5/28/15 Oh boy! Today was another travel day so we departed Small Country RV in Louisa, VA, and drove north and a bit west to the Skyline Ranch Resort in Front Royal, VA, which is at the north entrance to Shenandoah National Park. The Garmin selected a route that sent us down a variety of gorgeous, skinny, serpentine roads, some of which had pretty substantial uphill sections on them. One of the roads took us past Montpelier, where James Madison used to live but we zipped by at about 40 mph so we didn’t see much of anything there. The roads are quite scenic but very narrow in this part of the world and they offer few places to pull out for traffic which may be caught behind us. Virginia is not a state for novice or easily-frightened RV drivers, particularly those of us who elect to stay off the interstate highways which are lumpy.
The speed limits are fairly low on the roads we traveled today which is fortunate because it allowed us to enjoy the scenery. Unfortunately, the conditions noted above also resulted in some pretty substantial traffic queues behind us that I had no option to deal with other than ignoring the poor, miserable, slow-moving tailgaters that had only the Barbarian Invader’s bumper to look at. Fortunately, the low speed limits also allowed me to keep our 8 foot wide, 51 foot long, articulated, 10 ton vacation home from veering into the oncoming lanes and terrifying the innocent motorists fortunate enough to be traveling the other way. We did have a cop follow us for about 10 miles but I was able to keep the truck and fifth wheel trailer in one lane (mostly) and there was no danger of us exceeding the speed limit since I was unable to go fast enough and still keep from running off the road into some plantation.
Skyline Ranch is a nice park with full hookups and, since I got a membership to Resort Parks International with my Thousand Trails membership, the cost per night is only $10. The park has wi-fi for $3 a day, a pool, a stocked fishing pond, a hot tub (although I am too old and ugly to ever let anybody see me in one), horseback riding, a laundry, something called a “Soo Line Caboose” and advertise that they have something called “Holey Board,” which may or may not be something left from the Inquisition. We believe it is the same thing or game that they referred to as “Corn Hole” in Lynchburg. Whether it is Holey Board or Corn Hole, I’m not sure I would be too interested.