After lots of time with the grandkids we need a little rest so we came down to Annapolis, MD to visit Barb – a long-time friend of Carol’s – at her home on the water on the Chesapeake Bay (actually on the Magothy River just off the Chesapeake). Barb took us out for a light dinner at her club and we plan to just relax and watch the wild life – lots of ospreys and herons around here – for a couple of days before returning to Lewisburg for a final visit day for this trip.

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In Lewisburg, PA, Halfway Dam State Park – now called the R.B. Winter State Park – has always been the place to go to cool off in the summer. Halfway Lake is a spring-fed lake so the water is a constant 50 degrees F. (10 C) and is too cold for everyone except children of course. We went to Subway and bought a picnic lunch and headed for the lake as soon as Hunter was through with football practice at about 12:30. The lake is less than 20 miles west of Lewisburg so we had our picnic when we arrived.

As soon as we finished eating the kids headed for the water. Part way through the day we took the kids (they took us) for a walk to the dam at the other side of the lake where they played in the spillway and tried out the 4-person swing. At the end of the day the kids decided to build a bridge across one of the incoming spring fed streams.

When we returned to Lewisburg Harrison had football practice which we watched for a little while – practice is not a spectator sport.

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We are visiting Lewisburg because Carol’s family is here or in the local area. She was born here and graduated from high school here but spent some of the intervening years in Las Cruces, NM. Carol’s son Rick and his wife Kelly live in Lewisburg and have a large and very successful used car business in Mifflinburg – about 10 miles away. First thing Sunday morning he took us for a ride in his plane and then we had lunch with Carol’s uncle, and, then dinner in the evening with Rick’s son Landen and his girlfriend at Rick and Kelly’s house.

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Our first real destination on this trip was Pennsylvania for family visits. First, in the Harrisburg area, south of Lewisburg, we visited Carol’s cousin Janet and her husband George and went our for a late lunch at Duke’s which is just over the Susquehanna River from the state capitol. We spent the night in our preferred guest room – the GMC – in the street in front of their house. The next day we arrived in Lewisburg and got right into Carol’s daughter Laurie’s four great kids; Hunter (13), Kendall (11), Harrison (9), and Gracie (7). We went swimming at the local pool and saw lots of daring diving and got cooled off with a little swimming.  I don’t have time to do too much writing about what is going on but, with family – especially grandkids, pictures are all that is required I think.

On our first day in Lewisburg it was hot and humid – I’ve seen worse days here though – and Carol’s daughter Laurie and the kids were at the pool so I put on my bathing suit and we headed there. We had a blast with the kids both in and out of the pool. They really are great kids – very respectful of us and each other. I shot a lot of movies of them diving and playing and below is a sample of each of the kids.

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  We drove out of that state park near Charleston, WV the short way and it only took about a half hour. That state park was very remote but the night was very dark and quiet. The road out was about 5 miles long, very twisty, very narrow, and mostly gravel. We drove the rest of the way across West Virginia – very pretty country by the way – and into Maryland. The drive was in the Appalachian Mountains and even though they don’t really compare to the mountains in the West the roads have a lot of ups and downs. There is one section where a sign warns about 13 miles of 5% downhill and there was lots of corresponding climbing to get there. We drove over Donner Pass in California in May and I would compare some of the hills here to that but fortunately it was nowhere near as hot here as it was there.

I am, of course, paranoid about how the engine sounds and behaves but for the most part it was perfect. The only bad behavior was just as we stopped for the day. We were driving in Maryland and talking about going to a KOA resort – read “expensive ” – about an hour more down the road when we saw a sign for a state park with camping that was not on our map (Streets&Trips). We pulled off and idled while Carol looked it up and called for prices etc. We decided to go for it and when I started driving again I had a little stumbling happen but it went away pretty quickly. I think I must have gotten an extra dose of crapahol at the last fillup just prior to the stop. We’ll see tomorrow.

We went to the state park – Rock Gap State Park – there were only two spots left with electricity – need the A/C for a while at least – but they didn’t have a laundry and we needed one. The guy gave us a card for a campground about 2 miles farther down the road so we called them. They had decent rates, lots of space and a laundry. So we are at Hidden Springs Campground. They list their location as Flintstone, Maryland but they are actually in Pennsylvania – hence the title of this entry.

We did our laundry – planned and unplanned. The unplanned laundry was from our rear air conditioner leaking on the bed. It is so humid here that the A/C unit produces a lot of water. The boneheads in Tucson that installed our A/C unit about 4 years ago moved the old Duo-Therm from front position to the back and didn’t seal it right. It leaked once during our 2010 trip in Memphis with high humidity but this is the second time that it has happened on this trip. I soaked a spot on the bed so we had to dry the mattress pad, sheets and blankets.

Dinner was a repeat of a previous night – pasta that I made myself and fresh veggies. The photo does not do it justice – it was delicious.

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We made it to West Virgina and we are wondering about camping in Kentucky and West Virginia. Last night we stayed at the Elizabethtown Country Crossroads and had a less than satisfying accommodations. The sites were very haphazardly laid out in what used to be a nut orchard I think. The surface of the roadways and the sites was made from large pieces of crushed rock and I doubt that there were more than 3 or 4 level sites. We were faced so steeply downhill that even lowering the rear end all the way was not enough to get level.

One thing that made that worse was that it rained very heavily for a good half hour right after we got there and, being faced downhill (which is very unusual), we found several new leaks. We used a bunch of towels and paper towels but no huge problem. A couple of the leaks were from windows but most seemed to come from the roof somewhere. I already knew about a couple of them but they are not usually a problem in Arizona and California so I have ignored them up until now.

The reason we picked that place to stop was that there were not a lot of choices in the area – no others? We don’t plan ahead – we just don’t like the stress of being on a schedule. The stress of finding a place on the fly is far less because we, if we have to, can spend the night in a parking lot – we are self-contained. We like to see how the day is going and then set a target destination and then search for camping.

Traveling through eastern Kentucky was very pretty. The hills and fields were all green and there were lots of white board fences but we didn’t see many horses.

We stopped at the West Virginia welcome center about 10 miles into the state to verify what Carol had already figured out using Streets & Trips and the internet: there were only 3 campgrounds in that part of the state. West Virginia has almost no camping in the first 2 hours after entering the state from Kentucky.The first two were private; a KOA, and Jim’s Campground and both of them were very pricy – $45-$50 per night and all we wanted was electricity in case we needed A/C (cooling off here a little). When we saw those prices we decided to try the state park that was the third alternative so we headed for that.

The directions to the Kanawha State Forest Campground said that they did not recommend RVs longer than 26 feet. Carol called them and they said “don’t worry, bigger ones than that come here all the time” so we decided to go for it because we love state parks.

You cannot believe the road that we took in here – by far the hairiest drive ever in the GMC including US-1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) down the Big Sur coast from Carmel to Cambria – it makes that seem like nothing. It would be real fun in my (long-ago-sold) Porsche but not in a “12,000 pound antique hotrod with plumbing”. It took a long time to get here and it will take a long time to get out – at least the way out will be easier now that we know where this is.

The campsites come in ‘standard’ and ‘primitive’ for $26 and $20 respectively. The standard site has water and electricity. The water has super-high pressure but tastes good and the electricity looks like a 20amp circuit but has no specs and it is not obvious where the breaker is located. Fortunately, we won’t need A/C tonight – so why didn’t we try a WalMart you might ask. I don’t know would be my answer – we should have considered it but we didn’t. Topping it all off, once we got here we found that we had no cell service – both AT&T and Verizon do not get in here at all. So I am writing this tonight and will upload sometime tomorrow (Tuesday).

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I was up and ready to get going on either fixing the carburetor or calling for a replacement. I had the writeup in the maintenance manual to refer to and how hard could it be anyway? I uninstalled the carb and put it on a makeshift workbench – a blanket on our dining table – taking lots of photos of everything before I started. I took more photos at each stage of disassembly. You really are supposed to use compressed air to clean out passages but, since I didn’t have any handy, I used an aerosol can of carburetor cleaner I had with me instead.

It took me less than 2 hours from start to finish including cleanup – not bad for an old guy. Carol was amazed but I kept telling her that I had the manual so no problem. It was actually pretty interesting. Another skill to add to my on the road repair repertoire.

After I figured out that cleaning out the carburetor actually fixed the problem we headed out on our way to Penn. We made it to Elizabethtown, Kentucky – about half way across the state the long way. This is my first time in Kentucky – I’ll bet that there aren’t many of the 50 states I have not been to now. Just before we got here we crossed into the Eastern Time Zone.  Doing the time change gradually like this makes it a lot easier. Tomorrow we plan to be in West Virginia.

GMC content: When I figured out that the carburetor had a definite problem I called Frank Condos, a quadrajet kind of guy. Frank has given seminars at GMC rallies on quadrajets and I asked him for advice. He told me that taking the ‘air horn’ (the entire top) off the carburetor and cleaning out the inside was probably my only choice besides ordering a rebuilt. He told me that the maintenance manual – I have a copy on my computer – has instructions.

The maintenance manual instructions assume a lot of knowledge of terminology but at least but they are not hard to follow if you can read between the lines. I arranged my camera, my computer, and the carburetor and in no time I had it apart, cleaned it, and reassembled. I only had to refer to my photos twice. I reinstalled it and it started right up and ran great.

My biggest problem yesterday was that I was chasing what I thought was a vacuum problem but that turned out to be a symptom rather than the cause. The engine not running well can be fuel or ignition related and it is very difficult to tell the problems apart – the symptoms are the same most times.

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First the good news: We arrived at Dan and Teri Gregg’s home at about 3:00pm on Wednesday, Aug. 3rd – Carol’s birthday. We visited Dan and Teri last time we passed through the area on our 2010 trip – that visit was unplanned until the last minute as was this one. Dexter, MO seems to be the crossroads of 2-lane America – and, after visiting Branson and setting our sights on Harrisburg, PA instead of our earlier planned route through Ohio we found ourselves passing through there again.

We stopped at a grocery store for a birthday cake and Teri and Dan greeted us with plans for a home-made dinner. We sang happy birthday to Carol and even had a candle on the cake. Teri served us a delicious dinner and then gave us the recipe. We spent the night in their driveway in our own bedroom and their electricity for A/C and then went in for a great breakfast before leaving at around 10:00 am.

Barbie started acting up a few miles down the road. I noticed that there was a significant lack of engine power and it took forever to diagnose it. We spent the day on the phone trying everything to get her running smoothly again. Hopefully we now know that the carburetor seems to be at least partially plugged up or sticking. Tomorrow morning my plan is to take the carburetor off the engine and take the top off of it to clean it internally. Wish me luck.

Carol, in spite of hurting her back somehow, managed to put a great leftover dinner together – BBQ pork sandwiches and homemade macaroni and cheese. A little while later Dan and Teri showed up with a care package to make us feel better – some delicious herbal mixes, olive oil and bread along with a really wonderful locally grown peach, cheesesticks, watermelon and a great looking apple. These GMC folks are really the best – yes, you can buy another brand of RV but you won’t have friends like these that come along with them. Thanks Dan and Teri!

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I do not recommend the slideshow. Click on the first picture and use the arrows to see the next picture.

Today we really had no plans. It is too hot to do very much outside so getting whatever that is done early is essential. After that it will be stores and/or restaurants to stay cool.

One of the things the DUCK driver suggested to do was tour the fish hatchery at the foot of the dam. He mentioned that they had a wall-length aquarium and I wanted to see that – did not get a photo though. I guess I got excited by the size of the brown and rainbow trout they had in that tank. Bigger than any trout I have ever seen before.

On our way into town we had been passing a ‘craft mall’ where various little businesses show their wares – jewelry, signs, fudge, nuts – and one of the booths had a pair of brothers who played guitar and sang for tips. They were real nice guys – not good musicians, but nice guys. I included a photo of them – the only musicians we heard in Branson – not really our kind of music place.

Most of the day we hung around and did administrative chores like emails and bills – rested and ready to go see Dan and Teri in Dexter, MO. some fellow GMCers.

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Carol has been talking about ziplining for quite a while and, when we found out that there were some options available here we planned to do it. Yesterday we watched a group of people ziplining between some towers. It was, as it is today, over 100 degrees and it feels like high humidity so climbing those towers did not seem like a lot of fun and the whole thing seemed like a lot of work.  We didn’t really like the looks of it either so parasailing started looking very attractive. You do it from a moving boat and where else but on a moving boat would you choose to be on a hot humid day? Maybe, when we get to a cooler place we will give it another try – maybe Park City on our way home?

Meanwhile, we signed up for an 11:00am parasailing ride and went out with 2 other couples. Part of the fun is having the crew shoot pictures of the ride and, of course, buy the photos and movie from them. They just use a Nikon SLR with a zoom lens and the guy is not a real photographer but, he takes lots of pictures so a few have to be good – right? Below are the movie of our takeoff and various still photos.

Here is a link to a video of our ride:

and here are the still photos:

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