Driving an RV can be exciting…

We left the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and said a fond farewell to our very good friends Jerry and Kathleen knowing full well we will cross paths with them again some day soon. We stayed one more day than we should have since the day we left the forecast was rain, rain, and more rain… I hate driving in the rain…

We left around 9:30 and at least we were lucky that the rain didn’t get heavy for more than half the trip. This was good since we seemed to have several issues that forced us to find places to pull over. It began as we were heading north on Interstate 81 where upon turning on the wipers the one  on the passenger side came loose (which it has also done several times in the past). I am not sure why the part that supposedly clasps onto the wiper arm just simply doesn’t hold. Since the expectation was for a lot more rain I decided to stop, get a bread twist tie and tie it around the wiper arm to secure it. Thankfully it worked.

Then as we approached Winchester, Virginia we received an error on our Break Buddy which caused us to pull over again. This time it seems that it had just come “un-synced” since I simply recalibrated it and it was happy… or was it? We hadn’t gotten very far down state route 522 when it error coded again. This time I looked over the unit more closely and figured out that a leg had stripped and wouldn’t screw out to make it longer thus causing it to be off balance. So I simply screwed in the other leg thereby making it stable and once again all was well, or was it? Just before we turned on to state route 127 heading into the mountains it coded a 4 which is the indicator for a low battery. We never have had a low battery issue in the past so I started up the toad and ran it a bit while trying to figure out what caused the low battery. Turns out it was a turn signal that we inadvertently left on apparently when we initially put the break buddy on… sigh…

Well other than rain, steep 9-10 percent grades, and lots of winding roads the rest of the trip was uneventful! We drove through parts of West Virginia, Maryland and finally Pennsylvania. We came down the mountains and took route 51 into more mountains and rain until we got onto Interstate 68, then to PA 40 back into more mountains until we got to our site at Tub Run Recreation Area.  It is neat little COE park on Youghiogheny Lake that is very primitive (only electricity). A rough 4 miles of road into the park brought us to this little gem for our one night stay. Don’t expect any cell service or TV off the antenna here but for $21 per night it a neat spot to explore this area from.

  

Once we were set up at around 2:30 we drove around to sightsee a little and discovered that Frank Lloyd Wright has two building here called Kentucky Knob and Falling Waters. We hoped to tour them but with the charge of 20 bucks per person and our limited time frame we opted instead to stroll around the grounds and view the sculpture gardens instead. We also visited nearby Ohiopyle State Park where we originally had planned to stay until I had read about the steep entry road. I was sure glad we chose not to stay there as the park isn’t anything special for RV’s and the road was really not good at all for large motorhomes.

A last stop to see was Cucumber Falls in the state park and we were back to the RV for supper and some sleep. Tomorrow we will go to Fox Den Acres Campground near Pittsburgh where we will stay a week to explore in and around the city… sigh more rain tomorrow is predicted so we hope it passes through before we leave…