Our Great Adventure Heads North

At 10:09 on Wednesday, August 15 we picked up our Big Sky from the RV dealer where we had left it for some minor tweaking and headed out westward on our great adventure. First stop will be in Ohio, where we will visit family before heading westward. The travel north and west through the Allegheny Mountains on the PA Turnpike in our Big RV proved to be less challenging then we feared. The truck proved equal to the task of hauling our 22,000 pound “camper” through the mountains, although David was quite appreciative of the extra gauges he had installed in the truck to protect against overheating the transmission. Jo was in hog heaven as she travelled down the highway instant messaging with her friends, thanks to the air card in her computer. While we both were listening to golden oldies on our new Sirius radio and were sassing back at “Karen”, the bossy voice of our Garmin GPS.

After a long days drive, we arrived at a beautiful little campground in Streetsboro, Ohio, just off the Ohio turnpike exit heading up to Cleveland. The campground was covered in lush green grass everywhere, and we had a beautiful view out our dining room window as there were no campers in any of the sites between us and the woods 1,000 feet away. What a very wonderful change from the dry, dusty conditions of the campground where we spent a month in Maryland.
On Thursday, we had a wonderful visit with from David’s older brother John and his wife Carol. As with virtually all of the family and friends who have come to see our Big Sky during the last two months, John and Carol were amazed at how spacious and comfortable our Big Sky is. Jo fixed a lovely lunch in her big kitchen, and we had a wonderful visit all afternoon in our home on wheels. When they left in the evening, Carol left behind a delicious loaf of homemade zucchini bread which provided us many tasty snacks over the next several days.

On Friday we traveled westward to Vermilion Ohio to visit with Jos sister and several members of her family who were coming by for an impromptu mini-reunion. Jo found a lovely little campground right on Lake Erie, just outside Vermilion. Things initially looked a bit dicey when it became apparent that all the beautiful trees around each campsite would make it far more problematic to back in our Big Sky into the one campsite they had available. Fortunately, at the suggestion of neighboring camper, we drove in a loop around his RV and pulled in from the back side of the campsite rather than try to back in from the road. Thank goodness the grass we drove through was not too soft or we might not have been able to succeed with this maneuver.

After spending Friday night visiting with Jos family, we invited everyone over to our home on wheels for lunch on Saturday. Jo’s brother and nephew drove up on their motorcycles bringing along Jo’s great niece Rachel and great nephew Ryan. David hooked up the barbeque to the main RV propane tank and cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for everyone. The day was bright and sunny and the breeze coming across the lake was wonderfully pleasant.

That beautiful weather, unfortunately, did not last. Late Saturday night a cool front came through and brought a steady rain. Sunday morning, David decided to take advantage of the rain to wash off all the dust that had accumulated during our stay in Maryland. After spending an hour or more washing the Big Sky and the truck in the rain, he looked like a drowned rat.