Hard-Learned Lessons From an RV Newbie: Part IV
This is the final part of our series. If you missed the beginning of our journey, you can catch up here: Hard-Learned Lessons From an RV Newbie: Part I
The arduous mountain range that tested us twice on the way up to Luray wasn’t as challenging on the way back to North Carolina, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a nail-biter. The Ford chugged and bucked its way up the steepest inclines and Matt did everything he could to keep us on the road. Our lowest speed this time hit around 25 mph—better than the 5 mph we had endured on the way up. But the truck apparently wasn’t fixed.
Our second-to-last stop was Roaring Gap, North Carolina. We opted to set up camp in Elkin and drive just the truck up to visit the grandparents. While a Walmart would have sufficed, we’d been there, done that and preferred hook-ups (and a relatively flat piece of land) if we could get them.
HARD-LEARNED LESSON: Grab a few extra books to place under the head or side of the mattress in case you just can’t seem to level. This will help prevent your spouse from rolling into you during the night, or worse, waking up with a headache that feels like an ax has been embedded in your brain!
It took a few last-minute phone calls to secure a spot, but Byrd’s Branch Campground had just received a cancellation so we snatched up the opportunity to settle ourselves, once again, in a serene nature-filled RV park. The one opening (#1) was a back-in site—something we had yet to tackle. With a little help from the kind owner, Matt was guided in safely. (Not quite the same as backing up a relatively small flats boat!) Rain had become a recurring theme of the trip, so we followed our set-up checklist amid drizzle and mud. At least we were now seasoned RV travelers and could hook in, power on, and level up in a matter of minutes.
After a relatively smooth drive up the mountain, thanks to being detached from the RV, we all spent the evening soaking up the conveniences of modern living—TVs, toilets, and ample lounging space—to occupy us while it rained. A lovingly prepared meal and four loads of laundry later, Matt and I headed back down the mountain to sleep while the boys enjoyed the luxury of their own queen beds for the night.
The next morning, as we reunited and prepared to continue our journey to visit my father and family for Father’s Day, we had no idea that this short respite was the calm before a few more storms to come…
The route could have been simple: Take the interstate down through Charlotte and into Greenville, South Carolina. Little to no mountains. Little to no risk. Unless, you wanted to save 20 minutes. With a hefty dose of optimism, Matt seemed to have gotten hit with short-timers. The nail-biting drive in North Carolina the day before was somehow forgotten as he bravely opted for the GPS route that would take us along the outskirts of Asheville, i.e. mountains.
The scenery was beautiful, but the tension in the air quickly became toxic. After once again finding ourselves in the familiar predicament of crawling up a mountain, we managed to pull off the highway and into a sketchy truck stop. Matt tinkered around under the hood of the truck, found very little, and we decided to forge ahead on the assumption that a 20 minute rest would be enough to recharge the engine. Our current route required another ten miles of incline before being able to coast into South Carolina, so Matt found an alternate route through back roads to keep us from encountering steep elevations. His mission was accomplished. Steep elevations weren’t a problem, however, narrow windy roads and unreliable cell phone coverage quickly became our latest dilemma.
HARD-LEARNED LESSON: Purchase paper maps, just in case.
Day Eleven | The worst of the white-knuckling
Shortly after the phone’s GPS directed us to take a sharp turn straight down into a dead-end road leading to an apple orchard, Matt screeched to a halt and made the firm decision to ignore Siri’s sage advice. We all held our breath and crossed fingers and toes as we waited… and waited for the GPS to recalculate. My phone completely gave up, but with some sort of divine intervention, Matt’s phone reconnected long enough to give us the direction we needed to resurface from the claustrophobic canopy tree-lined country roads and onto the spacious interstate 10 miles up ahead.
As soon as we let out our collective long-held exhale, a truck pulled up beside us, rolled down the window, and yelled that our storage compartment was wide open. Without going into details, the door flying open—even if unlocked—just wasn’t feasible. A quick inspection indicated that all we had lost was a loose dog bowl that had been hurriedly added at the last minute (hence, the unlocked door). After piecing the events of the day back together we remembered a shady character at the rundown truck stop lurking around the RV as we had scattered to our various duties—bathroom breaks, truck tinkering, dog walking—who must have run off as we returned. We hadn’t thought to check the bin before heading into that adventure along the narrow tree-lined back roads. Thank goodness nothing valuable had been stolen or flown out.
Unlike our first brush with auto collision catastrophe the week before, we all remained calm (on the outside) this time around. We arrived at our KOA campsite in North Greenville, followed our well-practiced set-up protocols, and all sat in the RV air-conditioned literally staring at the walls for 30 minutes as we gave our bodies space and time to process the trauma we had just endured. Mind-body practitioners would call this state (at least what I, aka the co-pilot, was experiencing) “functional freeze.”
Days Twelve and Thirteen | Clemson and Tandem 📷 @tandem_cc
To wrap up a very long story of our road trip trials and tribulations, we managed to enjoy a lovely Father’s Day dinner with extended family, a much-anticipated Facetime-led Clemson day trip (since our tour guide had been exposed to Covid-19), and a final parting gift of our own potential Covid exposure. On the final evening of our two-week journey, my step-mother suddenly came down with a fever and chills and we all scattered like cockroaches—us to our RV campsite and the rest of the family to their respective homes in Greenville.
The story has a happy ending, though. We made the ten-hour trek back home to Florida the following day after a quick stop at Tandem in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina to load up on crepes. Delicious! My step-mother recovered from her fever quickly, she tested negative a few days later, and none of us contracted the virus in the weeks to follow.
A month later, we’ve decided that as challenging as this maiden voyage was for us all, we’re excited to entertain the idea of doing it again one day soon. Maybe for a few months next time.
We also came away with two final lessons…
HARD-LEARNED LESSON: Laugh it off. Shit happens and if you can find a way to continually remind yourself that it’s all a learning experience, you can enjoy the real gifts of such an adventure—fresh air, body movement, change of routine, and disconnection from daily life.
HARD-LEARNED LESSON: If you approach the trip as a vacation (RV newbies are often conditioned to view “vacations” as relaxing, carefree days off) then you may set yourself up for disappointment. Be open to surrendering to unexpected adventures and you’ll come away having grown in ways you never could have anticipated.
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