On the road again …. after a short but fantastic 2-month visit home. As always the time is way too busy with doctors, dentists, and general maintenance on our bodies. We of course love spending as much time as possible with Scott and Meg, meeting Meg’s family and visiting with several friends. In addition, we flew out with Scott and Meg to Ventura, California for a week as we celebrated our nephew Chad’s marriage to Katy. It was a great trip and the highlight besides the wedding was granting Meg’s request for In and Out Burgers!!

Traveling this year will be different due to the economy and gas shortages in the southeast but we will continue to travel, staying at membership parks longer and seeing the sights along the way. First stop this year was in Easton, PA to visit great friends Barb and Gary Stockslager and their son (Steve) and girlfriend (Adele). It was like leaving home and going home.

Continuing on, we stopped in Front Royal for few days. By car we traveled the Skyline Drive thru Shenandoah National Park. The drive was beautiful but the leaves were just starting to turn. We would have loved to hike down to see some of the falls but due to time restraints could not do it all. After the 4 hour drive on the Skyline, we continued on the Blue Ridge Parkway down to Montebello to the Crabtree Falls, labeled as the tallest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River and assumed to be named after a William Crabtree who resided in the area in 1777. The Falls is a 70 feet cascade featuring a series of five major cascades and a few smaller ones that drop an entire distance of 1,200 feet. We were able to walk to the lower falls and viewed as much as possible. It was a steep 2+ mile hike up to the top of the falls which we decided could wait another year. From here we headed back to the Parkway and drove down to Glasgow, VA to see the Natural Bridge, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. The height of the bridge from the stream below to its upper surface is 215 feet…. 55 feet higher than Niagara Falls. There is even a highway, The Lee Highway, US 11 that passes over Natural Bridge. It was strange to hear cars pass over as you stood below this natural wonder. Down below the bridge there is also a walkway with many things to see especially in the spring/summer when all the flowers are in bloom. The walkway ends at a lace falls which was spectacular with the colors of the leaves and the sun shinning off the water.

Next stop on our journey was Bass Lake RV Resort in Salisbury, NC. We went to see North Carolina Transportation Museum which is located on the site of the Southern Railway’s steam locomotive repair facility in Spencer. Although the main event that day was Thomas the Train and the place was crowded with little ones, it was an amazing place to visit. The following day we headed to Old Salem to walk around a community built on the foundation of the Protestant Moravian religion. The Church owned all of the land in the town and dictated what crafts and domestic skills the people were allowed to do back in the eighteen and nineteenth century. Boys went to a boy’s school to the age of 14, learning to read and write. Then they lived in The Brothers House to learn a craft, which could take up to seven years. They could stay in this house until they were married. Likewise the girls went to a girl’s school and at the age of 14 lived in The Sisters House. A lot of the homes in the area have been restored to the original time period and are opened to see the history of that time. Other homes in the area have also been restored and are private residence. Today Old Salem is the place to live with small homes valued at anywhere from $300,000 to $800,000.

Next stop is Fair Play, SC.