Traveling Companions, and Architecture

It's a small motorhome. If anyone lived in it with me I'd have to kill them ;)
Even my cat stays home in Virginia. But I do now have traveling companions. May I introduce: Strawberry, Chocolate Mint, and Stevia. The Strawberry, in its cute little pot, is because I am obsessed with having a pot of strawberries and have never managed to get them to be productive. The others are because it's nice to brew up a pot of oreo cookie tea. Stevia is a Very Sweet herb, used for sweetening stuff when you still want to be healthy. I talk more about that on my other blog, Sweet Enough Already



When we travel, they ride on the steps. When we stop, they come out and enjoy the sunlight while I work.



Or while I explore the back roads looking for what's cool wherever I am...



Riding around Harmony, NC I stopped to admire the architecture. This castle is on a back road near Van Hoy campground.



This is Pirates Landing Seafood Restaurant at exit 85 off I-77 in NC.



The Jolly Roger flies and pirates climb the rigging.



And when you leave, they tell you where to go ;)

Stuck in Park at the Park, or How To Un-stick a Parking Pawl

Last week I stopped to visit that same friend. Pulled into the campground and parked, put wood out and drove up on it. But I hadn't gone quite far enough onto the block and even though I had set the parking brake, when I released the regular brake the motorhome slipped backwards. My suspicions were immediately confirmed. I was stuck in park.

A parking pawl is inside the automatic transmission. It's the part that keeps the vehicle from rolling when you put it in park, and the part that makes it hard to get out of park when you park on an incline and don't set your emergency brake first. Busting my tranny is not high on my wish list, so I try to always set the emergency brake. This time it didn't help.

What do you do? I had lots of offers and suggestions, many of which involved gently pushing the motorhome forward. Right - forward, and up onto that block that was stuck under the rear wheel. And I have a motorcycle rack on the back of the motorhome.

What we actually did, once we found someone with a jack handle to fit them, is jack up the back end on the stabilizing jacks I never use. Enough to remove the leveling block. And then the vehicle shifted so nice and easy.

I wouldn't like to do that on a hill, but then it wouldn't have happened on a hill because I did set the parking brake.

My RV shop doesn't carry the kind of jack handle I need for those built-in stabilizing jacks, but now I'm determined to find one that does just in case.

A Tale of Two Mills

A few weeks ago, a friend and I rode out to Linney's Mill to get fresh ground corn meal. Linney's Mill is a working mill in Union Grove, NC. They are one of the few fully operational and producing old water mills in existence in NC. The mill store offers stone-ground cornmeal and grits as well as other flour mixes.





The next weekend I worked in Durham, NC and got to revisit West Point on the Eno. The mill there is no longer operational but the Eno is beautiful and the park is peaceful and shady.

Baby Mantids

Hey, Sue, these are for you. Everyone else, you can look if you want. I wish I'd had my good camera when this little guy decided to hang out on my finger!

Warning!

While Sue & I were canoing, we found a couple of beach balls had drifted down to the dam at the lower end of the lake. We retrieved them and brought them back to the swimming area.
I was pretty amazed by the warning label on this beach ball. Somehow I had never thought of a beach ball as a hazardous object. It's too big to swallow and choke on. It's too soft to give you a concussion. So?

Just what constitutes "competent supervision" for beachball use, anyway? I mean, beyond what common sense would dictate for swimming in general.

Izaak Walton League of Lynchburg

While my RV was in the shop getting its new roof put on, my friend Sue and I went camping. Although we both do 18th century Rendezvous camping, this time we camped in modern nylon tents.
(All varieties of camping are fun: car camping, RVing, primitive camping, backpacking, you name it...)
We set up camp in the shadiest spot I could find us at Walton Park, the Izaak Walton League of Lynchburg facility, and enjoyed a pleasant beat-the-heat weekend, mostly swimming.

The Izaak Walton park is one of my very favorite places to be. There's lots to do there, more fun than I can cram into any one weekend. Take a quick tour with me:

IWLL members enjoy

Tent camping

RV camping, seasonal or overnight

Archery range - and a really cool archery woods walk too.


The lower lake is for swimming, boating and fishing. The upper lake (no picture, sorry) is for fishing.)

Besides the picnic pavillion, there are many picnic tables and even a huge grill suitable for cooking for a large crowd.

This is the skeet range. There are also ranges for rifle and pistol. We have various contests and events.
Finally we tied the canoe to the tree, packed up our gear, and returned to the workaday world and, in my case, other sorts of camping.