Settling in for a Longer Stay in Virginia..

With just a short drive remaining to where we planned to stay and house sit for our friends we took our time getting ready to leave. We broke camp and hit the road right after lunch and a few hours later we pulled in to their gorgeously green farm between Woodstock VA and Winchester VA.

We have stayed here before as long time readers may know and we really love visiting this beautiful farm which is adjacent to the Shenandoah National Park. With the Shenandoah River cutting through the middle of the property there is always something to see or do.

Before we actually arrived our friends told there was a change in plans and they wouldn’t be vacating the house. That worried us at first but after talking with them they told us they had retrofitted the basement into an “apartment” we could stay in where we could easily continue our social distancing. When we saw what they had done for us in the basement we were stunned and very happy to know we had a safe place to hide out for a while. Incredible friends! We even have a patio to grill on!

Their farm sits on a hill overlooking the Shenandoah valley and is nearly 100 acres in size. Just across the river is their horse barn where a tenant is currently living and caring for horses. The horses are always a joy to observe from our window view or on our front porch as they run and play down below in the Shenandoah Valley with the mountains as the backdrop.

We have no set plan for how long we will be here but we will certainly leave long before it gets cold. In the meantime we are enjoying our daily ritual of having morning coffee, breakfast and then a 40 minute hike down to the river and back. It is feeling a bit like groundhog day once again and hey, we have actually seen a few groundhogs!

I’ll leave it right here with a final picture of where we sit each afternoon for happy hour, cheers our friends!!!

NOTE: We are currently in the Shenandoah Valley near Woodstock Virginia until who knows when

Virginia is Soooo Green!

We enjoyed our one night stay in Virginia at the Fort Chiswell RV Campground and since we had decided to stay longer at our next site we didn’t hit the road until about 10:00 am. We would have stayed later but the next stop was at a first come first served place and it was very close to the weekend so we thought we better get there a bit earlier.

Our planned stop was an easy drive up the highway to Buena Vista VA where we found our way to the park. I accidentally posted the photo above in the last blog but this was painted on a building in the town of Buena Vista and I loved it… “6002 Happy Citizens and 3 Old Grouches”.

Passing through town we crossed a bridge into Glen Maury Park. We pulled up to the office to pay and were told to just go pick a site. Well we looked around and could only find one power box with no one using it so we pulled into the site. It was then we discovered we were on a 30 amp site with no sewer unlike what we had read about this campground.

It turns out they do have some 50 amp with sewer sites however all but one was taken and all of those sites were located up a steep hill with lots of overhanging branches. Thus we decided to simply stay at the 30 amp site. The lower campground  is really just a large open field but is adjacent to the Maury River.

There is a cool older home on the site called the The Paxton House, but it's apparently closed to the public now. We also walked along the river as far as we could until the trail became in poor shape revealing it was obviously a hangout for kids. There was an old rope swing on a tree over the river and lots of trash. It’s sad how some choose to treat our scenic sites.

It was however a great place to stay to explore the Blueridge Parkway. One day we drove all the way from where we were to where the Blueridge Parkway meets the Shenandoah National  Park. Nearby was one of our favorite breweries so we talked about it and decided to go have our first craft beer at a brewery since the pandemic began.

When we arrived at Blue Mountain Brewery we were delighted to see that their large outdoor seating area was even larger than we remembered. We donned our masks and were seated by a masked hostess at a table on the edge where we we no clsoer than 10 feet to any other table. It felt almost sinful to be enjoying our first draft craft beer since March and gave us a very slight sense of normalcy albeit only for a fleeting moment…

Before leaving the area we also checked out a little brewery called Devil’s Backbone in Lexington Virginia. We picked up a growler and a few six packs from their curbside service. On the way back we checked out Lexington which appears to be a very cool little town. When all of this virus stuff is over we will have to further explore Lexington…

Cheers!

NOTE: We are currently in the Shenandoah Valley near Woodstock Virginia until who knows when…