Off to the Smokies: Travel Day 1

Friday, 13 April

Greetings from Fort Chiswell RV Park in Max Meadows, Virginia.  After an easy 273-mile (437 km) drive, we’re calling it a day.  Our original plan was to overnight at the Flying J located at Exit 80 on I-81 South.  That would have been OK had we arrived late in the day and all we wanted was a place to sleep.  Since it was only 4:00p, we decided to continue up the street to this campground instead.

With 273 miles (437 km) of the 463-mile (741 km) drive under our belt, we’re more than
half way to our final destination.

I’ll get back to the campground in a minute.  Let me first backtrack to the beginning of our travel day.  Initially, we thought we’d get started around noon, but when my 10:00a conference call was cancelled, we decided to head out earlier.  We left the house at 8:30a and were on the road in the Phaeton an hour later.  The comfortable 50F (10C) temp, blue skies, and sunshine made for a perfect day to get our wheels rolling.

The toad is hooked up; we’re ready to get on the road.

Securing the storage lot; I’m the designated gate keeper.

Today was a workday for me, so once we were safely on I-66 West, I fired up the company laptop and got cracking.  I gotta tell you — working as we rolled down the highway gives a whole new meaning to tele-commuting.  The wi-fi signal with our aircard/CradlePoint router/Wilson antenna set up was strong.  I managed to not only check emails, but get a VPN connection to the office network to export data for reports and send them onto my boss.  Nice; really nice — and it opens up new horizons for me should I wish to pursue them.

On this trip, we’re also testing out the Vonage VOIP home phone we set up here in the Phaeton in February (post here).   We both called our families in Turkey, and it was no different than calling from our stix & brix condo.  I love technology — especially when it works :-)

I exchange IMs and emails with my boss, and manage to get a whole lot of work done
while we’re rolling down the Interstate.

Left: I love my office on the road (Mui took the photo when we stopped at a rest area on I-81).
right: Mui takes advantage of the break at the rest stop to call his mom on the house phone.

The Phaeton fits nicely behind a semi at the rest stop.

The next two-hour segment of the drive was a comfortable one.  Traffic moved at a constant speed and wasn’t that heavy despite the number of semis with which we shared I-81.  There were a lot of RVs in the northbound lanes — the snowbird migration is well underway.  We didn’t see many RVs heading south.  In fact, the only one we saw was at the rest stop where we took our lunch break.

Speaking of the drive, Mui’s very happy with the performance of the Safe-T-Plus steering control device we recently had installed.  The Phaeton handled well to begin with, but with this device in place, he says it’s a dream to handle.  And there’s noticeably less sway when the semis whiz by us at high speeds.  More details in a future post.  (Mui’s sleeping, so I can’t bug him for information now.)

It was just too nice to be eating at home; we chose to eat at a picnic table instead.

Back on the road, we debated just pressing on to Townsend, TN.  Common sense won out in the end, and I went online to Woodalls to look for campgrounds en route.  Since Whytheville (actually, Max Meadows) was where we were going to initially stop anyway, I focused on that area.  And that brings us to where we are right now.

Fort Chiswell RV Park — Site 60 from the grassy knoll we face.

The campground is nice.  The sites are a bit tight, but it’s quite doable for an overnight stay.  Site 60 is a 50 Amp, pull-thru, FHU overlooking a grassy knoll.  We’re at the beginning of a row, and as luck would have it, several sites on our other side are empty.  It all adds up to plenty of privacy for us.  We didn’t have to unhitch the toad; a good thing for an overnight stop.

Site 60 is circled in red.
[map courtesy of the park website]

The park is not inexpensive.  The nightly rate is $33.50+tax.  Our Good Sam discount covered the taxes and saved us 50 cents to boot :-)  Cable TV is included in the rate; as is wi-fi with good speed for internet browsing, but slow for uploading photos.  And forget about streaming a video.

Site 60 from a different angle of view.

After we quickly set up, Mui washed the windshield to rid it of today’s bug casualties.  (There is a reason why I have just one photo from the road in this post.)  While he did that, I unpacked our bags, hung the clothes, and stocked the pantry with the food we brought from home.  Having fewer chores to do when we arrive at our destination campground tomorrow is a good thing :-)

Our nearest neighbors are the cows on the other side of that fenceline.

A quick dinner and a quiet evening at home — a pleasant way to end our first travel day.  We’re already fueled up, so we can get on the road without delay tomorrow morning.  But we won’t be in a hurry to check out.  After all, we have just 190 miles (304 km) to go and check-in at Tremont is not until 1:00p.

Speaking of fueling up.  We did so at the Flying J where we thought we might spend tonight.  The diesel credit price was $3.93/gallon — one of the best we saw en route — with a cash price of $3.87/gallon.  We did even better by using our Pilot/Flying J RV Plus card and got our diesel for $3.81/gallon.  Not too shabby!

Time to call it quits and get my beauty rest — mañana.