CuRVWander

  October 2024 A perk above and beyond being parked steps from our children and grandchildren is also just being minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It's very easy to just jump on the parkway and go either direction for some beautiful fall scenery. On a weekday soon after our arrival in the Asheville area we dropped our granddaughter off at school that is well north of Asheville and then we meandered on backroads our way to Grandfather Mountain.  We thought that with it being a weekday that we would miss the fall color crowd.  Didn't work that way.  The place was jam-packed with retirees just like us. But all was well, the lines to pay to get in moved well and the drive from the pay booth to the summit was unhurried and pretty.  Our last time to the visitor center at the summit was in 1997, everything sort of looked the same but we're pretty sure that some renovation and "upscaling" had taken place in the last 27 years.  The visitor center building m...

  October 2024 Okay, so the above pic is not our winter home, except in our dreams.  However it (The Biltmore) is just a stones throw away from where we are setting up housekeeping. As planned, our departure from Dumplin Valley RV Park in Kodak, TN was early with only about an hour-and-a-half traveling time to our destination in Candler, NC, a western suburb of Asheville.  But it wasn't quite as easy as it sounds.  The last four miles was like running a gauntlet. As soon as we took the I-40 exit to Candler a four mile obstacle course began.  The roads were just barely wide enough for two sedans to pass one another without taking a wheel off the edge of the pavement.  But that would be ill advised as steep and deep trenches lined both sides of the road.  Getting an eight foot wide and sixty foot long truck and trailer combination down these winding mountain roads was an altogether different drive.  Many of the turns in the road required me to pull ...

  Last Week of September 2024 With our chores done at my mother's house in Borger, TX we are ready to make the 1,234 mile "hop" to our winter destination, Candler, NC, a suburb on the west side of Asheville.  One single road all the way, I-40. First layover, Mustang RV Park, Oklahoma City.  We have stayed at this campground numerous times over the years.  Our first time they were still under construction and we pretty much talked them into letting us "test" a camping spot for them.  Prices were pretty decent our first few stays but in the post-Covid world that's not the case anymore. Next night was Outdoor Living RV Park, Russelville, AR.  Bare bones and tightly packed.  Classic old-school private campground.  But the convenience to I-40 and the price were right.  537 miles down, 1,200 to go. First Week of October 2024 The next leg was a long one, we drove roughly double our normal time.  Stopping in our normal range of four hours would ...

  Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area Reservoir September 18, 2023 The above pic was our last look at the reservoir before leaving Utah.  It doesn't look like it but the locals said winter could set in in a couple of weeks.  We want to be well clear of the area before that happens as we have many 8% grades and hairpin switchbacks to negotiate to exit the state. One last hurrah was held before departures began.  All our fellow volunteers gathered at the volunteer campground's common firepit for a cookout and saying of goodbyes.  The fire ring area was so big one couldn't get everybody in in a single shot so I put a group shot of us in with fire ring pics. The group above operated the FGNRA's visitor center, Green River boat ramps, the Swett Ranch, and Ute Mountain Firewatch Tower.  We didn't see much of each other during working hours but did do things together on off-hours.  These folks "meshed" very well, we had a great time with them. One of our m...

Flaming Gorge Reservoir  September 2023 It's hard to think about it but the time is coming near when we have to pack up and leave this summer paradise.  There are a few days of fire watch tower duty left and a multi-day excursion to Yellowstone National Park and then that's it, we head south. Labor Day weekend tends to be Flaming Gorge's biggest visitation time.  Bigger even than Independence Day.  But our visitation at the fire watch tower had been such a dribble for the whole month of August that we figured that since we were so remote that we probably wouldn't feel the effects of the holiday.  Couldn't have been more wrong. The tower, being the wooden legged structure that it is can only hold so many people at a time.  We had a ten person limit on the tower at one time.  We had only seen that limit hit a couple of times when we had tour groups come to the top of Ute Mountain.  The rest of our time we never saw more than one or two vehicles (2 t...