, and gave him 5 minutes to get off the property before she called the law.
We had a good chuckle and promised we would not be cussing with the f-word like the camper did.
We found our site, a back-in this time. My driver did superbly yet again. My new job is to make sure he has plenty of room on the left side of the coach to be able to extend the slides and also that there are no overhead hazards like low branches. No such hazards here, as we are on an open beachy area, close to the inlet.
It was actually short-sleeves-warm today with a clear sunny sky. We set up, hooked up, and walked to the pier and around the campground before it began to get dark.
Back inside,I am sure you can guess what came next - why, tea of course! While logging on to check emails. So far all the campgrounds where we stayed had wi-fi. It seems to be a given these days. I remember when wi-fi was not always available or included and often we needed to pay for it.
We depend on connecting to the WWW and being able to check emails. And of course I need to be online if I am to post to my blog.
Tonight's dinner menu was a warm salad. While preparing the greens and all the other fresh veg that I plan to use, I fry up some onion and mushrooms, and tonight also a red pepper and a yam. Once the salad is assembled and ready, I add the warm cooked veg on top, add some olive oil and apple cider vinegar ( or balsamic which I don't have right now), ground pepper and a tiny amount of sea-salt and toss everything together. Delicious! Coffee and dark chocolate ended the large salads. A perfect ending to a perfect Alpine day including a pink sky sunset. We had arrived safely at OBX.
Tomorrow's agenda is to walk to the Wright memorial. We passed it on the way to OBX Campground and will be able to walk there.
