One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

So, let’s take things back to 10/8/2020…. departure from Wilmington, NC. Other than the weekend at Jordan Lake with the cousins, we had/have absolutely no campground reservations booked in advance. I can probably say, with some authority now, that this is not the recommended way to do things. But we do not usually know what the next hour is going to hold for us……. so you can just forget about it if you think we can predict what’s going to happen 3-5 days out. Basically, we find it exceedingly difficult to plan ahead. And this is just normal life, I’m not even talking about road life… plain ole everyday, no clue what’s gonna happen next. So the no plan plan is what we went with in terms of destinations and campgrounds. It would be determined on the fly depending on where we are, what info I google up about where we are, and then what is actually happening inside the circus truck. At this point in the trip, I DO know that I’ve got Virginia is for lovers next on my list, and Shenandoah National Park is on the top of my must sees. So that undoubtably becomes the next stop. I had called the park service earlier in the week to make a reservation in Big Meadows Campground. The absolutely pleasant woman I spoke with said that the reservable sites were taken, but that the majority of the campground is first come first serve and that it looked wide open at the time (as did several of the other campgrounds in the park). Okay, well this is fairly reassuring. At this point we were trying to leave Wednesday and I thought to myself, that should be early enough to beat the weekend crowd……Well, so here is mistake number 1, let’s go ahead and call it… we left on Thursday. We also knew this was going to be our longest clip in the truck thus far, ringing up at 5 hrs 45 min from Wilmington. That seems doable, we drive longer than that to get to Wilmington…. no biggie…. SECOND mistake. I forgot to tack on the 4 extra hours that comes with our new traveling arrangements. We ( I) planned to leave at 6 am on Thursday, so we could be up there by 12, still beat the weekend crowd, and snag our camp spot in the epic Shenandoah National Forest.. is anybody laughing at me yet?? I mean this is some rookie shit right here. I’ve heard all the rumblings about how national parks are overrun right now, and that you can’t get resys for like a year….. but I had my rose-colored glasses on for the day, and damnit we were going camping in Shenandoah.

So naturally it’s now 10:00 am and we are just pulling out of my parents’ driveway. Y’all want to talk about a heartbreak? Try driving away from your aging parents, that you JUST got back in your arms, during a global pandemic, that you aren’t entirely sure when you will see again? If you are not crying right now you don’t have a soul.

But anyhoo, I mop up my tears and put on a brave face and we are on the road. We have to refill the propane tank at a Tractor Supply Co a little way up 40 west. And I kid you not, before we are even there, those rabid children in the backseat have eaten every single snack I packed for the whole 6-hour excursion. Good thing the fridge is outback. We get the propane tanks filled with the help of a lovely young gentleman named Wes. By the end of the exchange, Matt was walking away with young Wesley’s business card and an offer for a photo shoot….. we are still speculating about what type of photography this man is in to. Any guesses are welcome…. . he is from rural NC, works at Tractor Supply Co, has a few teeth, had a mohawk neatly tucked into is trucker hat, and was clad in camo. The imagine I’m getting is something along the lines of the Tiger King with his animals and husbands.

We probably made it 30 more minutes on the road before we needed to get gas, and guess what, everyone is hungry and needs to pee. So we find a gas station, I lay out a picnic blanket on a patch of grass between said gas station and a Wendy’s parking lot and we ate the sushi I had bought at Lowe’s before we left Wilmy. We got some looks, I guess that might have seemed weird…. I made everybody pee TWICE. Back on the road, and I am going to speed this next part up…. fighting, whining, song demands, song demands, song demands, fighting, a tiny bit of sleeping, more bathroom breaks, more snacks, more water, and then , yay! We are cruising through Richmond, VA, our first big city pass thru. And this is not just any city…this city holds a big piece of my heart. Both of my parents are from Richmond and I spent all my childhood traveling there for visits and holidays. A lot of the most important people in my life live here. I95 N gives you such a gorgeous view of this impressive and beautiful city built on the James River. Early in my attempts at planning I had wanted to spend a few days catching up with friends and family in Richmond, but time did just not allow for it. But hi guys!! Love you all!

To be completely transparent, driving through Richmond dug up ALL types of feels for me…..thinking of loved ones lost too soon, and the realization that they now have been gone for so long…childhood traditions that have run their course….. extended family relationships that I wish were a little bit stronger, or maybe that visits where just more frequent….. and here we are, my little heart is a puddle again. Goodness lady, put on your big girl panties.

I should probably leave room for the fact that I am PMS-ing pretty hardcore at this point. I know that is TMI for some, but I also know there are others of you that are going to be nodding your heads, with a hand up, screaming AMEN. This little hormone situation just seems to get worse and worse the older I get! I am PMSing, therefore I am the WORST version of myself possible. I am mean, irritable, weepy, and have zero patience. Not the best state of mind for extraordinary circumstances. I mention this because I want you to just keep it in mind as the day progresses.

So I get through my little mind *^##% of a trip down memory lane and we get through Richmond, pretty much intact.. The part of the state we are getting into now is uncharted territory for me… further north and west then I’ve ever been in VA,…..YES, FINALLY, unfamiliar scenery!!! And Oh. My. Word. It was GOOD, so good. When the mountains started rolling with their perfectly perfect fall colors, with the completely picturesque countryside, and the historical old farmhouses and pristine working farms……. I pretty much felt like I was in heaven. And at the risk of sounding cheesy, I am going to go ahead and say it….. I can truly feel my ancestral connection to this land, to this state of VA. I can always feel it tingle when I’m in VA, but I felt just so alive in every fiber of my being on this drive. I felt called, I felt touched, I felt seen. I felt like roots were shooting out of my toes and firmly embedding in these hillsides. I felt so peaceful and at home. I do not even really know how to put it into words, but it was a new sensation and I LOVED it. My mom has traced her side of the family as Virginians all the way back to the 17th century. She has even connected us somehow to Pocahontas. Mom, I’m gonna need to get some more facts, because I’m now obsessed with doing some family history work. I need to know more about where these feelings were originating from. My dad’s side as well has been Virginians for quite some time. But enough on that.

Highway 3 led us into Culpeper, VA. The cutest, quaintest town I ever did see. I immediately wrote it down as “somewhere to come without the kids”. I would love to meander those adorable streets and poke my head into the little cafes and shops that reside in what are certainly haunted, but architecturally brilliant, historical old homes. Leaving Culpeper, we were blessed with mile after mile of the picturesque landscape I described previously, and I truly never wanted it to end. It is not like any farmland on hillsides at the base of mountains like I’ve ever seen. That look usually comes with trailers and yards full of trash and car parts, dilapidated out houses and sun washed kids’ toys……but I am telling you this was gorgeous. Everything was so well kept. People must live on their riding lawn mowers out there. It was feast for the eyeballs. I am going to just shut up because I can’t do it justice with words. With every high, comes a crash, right? It’s coming…..

We finally see the signs for Shenandoah National Forest, and then eventually the park itself. We are beginning to get very twisty turny in the mountains, and it is the Shadow Cruisers first time on this terrain so the nerves start to creep up. I can see Matt’s knuckles getting white, but it’s okay, we’re good. Oh….guess what time it is??? Almost 8 freakin o’clock at night. We barely make it up the mountain to the Skyline Drive just in time to catch the sunset. Skyline Drive is a 105 mile road that runs the entire length of the Shenandoah National Park. It is an absolute marvel. It was the total apex of the landscape high that we were on. Truly truly stunning. We get out at an overlook, with just about no clothes on and realize it has dropped at least 25 degrees. We were all shivering, but super stoked to be there. Henry got to take an epic dump with the camper door open overlooking the Shenandoah Valley at sunset. Lucky duck. But it is getting dark now and we still have miles and miles to go into the park to get to the campground. We drive and drive and the kids are getting crazier and crazier and queue my pms psychosis. We finally get to Big Meadows, and I am met with an instantly unsettling site…… there are other RVs…..pulling out as we are turning in. My spidy senses are telling me this is not good. Are they getting rejected from the first come first serve? Are we possibly not going to get a campsite? But we have got to get out of this truck!?!?!?! We get to the check in hut and mother *^#%^+….. there is a campground full sign up. So it’s 9:00 pm at this point. Y’all remember when we left Wilmington??? That’s right, 10:00 am. You calculate those hours. How can this be happening???? We don’t have a campsite!?!?!?! Oh yeah, I remember, all those rookie mistakes from earlier…..

        The kids are losing their every loving minds at this point, I have full on crashed from my high , Matt is so tired from driving, the dog wants out of the car, we are all  raging at each other, and we have nowhere to go. We considered parking at the visitor center and camping there for the night. But the thought of getting woken up by a ranger at 1:00 am to the demand of “get the hell outta here” was enough to keep us on the move. There was a list of campgrounds near the park posted at this stupid little ranger hut, that I now despised because they hadn’t saved me a camp spot…..I know, so mature. So, we picked the closest one and plugged it into the GPS….which only worked for about 5 seconds. Our experience so far, is that the park has just about zero cell or WiFi… so, that is awesome. Couldn’t make any calls (not that anyone would have answered, it’s 9:30pm) don’t know where we are going….but yet, we go. We did see some fun wildlife, lots of deer and a few raccoons. It was pure magic to see the twinkling lights in the valley below with the vast Blue Ridge mountains all around, and the stars shinning so bright up above. I was trying to keep my shit together, but the kids were being TERRIBLE, I was being terrible, Matt was even losing it a bit. Fighting, crying, loud outbursts…It was like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

We head down the mountain to get out of this forest. I say that casually but it’s like a 30-minute drive. We start smelling the breaks on the truck cooking and my anxiety kicks into high gear…. are our breaks about to give out and we are about to go soaring off of this mountain? Chill lady, you’re gonna be fine. We were fine, kind of. So we find Swift Run campground….. not because our GPS was working, more just sheer luck…and we pull in. It immediately looks uninviting. It is extremely dimly lit, and every camper there looks like it’s been there for 50 years. At this point we are IN the campground and there is no turning back. We must drive through the whole creepy place. We get to the back curve of the lot and realize it is very tight, and the road very narrow… and before we know it….BOOM. The Shadow Cruiser has a little boom boom with a tree…. god damnit. I know we both said it, Matt and I…. oops…. we don’t normal cuss in front of the kids. So, I get out and try to help him back up the rig into a position to be able to take a wider turn. Not easy, and at this point we are about to kill each other, but we somehow manage to make it through this pass. I jump back in the car….and what do you know….everyone is cussing….The kids are trying out every swear word that had just been dropped during the last 20 minutes of the car ride. Even the baby. This is fun guys, right? We get back to the entrance of Swift Run and I think surely Matt is going to take a right and exit this hellhole, but he DOESNT. He turned left as if to try this fun little loop again?????? For a brief second, I think he was considering just parking the rig in front of the office of this place for the night. OH HELL NO. So mama puts the X on that one, and also the one where we drive through the whole loop again, and now here we are trying to back this bitch up. I’m out of the car AGAIN, because there is a random concrete brachiosaurus right in the mix that we need to navigate around. Seriously. I can’t make this up.

We managed to escape Swift Run without being shot, robbed, eaten alive, made into a batch of meth, or in a collision with a large, stone, prehistoric predator.

It’s 10 o’clock at night now. We have no cell service and no WiFi and seemingly no options…. yet we drive on. Up ahead we see a sign for Mountain View Motel…. our savior… our messiah….our holy grail….. but then….. oh shit…. we missed the turn in…. queue the cuss words. You know, that type of thing wouldn’t normally be a big deal, but when you’re hauling a trailer every single move is a big deal. And also let’s remember the time of night, my weak mental state, the cuckoo nest in the back seat, the angsty dog, the hangry, white knuckled dad……… I mean is it over yet???? We found somewhere to turn around and eventually find our way into the motel parking lot. The idea is that we are going to get a room and then run our extension cord through the window and just pull some power into the RV from the room. Great in theory, but our “approved” parking spot was nowhere near our room. The kids had already dialed in how terrifying the tiny motel cottages were and had vowed to not step foot in one. So it was camper or die.

Now we are faced with staying the night in the RV, right in the parking lot, right next to a state highway, right in the middle of nowhere. Seemed better than nothing. We figured we could make it one night on the battery and had propane if we needed heat. I haven’t mentioned yet that every time we set up camp, we have to move all 5 bikes out of the camper to somewhere outside. We never worked out a bike rack to handle the bike situation before we left. So that whole deal is a real pain in the ass… because we certainly were feeling like moving bikes around at this point in our day. Get that done, barely squeaked the slides out with the battery power, I am trying to manage everybody’s bedtime needs while I’m just absolutely a raging bitch at this point. I want so badly to crawl into a bed and so do the kids. Now, Matt spots an electrical outlet…. at the base of an ornamental GULF sign across the entrance to the parking lot of the motel. With the extension cord we can almost reach it, but ultimately, we are going to have to move the camper back to get to it. Me and the kids are inside it at this point and are not going anywhere. No big deal, it’s only a few feet straight back that we are moving. We are already pretty much up under the giant light up motel sign, so I am not sure how we are reaching our target location, but I’m leaving it up to Matt. We start moving back a little bit, and a little bit more, and then BAM!!! The Shadow Cruiser does a little bam bam with the motel sign pole. I kid you not. We were fine, wasn’t that big of a jolt, but it rattled my already incredibly fragile kids to the core. The camper’s new position is at a wonky tilt, so it felt like we were walking around in a state fair fun house. And would you believe we had an audience for this ENTIRE experience. Every smoker at Mountain View Motel was out front enjoying the show.

        Whatever happens next I blacked out, but we do somehow get everybody to bed in these unnerving circumstance, and manage a couple hours of sleep.

I will pick up on the next mornings shenanigans in the next post