Springtime feels like Winter

Some of our primary goals during the RV trip are to never set up after dark, drive no more than 4 hours a day and to minimize driving through areas of heavy traffic during the busiest hours. With this in mind, we headed out for the 200-mile drive from Roebuck, SC to Stoneville, NC. Upon our arrival, we met up with and had dinner with some old friends, Tinker and Frankie Woods. Realizing impending bad weather was headed our way, we decided to boondock in the Walmart parking lot until the snow storm had passed.

Since the upcoming weeks were routed up the east coast, we had to reevaluate whether we could maneuver through our course with Nor’Easter 3 on its way. We considered heading west towards Kentucky and coming back to the 11 states we would miss yet ultimately decided to bear the winter weather and keep moving along.

With just a short hour drive we left Stoneville, NC and drove through some heavy snow to get to Roanoke, VA. We found an empty storefront connected to a Planet Fitness so we set up camp for the evening. As part of our RV trip planning process, we gained membership with Planet Fitness to ensure we were able to work out when inclement weather existed and to have the opportunity of taking long, hot showers after our workouts and while boondocking. Speaking of boondocking, one thing I have enjoyed most about this trip is the boondocking experience. It’s both strange and exciting to lie asleep at night in the middle of a public place, not really knowing your surroundings. One disadvantage about boondocking is that the RV slide outs are retracted so the room in the RV is reduced. Since our king size bed basically becomes a twin when the slide out is pulled in, I’m the lucky one who gets to sleep in the “coffin.” I’m not complaining though because Darryl has the unique pleasure of sleeping in the overhead bunk. No real winner in this situation.

One of the specific issues we contemplated when developing this RV trip was the potential weather conditions in the areas we were visiting. We intentionally waited to visit the east coast during the springtime, however we were faced with some extreme weather conditions and had to reschedule the trip to West Virginia until later in the month. Instead we headed to Washington, DC for a five-day stay.

While in DC the weather did not improve so we opted to find at least one day of bearable weather and go into the city. We chose to visit Arlington Cemetery, the Women’s National Service Memorial and the Smithsonian Natural Science Center. With 6 miles of walking, plenty of photos, and some minor frostbite, we headed back for the 2-hour drive to the campsite and called it a day.