No doubt, the spectacular views from our mountaintop RV site mentioned in the previous post are the “rewards” Karen and I hoped for on our new journey. There is effort/stress associated with getting those rewards, so I want to make sure that my recaps of our journey do justice to that aspect of our journey, too. Basically, I want to keep it real, so to speak.
Even though Karen and I want to get out to Austin to meet up with Emma and Robin, this is really the first time that we can do our RVing on a very loose time schedule – meaning we don’t have any deadlines forcing our decisions as to when to drive or where to drive. The freedom that comes with that shouldn’t be underestimated. First and foremost, if we get to a place and decide that it would be fun to spend a few extra days there, we can just do that. Second, and almost as important, is that we can keep our RV driving on any given day down to a comfortable few hours and we can feel just fine about driving at the speed limit rather than feeling the need to drive faster so we get somewhere sooner. Until you have tried to drive a 40ft long (plus the towed car), 8 1/2ft wide, and 12 1/2ft high vehicle, you can’t appreciate the amount of vigilance required to drive it. Yes, it gets easier with repetition, but it will never be as relaxing as driving a regular-sized car. You really can’t let your mind wander much, especially on the roads in the eastern part of the country, where they aren’t straight, wide, and relatively empty. So, having the freedom to choose to look for an RV park that’s only 3 hours away from your current spot relieves a significant amount of stress.
As RV owners, we’ve decided to become a member of an organization called Harvest Hosts. The “hosts” are various places, such as farms, wineries, museums, etc., that permit the members to stay overnight for free. Many of these places have no “hook-ups” for RVs, so you have to be able to self-sustain – water, electricity, sewage tanks, etc. – for a day. In return for the free stay, the hope is that the RVer will patronize the hosts, such as buy a bottle of wine, buy some beef/eggs, take a tour, or even volunteer work at the host site for a day. Besides the nicety of staying somewhere for free, it allows us to stay at more interesting places than your average RV park. We decided to try our first Harvest Host visit by staying at a cattle ranch called “Walnut Hollow Ranch”, in the southwestern corner of North Carolina. As soon as we pulled in, Karen knew this was a place that she wanted to stay for more than a day. It’s beautiful, it’s quiet, it has cows, and we can let our dogs out of the RV without leashes. In that way, other than the cows, it very much reminded us of our own farm…and why we so loved it. In addition, the owner, Charlie, is such a nice guy. The unexpected bonus, depending on how you feel about this kind of thing, is that Karen was able to witness a cow giving birth to a calf – something that most of us “city folk” don’t get to see. Here are some photos at Walnut Hollow Ranch, though I’ll spare you the one of the calf-birthing process 😉
I tried my hand at taking a short drone video of the ranch, with the idea being to provide a perspective as if one was “gliding” into the ranch:
1 Comment
Gayle Sherman Crandell · October 13, 2018 at 2:14 am
I love thinking of you two with so much freedom and spontaneity. It warms my heart and reminds me to slow down. Xoxoxo
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