August 1, 2023 It was a cool evening with a morning temperature of 58. We got ourselves ready and pulled out of our site at 10:00. By then, the skies were hazy, but the temp had risen to 71. We hooked up the Jeep in the parking lot by the Office where we had space. I had second thoughts about camping at the Moose Lodge. When I checked the campground website online again, it said “tents”, no mention of 50 amps, and they opened at 2 PM on Tuesdays. So, to alleviate any last minute arrival issues, we decided to book a site at the Wytheville KOA just south of Roanoke and be done with it. This was our Plan B anyway. We pulled into the truck stop at the entrance to the interstate ramp and booked our KOA site online before getting on I-81. We got all done and were back on the road at 10:30 for our 187 miles drive today on I-81. Traffic was light at first and the skies seemed to get clearer the farther south we went. The Blue Ridge Mountains could be seen in the distance.
The highway wound its way up and down through the mountains.
The part of I-81 north of Roanoke south to the the VA-NC border is designated as “scenic highway” and it definitely was!! We crossed the New River as we continued our drive through the mountains.
We passed a town called Shawville along the way. How funny is that?
We had a pretty easy scenic drive with only one highway to deal with today, although it was heavily traveled by trucks–lots of trucks!! The Rest Areas were packed with trucks! Our campground was not too far off the interstate. We arrived at Wytheville KOA at 1:45.
Bob checked us in at the Office, while I took the cables off the Jeep so we could unhook it. This is a very nice campground with lots of amenities and activities for kids in wide open spaces. The sites are level and nicely spaced out. We will get a better idea of the whole campground when we take our walk tonight, but I think we would come back here another time.
We were given site #L14 and found it ourselves, no problem. We began our routine of hooking up to electricity and water which is my job, while Bob levels the bus and puts out the slides. Once Bob got done, he came out to help me hook up to the water. I was having some problems with their pump system. We haven’t had to use one like this on this whole trip.
I couldn’t get the lever to lift up and when Bob tried, it just wouldn’t move. We called the Office and they said they would have someone to come and look at it in a couple of hours. That wasn’t good enough. They finally agreed to move us to the next site, #L15, where the pump did work properly. We moved one site over and got all hooked up without any problems.
They told us that the area that we are in was all full tonight, but never sent anyone down to check out the water pump in L14. I hope that the people that take L14 have a properly working water pump when they do arrive. We relaxed a little before dinner after getting the satellite all hooked up. The temperature outside was only 80 and it was refreshingly cool. Auggie and I took our evening walk down by the pond where we met Mr. and Mrs. Mallard.
We have 2 nights here and we will do some exploring of the area tomorrow.