Thank Our Lucky Stars: The Long, Steep, and Winding Road to Shenandoah

October 2016

We have 3 GPSs! THREE! You might think that’s a bit of overkill right? Believe it or not there’s a reason for each one! We’ve had the Garmin for a couple of years. The Garmin is mine! I know how to use it. I understand it. It understands me! I can set our destination for that day then if along the way we need to find a rest stop, a Subway or McDonalds, or a gas station, I can easily set it to find something along our route. When we bought the truck we found out it came with a dashboard GPS. We thought about selling or giving away the Garmin until we discovered that NO ONE, not the passenger, the driver, or anyone can set or reset the GPS while the car is in motion! For safety reasons it has a voice command that you’re HAVE to use while driving. Actually it's a pretty good feature. We soon discovered arguing about the correct pronunciation of a word with a stupid machine while in motion proved to be not so safe either. We decided to keep the Garmin. Larry was going over our proposed route one day and discovered the possibility of low bridges and tunnels. He found an app for a tablet we already had that could be set for RV travel, so now we have three GPSs!

Along with the height requirement he set the app one to not take us to ferries or toll roads. Everything was going along great until we were on our way to Shenandoah National Park. The GPS warned us of a low tunnel inside the park right after the closest entrance to our campsite. We knew we’d have to go a long way around. Then it started taking us to really weird out of the way roads. One of them was the steepest road we’d ever tried to take the trailer on. Larry had it all the way to the floor and it was barely moving! It was a backwoods road with a few houses scattered here and there. One of the houses had a party going on and they were all out front taking pictures. I thought, Oh good, maybe they can help us. Then we saw the look on their faces and changed our minds about asking. They looked positively irate that we were even on “their” road. Whoever said southerners were friendly, never met this bunch! As we crawled closer a few of the men went into the house and I fully expected them to come out with shotguns! The engine started heating up. We had no choice. We had to pull over. We waited there on the side of the road just before the house of crazy revelers and tried not to look like we were watching them. The engine cooled off enough where we could continue. We passed the scowling partiers and got to a wide spot where we could see the road got even steeper! So… this thing avoids low bridges but takes us up impassably steep roads? What good is that? With a little maneuvering we finally got turned around and headed back down the road. By the time we got to the bottom we had to turn onto a very windy road and pull over again! Thankfully there was a wide spot not on one of the many curves. We pulled over and waited. I got the dogs out to relieve themselves and a woman pulled up in a car. Larry chatted with her while I tried to keep Jackson from barking. When she drove off I put the dogs in and Larry told me what went wrong. He said the woman was a volunteer at the park, saw we needed assistance and stopped to help, restoring my faith in Southern Hospitality!

The steep road up to the park was for employees only! Had we made it to the top, a locked gate would have thwarted our entry! He realized the GPS considered the park entrance station a toll therefore avoiding it. We reset the GPS got to the next entrance which was the one with the low tunnel and stopped to make sure our information about the tunnel was correct. They said, yes indeed a tunnel just a few miles down the road would stop us. We were assured the next entrance would be fine. The only problem being it was quite a ways down the road. Because our campsite was on this side of the park we’d have to go all the way down to the next entrance then turn around inside the park and come all the way back. Shenandoah is a long narrow park! Our 1 to 2 hour drive turned into a 6 hour drive! We finally made it and got set up just before sunset!

But as the following pictures show it was totally worth the hassle!

What a beautiful place!