E15 Shenandoah National Park and a flat tire - a podcast by Paul Sebastian

We visited Lewisburg West virginia. It was billed as the coolest town in America by NBC News in 2011. We have been through many towns of listed as quaint or cute or nice. We have found that if a town is listed as quaint or cute means it's small. So Lewisburg, in our opinion, was a snooty town, you'll see when as you read further. There were quite a bit of shops which are mainly overpriced. There's a bunch of places for live music but only on Friday and Saturday. It was also a playhouse but they only had performances on The weekends. So perhaps Lewisburg is a nice weekend town? But perhaps not, we visited the smooth ambler distillery, we walked in and were ignored by the two women at the reception desk. We then went to the bar and was ignored there also. A woman working there was walking by we told her we were interested in doing some tastings. She said okay we'll be with you in a couple of minutes. We walked out 5 minutes later. He then went to the brick house antique shop. We browsed for 10 mins and as we were leaving, the owner said, "come back when you can spend more time". Really?? We then went into Robert's antiques and wine shop. We complimented the owner on one of his pieces. He asked where we're from we told him New York. He asked if we were from New York City, we said no upstate and he turned around and walked away from us.
We then left town and walked in the Greenbrier trail which was really nice.
We then drove over into the state of virginia. Stopped at the Blue Stone winery in Bridgewater. They have a nice New tasting room up on a hill and it was a really nice fireplace inside. They had a big patio outside with a second fireplace and numerous heaters. We said enjoyed the view and the tastings and relaxed. What we do now with tastings is we ordered different wines for each of us and then we sample each other's also.
We've been headed north to luray Virginia and camped at a Yogi Bear campground. This was our first Yogi Bear campground. We're planning on staying there for three nights but they're running a special stay for three nights and get one night free so we said hey boo boo that's a pretty good deal. We were here so we could visit to Shenandoah national park. When we checked into the campground the woman gave us wristbands to attend the activities. We asked what the activities were and she said I have no idea. Unreal! They had to sign up saying new golf carts allowed. Yet the workers raced around the campground at more than the five mile an hour posted speed limit signs. And if you wanted to use a golf cart you could rent one for $60 per day. Unreal! Shenandoah national Park is a really interesting park it has one main road that runs north south and is 105 miles long the speed limit is 35 mph. And remember you're in the national park so people are driving a lot slower than that while they are 16. They gave us a map of the park when we arrived but it did not have any of the hiking trails on it. We went to the visitor center we talked to one of the rangers we explained they were looking to do a four to five mile hiking the area she ended up giving us four maps for free and told us a lot a different hikes. Very nice. The Appalachian trail or the 80 wines back and forth across skyline drive. Any hike that you do from skyline drive you will be hiking down off of The ridge and then hiking back up onto the ridge. We ended up doing a nice 5-mile hike but it was really cold. The next day we went on a guided horseback ride through the park. It was super cold around 30°. Foggy rainy and snowy. It was a beautiful ride but no open vistas. And the guide was not friendly at all. Not once did she acknowledge that we were behind her. The night we ate at moon shadows restaurant in luray. Had a great meal and highly recommended eating there. A bit pricey but we don't splurge very often while traveling in the rv. After dinner we went to a place called The speakeasy. There was a guy playing the guitar which was excellent. When we were leaving Shenandoah national Park we decided to drive up the skyline drive North and took us about an hour to drive 30 miles. I was a little concerned about driving a rig on this road but there was no issues at all. We stopped at one of the wineries in Delaplane. We knew we were back in the east the tastings of two different wineries were 10 dolls each and the glass of wine was anywhere between 7:00 and $12. We miss the prices out west. We stayed at one of the wineries via Harvest hosts which was really nice to sit relax and sleep at the winery. Here's a link to the discounts page on my website and from there you'll see discounts for Harvest Hosts boondockers welcome and other things. Relaxrv.org/discounts
Then it stay we went to Prince William State Forest we stayed at the campground which was really nice. We did find that the sites were not very level and we needed a bunch of leveling pads under the wheels for our rig. We're there to visit Tricia's son who lives about 45 minutes away just outside of Washington DC.
We were planning on spending the night at a boondock was welcome location. But there was a winter weather advisory coming in and we decided to head north a little further to stay at a harvest host winery in Logan's township New Jersey. On the way there we got a flat on the highway in maryland. The left front tire blew out the rig-handled it beautifully. All I noticed was a little bit of a sway. We pulled over onto the shoulder. We had to wait 4 hours for truck to show up with a tire. Which he installed on the side of the highway. We then headed off to Cedar Valley Winery. the owner Marsha invited us to stay a second night because of the weather. They were super accommodating to us. We arrived 5 hours later than we expected. And we pulled in with 5" of snow on the ground. They also pointed us to another winery just down the road that we visited during the snow storm. This storm as it turned out had caught many new yorkers and new jersians off guard and shut down the roads for many if our friends and family. Glad we were safe.


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