Nearly five years into full time RVing and on our third tour of the East Coast, we are focusing on, in addition to seeing family and friends, revisiting those regions and parks we really loved, skipping over those that were merely fine or just don’t work for this itinerary, and hopefully finding some new fantastic stops as well.  This can produce mixed results like it did in Savannah, a place we really enjoy, but with their revised visitor center rules we were forced to seek alternative accommodations.   We had great visits with Mom and Tim in Wilmington and with Linda and family in Chesapeake, where we stayed at our third military campground in as many visits.

I am not sure we are even supposed to be on this road.

After our longer than expected Delaware stop we needed to pick up the pace to stay on our intended schedule, and so we skipped past New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.  Such skipping was not without drama.  I planned a bit of a westward detour to avoid passing through New York City on I-95 and the egregious toll fee on the Goerge Washington bridge.   Despite my research and intentions our GPS kept trying to reroute us to a cars only parkway, which resulted in several last minute changes, some tight maneuvering in towns west of the Hudson River, and a good amount of stress.  Eventually we found a mostly legal route to the Tappanzee Bridge, and it was all smooth sailing after that.

But we made it through and it’s all down here from here.

So eight hours into our drive, far longer than our preferred daily run, we finally made it to Carr Point Recreation Area in Portsmouth, managed by the Newport Naval Station across the bay.  A tiny park consisting of only six no frills sites in almost every way: no shower house, no playground, no trees, no concrete pads, no camp host, no wifi, no dump station, no almost anything except power, water, and unobstructed views of the Narraganset Bay a stones throw from every site.  That’s why we come here.

Driving over the Clairborne Pell Newport Bridge

Unfortunately, this would be a bit of a lazy stop for us: the first day was shot due to the drive, we had a couple of days of foul weather, and started things off with a medical issue.  Rose has been having some upper abdominal pain that we generally attributed to a strain or cartilage inflammation, but it got worse over a couple of months, so we went to the local urgent care.  They were savvy enough to tell us that the type of tests they would need to run would entail going to the hospital, so we might as well just go straight to the ER.  Newport Hospital is not only in our TriCare insurance network, it was also one of the better ER visits either of us had experienced.  We got in quite quickly and with minimal fuss, and received excellent care and attention.  X-Rays and fluid test results revealed mostly normal readings, and the doctor assessed her as having a peptic ulcer.  Medication and diet change has made significant progress already, and here’s to more.

Rose feeling better for an outing during a break in the rain.

Despite some bad weather we found the time for a few outings, and took advantage of being back on a base to visit the commissary and thrift store.  During a trip to downtown and historic Newport we stumbled across the B&B that we stayed at during a weekend visit from Rose while I was attending school in Newport while we were still dating!  We also did some casual geocaching in the area during breaks in the weather.

A casual dozen geocaches found during our stay.

We met Roy and Theresa, our neighbors in the campground, and enjoyed a couple of evenings of cocktails and world problem solving conversations.  It turns out both of us are on RVillage, a social networking site specifically for RVers, and we are now keeping up with them as they enjoy a 49 day guided caravan tour of Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.   Since our plans take us to Eastern Canada around the same window, we hope to meet up with them again.

Front page or our RVillage account.  Other than messages, it allows you to see other Villagers in your campground or those at your future stops. 

Catching up! We are only three weeks behind on the blog now, and will close that gap significantly with a couple of upcoming posts about our wonderful stay in Maine. 

After departing the Norfolk area we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, an experience in and of itself with a hefty $34 toll for our rig, and pulled into the family campground on Dover Air Force Base.  We stopped there last year for a couple of days, and remembered it to be quite decent.  Like almost all AFB campgrounds everything is in excellent condition and reasonably priced: we had 50 amp and full hook ups for $20 a night.  Sure, Dover is not exactly on everyone’s must see list, but it worked as a nice stopover after spending five days with family.

The Dover AFB campground only has 15 serviced sites.

We planned for a two night stay, but then Rose learned of a Buccaneer Bash at nearby Bowers Beach, basically a pirate festival with a lot of people in full historical costume, and they accepted us as vendors, so we ended up staying a full five nights.  It had been ten weeks since our last sales event, which made it almost like starting over as we had to pull out all our racks and equipment and get everything ready.  Rose went gangbusters building our inventory back up and organizing the racks while I, um, supervised.  OK, I had to pull out all the tables, racks, displays, and canopy and load the car, but Rose did the lion’s share of the prep.

Setting up on day 1

We were rewarded with an excellent result at this two day event, and had a great time doing it.  It is always fun to walk around and see the other vendors and purchase a few items.  For us this is usually food, and we enjoyed a breakfast sandwiches, fries, and craft beer from a local brewery.  This festival had some live music, plenty of cosplayers, and a “pirate camp” devoted to those in full period attire with 18th century and before style tents, producing goods and items in authentic style or at least authentic appearance) and giving demonstrations and reenactments.  We could have done without the periodic cannon fire, though. 

Despite brisk sales, we had to cut the first day short when the wind picked up considerably and threatened not just our racks but the entire canopy despite our tent weights.  Day two had considerably better weather but slower sales; it seemed like a third of the vendors didn’t bother coming for the second day.

We also visited the local Moose Lodge, Camden-Wyoming #203, for a drink on our last day in town.  This Moose is likely the second most welcoming (nothing will ever top our Ellsworth home lodge) of the 26 we have visited.  In addition to one of the generous members covering our first round, they gave us a license tag to take to our home lodge, and were generally interested in our travels and glad that we stopped in.  Of interest for the next time we get to Delaware: I asked the handful of members if there was something that they considered a specific regional food.  After some internal discussion, they came back with scrapple.  Yes, scrapple.

All the Moose’s we have visited

We got to see a bit of drama during our stay in the park.  One of the campers, staying in on of those Class B camper vans, left his spot to run some errands, meaning he took the van since it was his only transportation.  While he was out, another camper in a big Class A with no reservations pulled into his spot, having failed to check with the front office about availability or check the board with posted reservations.  When van guy returned, Class A guy refused to give him back his spot!  The cops came, and after about an hour and apparently several phone calls, Class A guy was forced to move, and nearly kicked out of the entire campground.  Bizarre.  We actually ran into van guy at the festival, he had a sense of humor about it and gave us the full blow by blow. 

Our only regret about our Delaware stop was not being able to see Stan and Marilyn, who were out of town during out stay.  Next time, guys! As for bringing the blog up to date: I was on a real streak for a while with 8 posts in 11 days, only to get lazy with a 9 day lapse.  With this and yesterday’s post, we are getting back on track, though still nearly four weeks behind.