On Saturdays and Sundays there is a HUGE (silent 'H') flea market in Lexington, South Carolina, the 'suburb' of Columbia where we spent last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. Actually, there are a couple of huge flea markets in Lexington, but one of them is adjacent to The Barnyard RV Park. There are rows of long, open ended buildings inside which vendors ply all sorts of useless junk. Given our close proximity and with plenty of time left to complete our journey home (We don't have to be home until Saturday, April 7th when Allie, her maid of honor, Suzanne and Andy's mom and sister will be spending the afternoon perusing bridal gowns) we stuck around an extra night (Friday) and spent a couple hours making our way up and down row upon row of other people's crap. To be fair, there were a few things I found interesting - a banjo I probably could have had some fun plunking on, tools, artists displaying their work, barnyard fowl.
Neither of us found anything we couldn't live without.
Travis and I did, however, find a tiny stuffed Easter Bunny during our morning constitutional. I cleaned it up a little and zip-tied it to the grab bar beside Suzanne's seat in the coach.
Our somewhat evil looking Easter Bunny
When we arrived in Lexington on Wednesday, I spotted this gas station with diesel fuel at $2.64 a gallon. I'm always looking for low diesel fuel prices and $2.64 was several cents lower than any other price I had seen in town. As the station did not have a truck/RV section, the day before our departure we swung in on our way home from lunch to make sure I'd be able to negotiate the turns in and out. Anticipating having to back up in order to get close to the pump, on the afternoon of our departure I left the car disconnected from the coach and Suzanne followed me to the gas station.
Truck stops have high volume pumps that greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to fill a 150 gallon tank. This, however, was a standard pump - and even though I was only half empty, it took quite a while to pump 74 gallons of fuel. There was a wide, cul de sac separating the gas station from a couple of fast food joints - the big, circular end of which allowed plenty of room to turn the coach around. After getting pointed in the right direction, I attached the car while Suzanne ran into Bojangles to get us a couple of breakfast sandwiches.
Kind of a tight squeeze. But for $2.64/gal, it was worth the effort
We had about 230 miles to travel in order to reach Fort Chiswell, Virginia, our destination for the day. We've stayed at Fort Chiswell RV Park maybe five times over the past few years. Two hundred eighty five miles from our home in Herndon, Va, and at the junction of I-81 & I-77, it's a great first night stop for all destinations south or west.
We arrived late afternoon, set up, ate some leftovers and spent a quiet, uneventful night back in our home state of Virginia. Having spent the first night of our trip here back on December 1st, we had come full circle.
Sunday morning we left Fort Chiswell destined for one of our favorite places on the planet, the Shenandoah Valley - specifically, Luray, Virginia. We had only two hundred miles to travel and with plenty of fuel in the tank, we didn't have to stop fer nuthin'. Not far out of Fort Chiswell begins a steep, steady climb culminating around Christiansburg (elevation: 2,133'). The 450 Cummins had us chugging up and over the Blue Ridge in fine fashion.
We exited I-81 in New Market, Va. At this point one must climb up and over "The Gap" in the Massanutten to reach Luray, which lies nestled between the Massanutten and the Blue Ridge in the Page Valley.
Climbing through 'The Gap'
And down into Page Valley
Our home for the next three nights
So...
We've had this coach for two years and I just made a really cool discovery!
There is an 'L' shaped sofa in the living room area that, with the touch of a button, folds down into a bed. It's comfortable enough for one person. For two people... it's a little cramped. But Aaron and Molly spent a couple of nights on it during our trip to Williamsburg last fall and didn't complain.
The sofa in the upright position...
... and in the down position.
As you can see, the person sleeping on the outside has plenty of headroom. The person on the inside (against the wall)... not so much.
Look what I found while searching for a good spot for a new subwoofer for the in-dash entertainment system!...
There's an awesome feature of this sofa that we were completely unaware of!
Grab the release handle under the seat and out pops an extension that makes the bed into something much bigger and WAY more comfortable!
Now your head goes against the wall and both people have plenty of room! Duh!
AND...
With the sofa in the upright position, the 'extension' becomes a footrest! For additional comfort, you can recline the sofa to whatever position you want.
I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't know about this feature. Judging from the amount of dust and dirt underneath, I'm not sure the previous owner did either.
I think we'll watch a movie tonight from the comfort of our newly discovered lounge!
Thanks for reading the blog!
