I got back from vacation last weekend. This vacation wasn't terribly well planned, and it didn't help that there were some last minute alterations to the itinerary. I had originally planned to start off on Assateague Island and then drop down to Virginia for a day but that got axed due to a lack of a campsite availability and possible hurricane activity, so I spent a day in Harpers Ferry instead. When I removed that though, I ended up shortening the itinerary. I intended up staying in KY a bit longer as a result, which worked out because most weekends were still booked up for campgrounds, since I didn't finish booking the campgrounds until I got to KY. The government shutdown didn't help either, meaning most of the parks I went to the visitor centers and whatnot were not open, many of the exhibits were closed, and many of the campgrounds were partially closed as well. The only destination that was completely closed was Mammoth Cave (which is why KY was on the itinerary). This was the final itinerary with links to its albums:
10-07 - Manasses Historical Battlefield. This one kind of suffered from everything being shut down. I was intending to hit Washington's Birthplace National Monument, but it was closed as well.
10-08 - This was a planning error day, I ended up driving to New River Gorge this day after I was informed I didn't reserve the Shenandoah campsite long enough. I learned this too late to do the Blue Ridge Parkway, but it was rainy and poor visibility anyways.
I stayed in KY until the 19th, and drove up to Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio.
10-21 - I drove to Cuyahoga (no pictures here).
10-22 - Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The train didn't appear to be running, so I cut this short.
All the pictures are at the links above, but here are a few highlights.
The trip was 2,950 miles, a shorter trip than normal. I averaged 28mpg for the trip, which was nice. The traveling days were mostly over 30mpg, the days in the parks with all the starting and stopping brought down the average though.
While this may not be a popular opinion, I actually liked New River Gorge better than Shenandoah; the view of the Shenandoah Valley is excellent, but not uncommon in the Appalachians (I can get the same kind of view just driving around the White Mountains in NH), and I felt that New River Gorge had more to offer. It was better developed than I expected too. Cuyahoga was hampered by not being able to take the train ride, which is really too bad since it was peak foliage, but the ticketing booth was not open when I was there, all the buildings were shut down. For those interested, the Viaduct Park in the northern end was the highlight of the park for me, the rest of Cuyahoga was kinda meh.
All in all the car camper was adequate. That said, the electrical setup is unacceptable. One of the splitters failed, and the other stuck out too far, I kicked it in the night. And just in general the connectors were flaky and didn't reliably stay in; the freezer came unplugged 4 times on the drive home. I ended up running the freezer off the Jackery and running the fridge off the Anker. Once I fixed its settings (thanks for the tip Matt) it worked like a charm. I will probably need to build my own wiring harness and find a way to make them fall out less. My only other main complaint was that I didn't have a good way to deal with a rainy day. That one might take some thinking.
As usual I waaay overpacked for food, so I had to move a lot of stuff around that I didn't need. Interestingly, I only used a couple of things out of the conversion, so I might be able to rearrange that and put the food stuff in there. The cargo net was obnoxious, I might try to build something else. It also needs a little bit more support. I slept okay, though not great. So I have a few things to iron out, but it was overall fine.
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