Yes, back to Lorton and the Pohick Bay Regional Park for our fourth visit. This will be the shortest of the four – just four nights this time – because we are committed to getting the MD and DE stickers on our map. These little states are hard to get to – particularly Delaware. Who goes to Delaware in an RV? No one I know.
This hop turned had the misfortune to encounter some lousy travel weather. It rained both days. I believe that is now five straight travel days on the QTN that had at least some rain. Five out of six. Lucky us.
Checking the tires
I guess I should say a few words about our stay at the Pine Ridge Campground in Roebuck, SC. This is a park that gets good reviews from other travelers (they claim to be one of the 300 best RV parks in America), but the charm was mostly lost on us. The access road was horrible – narrow with steep hills and lots of bumps – and the roads inside the park weren’t much better. There is no cable, no trash pickup and no dog park. We had one of the 6 pull-through sites that are favored by short-term residents, so we had neighbors setting up and tearing down every day. The pool is small and unattractive and the WiFi is nearly useless.
And the weather sucked, which didn’t improve our opinion of the place. It was cold all week, with temperatures dropping below freezing nearly every night and rain on three of the days. Cold, damp, gloomy. Not our kind of place.
Cold, wet playground
Some long-term residents
The only positive is that the owner is a really nice guy – very helpful and informative.
Roebuck is near Spartanburg. I looked into what there is to do in Spartanburg. Not much. TripAdvisor lists the #1 and #2 attractions as city parks. The #3 attraction is the shopping mall. Such is Spartanburg.
On Saturday we had to do our tear-down in a driving, cold rain, with me kneeling in deep red mud. The most miserable tear-down ever.
Good riddance!
QTN Hop 3, Day 1: Roebuck, SC, to Bracey, VA
292 miles via I-26 and I-85.
QTN Hop 3, Day 1
It was gloomy all day, but not particularly cold – in the 60s most of the day. The road was relatively flat. We stopped for gas in Mebane, NC, about 20 miles short of our planned refueling stop. I had made the mistake of filling the truck’s tanks before going to Walmart for some supplies, forgetting how far Walmart was from the RV Park, so I had 15 miles on the odometer before we even hitched up. That made the planned stop a bit of a stretch.
Jett buying snacks for 6 kids
The refueling stop was not a truck stop but was a large station with about a dozen pumps and plenty of room to maneuver. Or so I thought. Unfortunately, only 2 of those 12 pumps had diesel, so I had to wait until one became free (it was a busy place) and when I started to pull into the vacant space some idiot pulled in in front of me. I didn’t shoot him, but I was pretty annoyed. I had to go around and come in from the other side, at an awkward angle. Jett just about had a coronary directing me out of there.
Note to self: use truck stops.
We had stopped earlier at a rest area where Jett observed a family of 8 – 2 parents and 6 children, all under 15. They were traveling in a pickup with a canopy (the white truck in the picture). Jett flashed back on her large family and decided to buy the kids some ice cream. The picture is of her speaking to the father and giving him $10 for treats. The kids were thrilled.
And that’s why I love her.
Our park for the night was the Americamps-Lake Gaston in Bracey, VA. This is a large park on a large lake which in nice weather is probably beautiful. But it was raining. Gloomy. We set up as quickly as possible, then I went out to get dinner an diesel.
I thought the roads in the Pine Ridge Campground were bad, but the roads in Lake Gaston were worse. We had a pull-through but I determined that the only way out of the pull-through was to back out. Not much of a pull-through. And when I took the garbage to the dumpsters (another park with no trash pickup), I just about buried the truck in red mud.
Again, good riddance.
QTN Hop 3, Day 2: Bracey, VA, to Lorton, VA
188 miles via I-85 and I-95.
QTN Hop 3, Day 2
The route to Lorton was simple – up I-85 until it merged with I-95, then up I-95 to Lorton. Simple route but lousy weather. Heavy rain almost the entire way. And the road was very rough. A very unpleasant travel day.
We had looked at the weather forecast for Lorton before we left and it was not encouraging: rainy with a high of 46. Normal high temp for the end of March is about 67, so that was 20 degrees below normal. But as we drove the temperature dropped and kept dropping. The temperature when we pulled into Pohick? 36 – a full 30 degrees below normal. And SNOWING. Unbelievable!
Snow in Pohick
Let’s hope that spring shows up soon. We are using a lot of propane.