Biking & a Hike along Blue Ridge Parkway

It was a cool sunny drive to Galax, VA, a few miles off I-77. Our plans were to do a section of the New River Bike Trail that starts in Galax and goes to a long bridge over the New River. It was cold about 45^oF and cloudy. We decided we would try it anyway. We dressed warmly and had gloves, but being our first bike ride we felt we had gone far enough so we turned around at 9 miles, uphill back to our RV. We loved the trail, but I forgot to take pictures.

The weather report called for light rain on Monday so we decided to skip going up to the VA Creeper Trail, which we had done about 20 years ago.

We decided to go up to the Blue Ridge Parkway which we had enjoyed about 40 years ago. We got off when it started to drizzle and got foggy at Boone, NC and spent the night at another Walmart.

We got back on the parkway and stopped at the first craft shop and visitor center. We found out that all the other campgrounds and visitor centers had closed at the end of October.

The weather started to clear up so we took a short hike to Linville Falls.

The day got more sunny and the views were spectacular. Very little traffic and we did not see one RV. I'll bet this place is a zoo in season.

You can only average about 35 miles/hour, so it turned into a long day, we had only travelled about 120 miles to Hendersonville, NC and another overnight at a Walmart.

If it warms up this morning, Tuesday, we will try biking again on a local bike trail that follows along a local creek.

Later we will head over to our friend’s, Greg and Sandy Lewis, home in the South Carolina mountains.

Cold Weather in Cleveland, We head south on 11/11

We had a warm spell to get all packed and ready to go. We should have left last week but we had our annual early Thanksgiving dinner with all our family. It’s getting to be a tradition since we head south in early November. Our last blog post shows where we expect to travel this year but plans often change.

To keep from reinjuring my back, we bought a Kevlar canoe that is 20 lbs. lighter the our old ABS canoe.

To keep Peggy peddling on all the bike trails, we bought a really cool used Burley Tandem bike. We practiced with it all summer and she loves it. It looks like we can double the mileage we normally peddle in a day on the Rails to Trails bike paths that we love.

I had to change my hitch to move the bikes 5” higher so as not to block my tail lights. The tandem is 8’ long so needed to have a local canvas company make a custom cover to keep the dirt off when we travel. It turned out he only lived a mile from our home so he dropped over to measure and then deliver the beautiful cover.

I will provide our blog with a option to read in the order of our travels as well as in standard blog format with latest news on top.

Tentative Planning for 2017-18 Winter Trip

We decided to head back to Florida again this fall & winter. We will bring our new lightweight Mad River canoe and our new Burley Tandem Bicycle. We hope to do some Rails-to-Trails in VA, NC and GA on our way south. All of our plans can change depending on the weather, but we hope to visit Greg & Sandy in SC and end up in Orlando to fly home to CLE to spend Christmas with our big family. Here are some maps showing our route planning up to Christmas.

1 Home, 2 Galax, VA, 3 Va Creeper Trl, 4 New River, NC, 5 Blue Ridge Pkwy, 6 Greg in SC, 7 Augusta, GA, 8 Laura Walker State Park, 9 Okefenokee, GA, 10 Ocean Pond -  Nat'l Forest, 11 Palatka Trail, FL, 12 Juniper Springs, 13 Silver Lake, 14 Wekiva Springs, 15 Store RV in Orlando

Any friends that care to join us along the way, now is the time to let us know. On all of our campsites we can share a second vehicle, since we don't pull a car with us.

Back Home a Little Early–March 7th

Here are a few pictures from this year’s trip.

We got home a little earlier than planned. We both were getting a little homesick but the biggest factor was the weather. Near the end of our trip we like to head back to northern Florida and watch the weather forecasts closely. We look for at least two good weather days to drive and some warm weather to unpack. This usually occurs around mid-March.

Even though Cleveland’s weather was warm in February all the long term forecasts were pointing to a very cold March. When we were unpacking this Wednesday it was sunny and 60^oF. The next 60^o day is not forecast to occur until April and the weather will be below freezing until around the 19th of March.

Another great decision I made was to stay off the interstate highways until we got to Columbia, SC. See the map in our last blog. We basically took US-301 which passes through lots of little towns and has speed limits of about 60 mph. Comparing it to our drive last year was like night and day. The miles were the same but we actually made it 20 minutes faster and there was virtually no traffic. We had good scenery and the drive was very relaxing. I-95/I-26 has hundreds of trucks along with cars trying to pass everybody at 75 mph. It is bumper to bumper white knuckle driving for a motorhome that only wants to go 65 mph.

It was around 1 PM when we got to I-77 so we kept on going past Columbia, and Charlotte and stopped near Statesville for the night at 3 PM. It was a good time to go through these cities with all the road construction and traffic tie-ups.

It was still a dry drive until we reached the WV Turnpike. It was not heavy or windy and the rain stopped when we left the pike. We got home at 3:30 PM and decided to wait until Wednesday to unpack in the nice warm weather. I did have to winterize the RV after I saw that a real cold spell was coming.

Our Trip by the Numbers

The total trip duration was 116 days but we were home for the holidays for 20 days.
We drove 3200 miles, averaging about 9 mpg.
Our average camp cost was about $18/night.
We paid as high as $46/night at Fort Desoto County Park in St. Petersburg.
We paid as low as $6/night at Ocean Pond National Forest Campground with no electric hookup.
We canoed on 11 different rivers for a total of about 120 miles.
We biked a total of over 250 miles, mostly on bike trails.

Most of all we both stayed healthy and didn’t even get a cold this winter.

I posted 30 blogs this season. This is our last Blog until next fall.

If this is the first time that you are visiting our 2016-17 Florida Blog you may want to click this to read about our trip in Chronological Order rather than going backwards (As all Blogs do) from today to the start of the trip.

Last Campground - Ocean Pond

We had a nice no traffic drive on back roads from Juniper Springs up to Ocean Pond campground in the Osceola National Forest. We had hoped to get a campsite with electricity but all were full.

It seems like la lot of campers like to take extended stays here since the cost is only $12/night for seniors. The only available sites had water hookups and were only $6/night.

We hoped with nice sunny skies my solar arrays could keep the batteries charged. However we had rain one morning and too much shade in our campsite to keep fully charged. We had to run the generator a few times to top off the batteries and to run our microwave, waffle iron & toaster. Our TV runs fine from the power inverter and doesn’t take that much battery power.

The small lake doesn’t interest us enough to take the canoe down from the RV but there are a lot of forest roads in the area for us to bike on.

We took a short ride each day past some of the rustic campgrounds in the forest. The first day was in the 80’s but after the rain & cold front came in it barely hit 70^o each day.

We were going to go up to the Okefenokee swamp and canoe when we left here on Sunday but we decided based on the weather in Cleveland and missing our families, maybe on Monday morning we should just start our drive heading home.

I think we will start on some back roads and stay off the interstate highways, at least until we reach I-77 in Columbia, SC.