The drive from Virginia Beach up to Shenandoah National Park was going to be our longest yet. With that in mind, we skipped stopping in Williamsburg, which we had considered checking out. We did not, however, skip the Costco in Richmond. We also needed to refill our propane tank for the first time, and used our phones to find a place somewhat on our route. Expecting to head to a typical commercial propane business, we were a bit surprised to end up at a house on a rural road. This home was the unlikely location of Blue and White Propane. It couldn’t have been a better stop. The guy running the place was sitting in a lawn chair in the driveway just waiting for a customer to pull up, or for the hours to pass. I imagine he’d be happy either way. $38 dollars and a not-so-brief description of the business, property, garden crops, area, and family history later, and we were on our way with a full propane tank. From that point on, it was an awesome change of scenery as our route took us on a scenic byway through historic Virginia villages. It looked and felt very Appalachian. Once we got to the actual Shenandoah National Park, we opted to buy an annual National Parks Pass for $80 instead of paying $20 to just get in this one park. We knew that this was only the first of many national parks we’d see this year.
Upon arrival at Mathew’s Arm campground, we drove through to find a site that we liked. It was here that we learned a lesson: if you find a great site but you want to keep exploring, put something (a chair, bucket, toys, whatever) on the site to claim it. We liked site C-134, but of course I wondered if there was something better, so we jotted down the number and kept driving along the one-way roads. We saw a few more sites that were decent, but none as nice as C-134. On our second lap, someone backed into the site we wanted. At this point, Ryan was getting annoyed and just wanted me to pick one. On the third lap, the site that we wanted was open again. We quickly backed in and Ryan grabbed his bike of the carrier to go pay for the site and officially claim it. The site had tons of dandelions, other flowers, and a large area for the kids to play in – it was AWESOME, but so unlevel. Maybe that was why the other RV bailed on the site. After stacking our ‘fancy’ leveling blocks (pieces of wood we’d accumulated along the way) as best we could, we were still super sloped down to the right, but we made it work. As soon as we exited the campervan we were greeted with terribly annoying little flies. The kids didn’t really seem bothered, but they were so awful that we quickly set up the screen room to have a safe haven. We hoped the flies were only an evening problem, but they were still present in the morning. When we asked one of the park rangers about the flies, he half-joked, “Haven’t you ever heard of the Virginia wave?” After finishing up a late breakfast of pancakons (yes, they are exactly what they sound like), we briefly chatted with a lady named Lilo and her sweet dog Mellow. Then we were off to explore. We thought it would be fun to bike over to the neighboring picnic area in the park that was only two miles away. After the brutal one-mile ride up a very steep hill just to get out of the campground, we decided we would coast back down and stay put where we were.
After resting our legs from the torturous bike ride, we ventured out on a short hike around the campground. Brooks was not at all a fan of the baby carrier, so the hike ended up being an arm workout as I carried him. We got back on the bikes for one more cruise before dinner. We rode around the campground and met a young family of four from France. They shipped their RV over and also had plans to tour much of the US. We were able to share funny stories of how a day on the road is with two young kids.
We had pork tenderloins thawed, so that’s what we were having for dinner. Ryan decided to go on a firewood raid of the empty sites and managed to hit the jackpot. He was able to find enough wood to cook the pork on the fire-pit grill and the sweet potatoes in the coals. To end the delicious fire-cooked dinner we had smores, or as Cooper calls them: “pores”.
After sitting around the fire for a while, I got the kids ready for bed by myself so that Ryan could pack up the site. We were due for rain overnight and into the morning, and knew we needed to get out early so that we could get a site reserved at our next stop for Memorial Day weekend. I would have liked to stay in this nice and cheap ($15) campground another night, but we didn’t know what to expect since it was our first holiday weekend on the road.