Days 49-50-51
Oh, Lordy, Lordy. How things can go from great to gruesome in such a short time. We hauled out of Virginia Beach Saturday morning, and had a fine voyage to an RV Park near Williamsburg, VA. We set up the rig and hooked up to the utilities, then got in the truck to visit the first English settlement in North America in Jamestown, founded in 1607, fourteen years before the Pilgrims. How does a dog know all of these facts? This dog lives with Don, and spends a lot of his time with him in his office at home, where he does a lot of genealogical work. He tells me a lot of things, because I’m the only one who will listen to him on such subjects. And I do find them interesting. When he found his family’s connection to the Pilgrims, he was very pleased, and explained it all to me. He didn’t seem to care that this association involved a mother who was the first woman hung for murder in the colonies, or that several non-marital relationships were involved; really, I didn’t either. So that’s why I know so much. So we had a good time in Jamestown, though Don’s camera batteries went dead and he didn’t get many pictures. We went back to the rig, and Don looked at our electrical load display. He got really upset. The battery charger for the house batteries wasn’t working, and the batteries were losing voltage rapidly. He tried a whole bunch of things to correct the problem, but none of them worked. The battery voltage was getting so low, we had to turn off all of the power consuming equipment in the coach. Then he remembered a similar problem we had in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, and checked a little fuse in the battery charger; sure enough, it was blown. He replaced it, and hoped the problem was fixed. It wasn’t. Nothing was happening, and it looked like we would have to try to get an Easter Sunday visit from a RV Technician. We shut down everything in the rig and went to bed. This included the heating system, and it was cold. Geri was less than happy. I thought I was going to have to get in bed with them to keep them warm. But we made it through the night, and Don got up early to try to work on the problem again. After checking a few things in the coach, he went out to check the circuit breaker at the box where we plug in our cable to get shore power; it had tripped! He reset it, went back into the rig, and saw that all the systems were working again! We had heat, lights, TV, everything! He said he was very sorry that he hadn’t checked the box the night before. Boy, was he sorry!
They got dressed, fed me lunch and took off in the truck. I had some good nap time, and they came back late in the afternoon. They told me about Williamsburg, and how interesting it was to see a real Colonial era city that had been completely restored to look like it did in the 18th century. They had a really good time, took a lot of pictures, and even had some New York style pizza for lunch. Huh? They put me in the truck, and we drove down to Yorktown, where the last battle of the American Revolution was fought. There were a lot of grassy hills and hummocks there, that Don told me were built by the armies that fought there. We went for a good walk on the grounds, and I had a great time running up and down the hills and valleys of the battlements. Don found a place where brochures describing the grounds and the battle were available, and took one. I offered to carry it back to the truck, and he gave it to me. Something snapped in me, I went absolutely nuts when I got that brochure in my mouth, and I went Crazy Dog. I was whirling, running, spinning, ripping and tearing for about five minutes. There wasn’t much left of the brochure. Don didn’t mind, he thought it was funny. We got back in the truck and drove around Yorktown for awhile, then headed back to the coach. Don made some pasta, resulting in some good plates. All systems were working, and we went to bed warm and happy.
So, today, Monday, was a travel day. There wasn’t much discussion (argument?) about where we were going, Geri and Don both want to see Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. Don took me for a really nice walk in the meadows around our RV Park, and I found a place that I had to some digging in; I’m not sure why, but there was a place in a log pile that made me a little crazy, and I had to dig a hole there. I almost never do that. I didn’t really find anything, but it was fun. We got underway, drove for a couple of hours, and settled into a RV Park near Waynesborough. Don made some pork stir-fry, which we all enjoyed. We worked hard on updating the blog, and went to bed pretty early. Tomorrow should be interesting!