Luray KOA, Luray, VA

When? August 15-17
Where? Luray KOA, Luray, VA
Cost?  $59 per night (plus taxes & resort fees and before KOA discount)
Hookups? Full
Type? Pull through
Site #? 46
Check in? 1:00pm
Check out? 1:00pm
Characters? Heather & Jon, David the dog, The Powell Family
Weather? 60s-80s

I love the Luray KOA. Such a great location. We had another great trip here this year. Different camp hosts, but still awesome. 

We arrived around 1:30 on Friday afternoon. We noticed that they didn't ask us about the pizza dinner like they have in the past, but since I'm gluten free, we had already planned on not eating pizza. We got all set up & took David (the dog) down to the dog park. Their dog park is fantastic! We met "Lily", the Great Dane. What a sight that was; David was so tiny next to her! They played so well together. 

The Powells arrived while we were at the dog park. We greeted them as they set up (in the site next to us, yay!) and they were telling us that the pizza people apparently quit right around the 4th of July! They were banking on pizza for dinner, so they were scrambling to figure that out.

We realized at some point that we needed to go to WalMart for a couple of things, so we offered to take J with us if they needed a trip. They decided to order pizza instead. I made some very tasty mushroom steak burgers and sweet potato fries. We had a great campfire that night, complete with s'mores!

Saturday morning, we got up & took the dogs to the dog park. Score for the pups being tired! Our group went to Luray Caverns and did the whole tour. I piggybacked one of the Powell twins for most of the trip through the Caverns. Always fun! After the Caverns, we had lunch, did the ropes/high course thing, and then did the maze. That was a full day! We stopped by WalMart again on the way back to the campground. We forgot a couple of things the day before, so it was all good with us!

Please don't make me go back in my crate! I'll be cute.

After the outing, we headed back to the trailer. Jon & David took a nap. 

It's a good thing I didn't want to take a nap too!

After nap time, we took David to meet Princess Grace. She's a camping Havanese. We met her (and her poppas) last year and she's the one who convinced Jon that the breed was a good size.

We did a combined dinner on Saturday night. I made pulled pork & the Powells did all sorts of fixins. We did a Chipotle burrito bowl type thing. Everything was great! The kids were so tired that they all missed dinner! Another campfire with great friends (and adult only s'mores!) was the perfect close to the evening.

Sunday was a sad day. Weekends are just too short! We took our time, packed up, and headed back to the lot to put the trailer away. It was supposed to be our last trip of the season, but the Powells talked us into one more trip this season. We'll be visiting another campground that we loved last year. YAY! 

Winnebago Brave/Itasca Tribute

We've been thinking about a Class A for a while; we originally thought about a Class A, but decided we should get in at the travel trailer level first. We've been camping in the trailer for 2 seasons now. We LOVE our lil Lance (reasons here). We've just always continued to look (because that's what people do, right?!)

Jon has had an obsession with Winnebagos. I've always thought they're nice, but have never seen a floorplan that I've loved, or even liked enough to say "yes, that's it!"Until now. I really like the floor plan of the Winnebago Brave/Itasca Tribute. If money were no object, we'd buy it today. But alas, it's not in the cards.

Things I really like about it:
The outside looks different. Sets it apart from everything else out there right now.
The finishes on the inside are nice.
The 27B floorplan is the perfect setup.
The shower is glassed in.
There's a good amount of counter space.
There are only 2 options, everything else is standard.
Love the slidable GPS unit.
The passenger work table.
The overhead storage that the doors slide instead of lift up.


What I don't like about it:
The U-dinette.
The tv is over the counter space. Meaning, if I'm prepping in the kitchen, you can't watch tv through me.
The shower isn't contained in the bathroom.


We're hoping to see one at the Hershey RV Show. For now, it's a dream, but I love to dream!

Harbor View RV Resort, Colonial Beach, VA

When? July 11-13, 2014
Where? Harbor View RV Resort, Colonial Beach, VA
Cost?  $37 per night (plus taxes & resort fees)
Hookups? Full
Type? Back in (there are some pull throughs)
Site #? C21 (across from the comfort station!)
Check in? 12:00pm
Check out? 11:00am
Characters? Heather & Jon, David the dog
Weather? 80s

On Friday, we headed to the trailer & got all hooked up. We spent some time in our driveway before we left trying to figure out what we were forgetting. When in doubt, go back into the house & look; we realized we left all of our food that we packed up in the cooler. Oops! We had a few options, but ultimately decided to continue on and deal with it when we got home on Sunday. We also decided it was a good idea to give our neighbors a key to our house. 

We got on our way and traffic was already backed up like crazy on 95 south. Took forever to get to Rt 3. Once we were on Rt 3, it was smooth sailing until our GPS decided to take us down some random roads. We eventually figured it out, but definitely no thanks to our GPS!

Once we got to Harbor View, I went in to check in. It was kind of weird because I had to get into a golf cart with the check in person & go pick our site. I've never had to do that before! I picked our site & then we drove over and started getting settled in. After getting set up, we headed to packet pickup for my race that weekend & then went to the store to get groceries and bathing suits (you've gotta love WalMart!). 

After a longer trip than we were expecting, we made dinner & called it a night. The next morning was going to be an early one.

Saturday morning was the Colonial Beach Sprint Tri. We were up & out of the campgrounds before most people were even thinking of waking up. I did my thing during the tri & had a bit of a wake up call about doing races with no training. (To be fair, I had been sick leading up to this one & was out of commission for about 1.5 months.) After the race, we headed back to the trailer.

Once at the campgrounds, I showered and promptly went back to sleep. I managed to sleep until about noon, when I woke up starving. Jon and David (the dog) were outside during my nap, relaxing. Made lunch and chilled out for a while. We eventually went to the pool, which was really nice. Much larger than most campground pools. After the pool, we made dinner & relaxed more. It was a really calm trip after the race!

On Sunday, we woke up around 7:30 or so and got packing up. We were back on the road around 9:30. Got the trailer back in it's space & then headed home. When we got home, I went to the kitchen to figure out the cooler situation. Somehow there was still ice in the cooler & pretty much everything was saved! Yay! 

American Heritage RV Park, Williamsburg, VA

When? June 13-16, 2014
Where? American Heritage RV Park, Williamsburg, VA
Cost? $49.25 per night
Hookups? Full
Type? Back in (there are some pull throughs)
Site #? 84
Check in? 2pm
Check out? noon
Characters? Heather & Jon, David the dog
Weather? 80s

Originally this weekend, I was supposed to do the Rev3 Williamsburg 70.3 triathlon. Well, due to a cold I picked up in Disney & a never-ending cough, that plan went down the tubes. We decided to still go camping since we had the reservation. 

The drive down was one of the most eventful drives we've had. David threw up 3 times between our house & the trailer. Thank goodness he stopped once we had the trailer hooked up. Once we got to the Richmond Bypass, the rain started. It was just pouring! Jon handled it well. 

We got to the campground between storms & got checked in. We were assigned to site 84 (which happened to be right next to the camp hosts), drove over, & it started pouring again! We managed to get backed in without me getting out of the car (go Jon!) and then waited it out. After about 30-40 minutes, the weather cleared up enough that we could get set up. 

We managed to get set up pretty quickly while David hung out inside the trailer. Once set up, we hit up the grocery store for weekend rations. We got back just in time because another storm was headed in! That storm had us a bit worried as there were tornado warnings going with it.

The following day, we went to packet pickup for my triathlon (even though I wasn't doing it). After packet pickup, we went to the Williamsburg outlets.  Eventually, we headed back to the trailer.

After dinner, another camper visited a bit too long, despite our best efforts to excuse ourselves. We were left with a promise of another visit the following day.

Sunday, we headed to Jamestown Settlement after we knew the triathlon was cleared out of the general area. After Jamestown, we headed to Yorktown. After exploring Yorktown, we headed back to the campground. Once there, we decided to head home early, as Jon had a flight (for work stuff) to catch the next day. 

After a crazed pack-up, we hit the road & a 2 hr trip from Williamsburg back to the storage place turned into 3 hrs. Gotta love traffic! We had about 30 minutes (in the dark) to disconnect & get out of the storage area. We did forget a couple of things, but no big deal. Nothing a trip to the trailer the following weekend didn't solve!

Walt Disney World!, Orlando, FL with stops in Waltersboro, SC & Dillon, SC

When? May 17-28, 2014
Where? New Green Acres, Waltersboro, SC; Fort Wilderness Campground, WDW, FL; Bass Lake, Dillon, SC
Cost? varied based on campground
Hookups? Full
Type? Pull through; Back in; Pull through (respectively)
Site #? C38; 104; B8
Check in? varied based on campground
Check out? varied based on campground
Characters? Heather & Jon for camping; Mrs A, L, C, and C for Disney
Weather? 80s - almost 100 (!)

Pre-trip prep
This trip has been in the works for almost a year now. My youngest sister-in-law (J's sister L) graduated high school on June 3. We did all of our planning & decided to tow down to Disney.

The weekend before this trip, we headed to the trailer to install the new Select Comfort bed and bring a bunch of supplies. We also took a bunch of stuff home. Thank goodness that we did all of that because we thought it'd only take us an hour or so... After 2 hrs, we called it a day and left the rest for the trip.

May 17
We left our house around 4am. Got to the trailer around 5am, hooked up, and were on the road by 6am. J installed the TireMinder valves on the tires so that we could keep track of the tire pressures on our first long haul. We knew we needed to be south of Richmond, VA before the crazy beach traffic started (so by 9 or so), hence the early start.

Driving was uneventful. Can't really ask for much more! The hardest thing was finding places to stop with the trailer for gas & food. We tried to make sure that there was food wherever we stopped for gas. We saw another (utility) trailer blow a tire. That was kind of scary. He rode his rim a little too long & his tire locked up. Still not sure why he didn't get off the road!

Around 3pm, we pulled into New Green Acres Campground in Walterboro, SC. After setting up, we went to the Super Walmart to pick up a few things. Walmart in different towns are always fun to check out. After that side trip, we got gas & headed back to the campground to cook dinner - steak (from our farmer's market at home), broccoli salad, mushrooms, and gluten free cornbread. It was delicious! We headed to bed kind of early since we'd been up since 3am.

May 18
After waking up on our new Select Comfort bed, we got a later start than we were originally thinking. Ah well. We had about 6 hrs to go to Disney. We got on the road & had a pretty easy drive. We hit traffic just before Orlando, but it wasn't too bad.

We pulled into Fort Wilderness and were directed into a line to check in. It was pretty cool to not have to get out of the car to check in!

We were put into spot 104. The people in 106 arrived just before we did & were having some problems backing in to their spot. It is pretty tight through loop 100. Thankfully, the people who were in 107 were there & offered to move their truck so we'd have an extra foot of space to back in. It really helped!

Once we got backed in, we set up, and then decided to head into the Magic Kingdom. We stayed long enough to do a couple of rides, see Wishes!, and call it a night. It had been a long day!

May 19 - 26
We played at Disney. A lot. In the super hot temperatures! The little Lance did perfectly with no problems with the AC at all. On the 26th, we started to pack things up a bit. We had professional pictures done (waiting on them). Celebrated my birthday & L's high school graduation. Overall good trip.

May 27
We got up pretty early (well, early for this Disney trip), finished packing up, had breakfast, and got the trailer hooked back up. We got on the road & started to haul up to SC. We needed to make Dillon, SC. We stayed at Bass Lake Campground. It was another easy on/off for 95. The town was interesting, to say the least. Not too long after we got in & set up for the night, a pretty good thunderstorm came rolling through. Again, little Lance did wonderfully!

May 28
We headed out around 9ish and got on the road for the rest of the trip home. The trip went uneventfully (YAY!). We got parked, unhooked, cleaned up a bit, and bid adieu to the Lance until our next trip.

Overall
The TireMinder gave us such peace of mind on this trip. The trip was the longest Jon's ever towed & it went perfectly. We really couldn't have asked for a better towing experience! I'm proud of Jon for doing so well with the trip. Up to 9 hrs at a time is a long time to concentrate on driving!

Pohick Bay, Lorton, VA

When? April 4-6, 2014
Where? Pohick Bay State Park, Lorton, VA
Cost? $43.50 (jurisdiction) per night, plus $10 off our total overall
Hookups? Full
Type? Back in
Site #? 
Check in? 1pm
Check out? 11am
Characters? Heather, Jon, & our new(ish) puppy David
Weather? 50s

We've been trying to camp at Pohick since we got the trailer. The entire reason? It's a VERY short tow from where we keep the trailer. Great for a quick weekend, shake out, de-winterizing, etc trip. We managed to get in for our shake out trip this year by booking several months in advance. Thanks to an RV show we attended, we had a $10 off coupon to either Pohick or Bull Run, so we used that in addition to our resident rate.

On Friday, April 4, we got the trailer mid-day (from our storage place) and towed over to Pohick. David, our puppy, managed to throw up 4 times on this trip. Sigh. Poor thing gets car sick. It confirmed to us that taking him to FL in May would be a bad idea.

We got set up without too many problems... except Jon managed to over-tighten the water heater and blow a 2 amp mini blade fuse. Right. We definitely didn't have a spare one of those lying around. After a slight freak out, we decided to deal with it the next morning.

We took a quick walk down one of the paths & decided it was too muddy to continue with the pup. It had been raining for a few days before the trip, so it wasn't that surprising. After a while, we made dinner, showered in the comfort stations, and chilled out that night.

The next morning, we made a few phone calls & finally found the 2 amp mini blade fuse at AutoZone. So, we made a trip (with David with us) to go get the fuse. We also stopped & got another case of water. We spent the rest of the day fixing the water heater, changing out the thermostat, making lists of things we needed to do get for the trailer for the season, etc. Overall a pretty relaxing day. David seemed to really enjoy being at the campground.

The boys kind of took over the bed! Good thing I like them both!

Atwood Stove Problems

Last camping season, on our last trip out, we started having this weird flare up with our front burner of the stove. We were hoping it was a wind thing, as we had read that on windy days, it can cause flare ups.

Fast forward to the first trip of this year (which I still need to do a trip report for - I'll get it up this week!) and we're having the same problem. Well, crap. Now we needed to do some research about what was causing the issue.

Thank goodness for the Lance Owner's forum. They've saved us so much time & money. Seriously.

Anyhow, someone recently posted about the same problem with their Atwood stove. Turns out that Atwood decided plastic bushings were a good idea. Um, right. Plastic bushings, which connect to the valves that provide gas to the burners, which produce fire. Nothing could ever go wrong with those!

As you travel, the burners come loose from the valves. When that happens, the bushings aren't connected properly & they can melt. That's the gist of it anyhow. While we were having issues with the front burner, the other two were coming loose too.

All three burners

Melted bushing

Front burner, melted bushing, new bushing

Close up of the melted bushing & new bushing

Where the burner naturally sat to line up the screw holes. Notice that the valve & burner still aren't all that well connected. 

The screw hole needs to be up slightly more in order for everything to line up properly. We ended up bending the metal at the back (where the screw hole is) to push the burner into the valve.

We ended up bending the metal in the back of the burner (where the screw hole is) to push the burner into the valve on all three burners. Hopefully this fix holds for a while. At least now we know how to fix it if we need to!

(--Heather)