Blackwater Falls, Brain Farts, and an Amazon Miracle
This week, Mrs. Weeble and I are headed to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia.
As much as I love Shenandoah National Park, I wanted to take Mrs. Weeble somewhere different. While looking at campgrounds, I was also keeping an eye on the calendar. Around here, late June weather can be a complete wildcard. It might be pleasantly cool, or it might feel like someone opened the gates to the surface of the sun.
Because of that, I wanted a campground with electric hookups. Let’s be honest. Sleeping in an RV without air conditioning when it’s 90 degrees and humid is not camping. It’s voluntary suffering.
My search eventually led me to the wilds of West Virginia. In all my years of camping, I’ve never actually camped there before, so this will be a new adventure for both of us.
That’s when I had what can only be described as a brain fart.
Since I’m off on Friday for the holiday, I decided we would stay Thursday through Sunday. Easy enough.
Except somehow I only reserved Thursday and Friday nights.
When I realized my mistake and went back online to add Saturday, our campsite was already booked. In fact, I couldn’t get just Saturday night anywhere.
After a little creative reservation juggling, we ended up booking a different site and adding an extra night.
So instead of camping for three nights, we’re camping for four.
I’m not exactly sure how I managed to turn a mistake into more camping, but I’m counting that as a win.
If you’ve been reading these blogs for any length of time, you already know that just because you’re camping doesn’t mean you have to eat like you’re camping.
The menu planning has been underway.
Breakfasts will mostly be the usual camping staples: scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, and whatever happens to sound good before Mrs. Weeble’s coffee fully kicks in.
Mrs. Weeble has been enjoying some overnight oatmeal lately and has requested that for herself. I’ll either try some of that or find something a little more substantial.
Translation: I’ll probably be cooking myself something different.
Lunches will be determined by where we are and what we’re doing.
Dinner, however, is where things get interesting.
One evening we’ll be having peach-glazed pork chops cooked over the campfire.
Another night will feature Italian-marinated chicken thigh sandwiches.
We’ll also have smoked sausage and sautéed vegetables on the Blackstone.
And one night we’ll completely abandon all culinary standards and enjoy sloppy joe sandwiches.
Honestly, that sounds like a pretty solid camping menu to me.
As this trip gets closer, I’ve been doing what every camper does.
Watching the weather.
Then checking it again.
Then checking it one more time because maybe it changed in the last fifteen minutes.
As I write this, we’re two days from departure.
Thursday night is showing thunderstorms.
Friday and Saturday look pretty good.
Sunday starts off nice but may turn wet later in the day.
And Monday currently shows us packing up and heading home in the rain.
Again.
Apparently we’ve become experienced professionals at breaking camp in wet weather.
It’s not ideal, but at least we’re getting good at it.
I’m still hoping the weather forecaster is wrong. Statistically speaking, they have to be right eventually, but hopefully not this week.
Mrs. Weeble and I are also trying a little experiment on this trip.
We’ve talked about getting a toad someday—that’s RV language for a vehicle you tow behind the motorhome.
Before spending money on tow equipment, we’re going to test the concept. Mrs. Weeble is going to follow me in the car and we’ll see how having a second vehicle works for us.
The biggest challenge isn’t the driving.
It’s the three goobers.
The dogs are perfectly happy as long as they’re wherever we are. The challenge comes when we want to go somewhere in the car after we’re set up.
We’re hoping this little experiment will help us figure out whether a toad makes sense for our style of travel.
Or whether it’s just another way for us to complicate our lives.
One of Mrs. Weeble’s ongoing complaints about the RV is the shower.
Like most RV showers, it’s raised higher than a residential shower because the plumbing can’t run underneath the floor the same way it does in a house.
The result is about a nine-inch step down when exiting the shower.
While that may not sound like much, it feels a lot different when you’re standing there wet and trying not to perform an unplanned gymnastics routine.
We tried using a stool we already had at home, but it was too large for the space.
So I turned to every RVer’s trusted friend: Amazon.
I measured the available space approximately seventeen times, found a stool that looked perfect, and ordered it for next-day delivery.
Since we were leaving Thursday morning, it absolutely had to arrive on Wednesday.
The next morning, I received an email informing me that the stool would now arrive Thursday evening.
After we had already left.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled.
Lately, Amazon seems to have developed a habit of promising one thing and delivering another.
So I canceled the order and started looking elsewhere.
A little while later, Amazon informed me that I couldn’t cancel the order because it had already shipped.
Now I was really not thrilled.
They weren’t delivering it when promised, and they weren’t letting me cancel it.
At this point, I was convinced the stool and I were engaged in some sort of personal feud.
Then something unexpected happened.
I went out later that evening to pick up dinner and found an Amazon truck sitting in my driveway.
Guess what they were delivering?
Yep.
The stool.
A full day earlier than their revised delivery estimate.
Now the big question is whether another identical stool will show up tomorrow.
Honestly, nothing Amazon does surprises me anymore.
The good news is that the stool fits perfectly, exactly where Mrs. Weeble wanted it.
Which means I have started this trip firmly in her good graces.
And any married man knows that’s a much bigger victory than finding the perfect campsite.
The adventure continues.
The adventure does not stop here. Use the Previous and Next post links below to see where the wheels rolled before — or what trouble we found next