Visiting Family and Friends, June/July

Sprinty enjoyed his outing to Florida so much, he looked for opportunities to get out again. As his humans have a home repair project planned for July, he proposed a quick trip to visit family in North Carolina and friends in Maryland,

Sunday, 21 June

With uncertain weather forecast for the day, we waited until this morning to pick a golf course and make a tee time. As rain was expected in the afternoon, we selected Old Union Golf Course in Blairsville, GA, to play. It was only about 1-1/2 hours from home, a nice drive through north Georgia.

We arrived in plenty of time, but they were busy enough that we could not start earlier than our tee time. Kris played very well for the first nine holes, hitting every fairway, and making 8 pars. Darrell struggled, making only one par. The back nine was more challenging, and we both struggled. Darrell continued to struggle more. As we continued north, we found a Starbucks in an Ingles grocery store for Kris to pay up.

We continued on without reservations, and had the Asheville East KOA in Swannanoa, NC, east of Asheville, as our Plan A. KOAs offer the advantage of on-line reservations, which also lets you check to see if sites are even available. We did not make a reservation as an option was to continue down the road for a bit. As the afternoon wore one, Plan A started looking better and better. On check in, we were assigned site CC1, which was right on the Swannanoa River.

Because it was the end site, the staff let Sprinty park crosswise to the site so we enjoyed the river view outside the sliding door.

What you can't see in the photo is that the dump station is right next to this site, which was Sprinty's front view for the stay. Fortunately, there were no early departures, so it was a non-issue. Other than checking in at the office and a walk around the park to stretch our legs, we could have been completely self-contained and isolated for the entire stay.

Monday, 22 June

After enjoying a nice night by the river, we headed out a little after 8am for Lenoir, NC. Darrell's sister, Marina, moved there last year from Marietta, GA. We had a very nice, albeit socially distanced, visit on the porch where we caught up on various things. We were grateful that she could take some time off from work (she is a remote worker since moving to North Carolina) to visit.

We then continued north to Damascus, VA to bike on the Virginia Creeper Trail. As we headed that way, we started researching riding eBikes on the Creeper Trail. The trail organization website made no mention that is was permissible or was not permissible. Finding nothing that said we couldn't, we pressed on. After getting Sprinty settled in a public parking lot by the river on the west side of town, we broke out the bikes.

The Virginia Creeper Trail is a 34-mile rails-to-trails trail that starts near Abington, VA, and goes towards Mount Rogers. Damascus is at about mile marker 16 of the trail. Three agencies own and manage the Virginia Creeper Trail: Damascus and Abingdon administer the trail from Abingdon to Damascus (mile 0-16); and the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area manages the trail from Damascus up to the NC line (mile 16-34).

We decided to ride uphill first, unlike 90+% of riders on the Whitetop-to-Damascus section who are shuttled to Whitetop (by one of numerous shuttle services in Damascus) to enjoy a 17-mile gentile downhill-only ride. As we rode uphill, we saw only two other bikes riding uphill compared to a couple hundred riding downhill. We used pedal assist going uphill, turned around at the 10-mile point, and rode back on pedal power only.

A nice ride on a beautiful day.

We continued north to Claytor Lake State Park in Dublin, VA, a place Sprinty has visited twice before. Selected as the place for the night as the reservation system showed available sites. When we arrived, the only sites left were "tent" sites, meaning no water or electric. The tent sites were more than large enough for Sprinty, and we got to pick from many vacant sites.

Tuesday, 23 June

We started the day with a bike ride through the state park. We just rode the roads and parking lots as the trails seemed to be more suited to hiking or technical mountain biking.

After packing up the bikes, we continued on to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland where we have a small condo at the yacht club. We chose to take back roads, so we were only on Interstate 81 for about 50 miles. Sprinty must have liked it as he returned almost 20mpg for the day.

Wednesday, 24 June to Saturday, 4 July

We spent the next 10 days enjoying cooler temperatures and the typical summer activities we do when we spend the summer in Maryland. Some of the activities included:

• Wednesday: bike riding on Great Allegheny Passage rails-to-trails. Parked in Myersdale, and rode to Rockwood and back, 24 miles. Darrell did the route on pedal power only, and was plum tuckered out at the end.

• Thursday: golf at Thousand Acres Golf Course. The staff welcomed us back and provided a nice deal for us as former members only visiting for a short while.
• Friday: golf at Thousand Acres with Bill and a Melanie. Kris got sick with diarrhea and vomiting before finishing. Sprinty provided full support as Kris barely made it back to the parking lot and needed a bathroom. Sure beat the porta-pottie option at the golf course.
• Saturday: showed off the Rad eBikes to lake friends including letting them take test rides, and wound up selling our two regular bikes in Maryland
• Sunday: watched races, helped Melanie and Bill move a sofa
• Monday: golf at Thousand Acres
• Tuesday: bike riding on Great Allegheny Passage with Tom & Heidi. We met them in Ohiopyle, rode to Confluence and back.
• Wednesday: golf at Alpine Lake Golf Course with Bill.
• Thursday: golf at Oakland golf Club
• Friday: golf at Thousand Acres with Bill
• Saturday: relaxing day. Very light winds which made us a little happy that we were not trying to race our sailboat in the fluky wind conditions. A very different 4th of July as fewer members were present. As with most organizations/groups, there were some who respected the need to keep distances and wear masks, and others nearly oblivious to prudent pandemic precautions.

Sunday, 5 July

We learned last Thursday that the deck replacement project was going to start on Monday, 6 July after all. Too late to try and head home as finding overnight camping places is nearly impossible on short notice over a holiday weekend.

We headed out early in the morning and made it a driving day, with our destination for the day being Panther Creek State Park, Morristown, TN. The drive was uneventful until the last 5 miles when we ran smack into a big thunderstorm. With roads flooding, we elected to pull off the road in a convenient retail parking lot to wait it out.

Panther Creek SP provided touch-less check in - just go straight to site and setup. As we walked around the campground loop, we saw a number of empty sites with "not available" signs on the posts. It appears this is part of the COVID procedures for contact-less check in. Tennessee State Parks, like some other states, does not let you make same day reservations online - in effect, COVID procedures are requiring planning ahead and limiting the winging it that Sprinty prefers.

Panther Creek SP was not a large state park, so we weren't too motivated to break out the bikes. As we relaxed for a bit, Mother Nature decided for us by providing another thunderstorm.

Monday, 6 July

We got an early start, which had us passing through Knoxville, TN, during morning rush hour. Under normal conditions, we try to avoid rush hour gridlock in metropolitan areas. However due to COVID-19, the morning rush-hour traffic was about like we would experience passing through at 1pm. No stop-and-go traffic, everyone traveling at speed. We arrived home just after 10am, about 2 hours after the workers arrived and started taking down the old deck. By the time we arrived, most of the deck had been taken down.

So what's next for Sprinty? He has not shared his plans as he digests the latest COVID-19 situation and various states, counties and cities' adjustment to the surging case count. He is using the deck replacement time to evaluate ways to offer relief to his humans from the Ground Hog Day routine of hunkering down at home with short, outside activity-based (golf, biking, hiking) adventures that can be done within COVID-19 precautions.