My favorite hike at my favorite state park in Virginia

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Camping, and a fabulous waterfall hike

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We bought our camper one year ago

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Trip report on a long weekend at Breaks Interstate Park

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Trip report 2/2 on our week at Great Smokey Mountain National Park

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Trip report 1/2 on our week at Great Smokey Mountain National Park

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Loudest campground I've been to all year. But I'd still go back

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It's a nice park. You should camp there.

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Peaks, creeks, and a B-25 crash site

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Trip: 8
Total Nights: 22

We normally stay up near Kitty Hawk for our annual-ish Outer Banks weekend, but with the camper we decided to go farther south to Hatteras.

A few days prior to our trip Hurricane Teddy passed by well offshore, but still sent enough water crashing west …

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Trip: 7
Total Nights: 19

On Friday morning we backtracked from Stone Mountain State Park to the Blue Ridge Parkway and continued our journey south at milepost 229. It was foggy and cloudy and the forecast was calling for rain, but we mostly stayed dry. You are starting to stay …

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Trip: 7
Total Nights: 17

We got up early on day 3 and packed up to move on down the road, but not without some excitement. We had a sewage hookup at the site but for reasons unknown my gray water tank would not drain out the hose. It would …

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Trip: 7
Total Nights: 15

We started our week long adventure on Labor Day. While everybody else was headed home to go back to work, we were headed west to the Virginia mountains. We entered the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 0 near Waynesboro VA. The plan for day 1 …

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Trip: 6
Total Nights: 13

The weather forecast a week out looked fabulous, mid 80s and sunny all weekend. Then Hurricane Laura set its sights on the US and once on land made a sharp right and beelined for the Mid-Atlantic area. I was checking the forecast several times a …

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Trip: 4
Total Nights: 9

We took the Ascape out for the 4th time this weekend, this time a father-son trip to go hiking. On the drive up there must have been traffic on the Interstate as Google routed us on US Hwy 33 all the way from Richmond to …

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Trip: 3
Total Nights: 7

Our third trip in the Ascape was a weekend camping trip to Fairy Stone State Park. 30 minutes before we left I looked at Michelle and said, “Let’s take Teddy.” Teddy is our Jackshund (Jack Russell / Dachshund) who at the moment I said that …

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Updated July 2024

Do you remember back in the golden days of blogs when somebody would write something then a bunch of other people would write about the same thing and link back to each other and somehow all this happened without Nazis invading your comments?

I miss those days …

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We spent the weekend camping at the Natural Bridge / Lexington KOA. As I pulled up for curbside check in the employee/manager/owner was masked, but she made a snide comment as she checked me in that made it clear she didn’t think she needed to be masked. That …

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Trip:1
Total Nights:2

No more pandemic diary, but you get a camping journal in its place. Fair trade?

We took the Ascape out this weekend, just 60 miles east to Williamsburg VA. Camping near the coast in humid 90F+ weather is not my idea of ideal camping weather …

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Like everybody else, the pandemic is "top of mind" 24 x 7 for me. I'm writing to help myself not internalize all of it. You can find other posts in the series at https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/tag/coronavirus.html

It was game night at Casa de O'Donnell this evening …

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