I haven't written anything for a few days as we have been on the move. With Maria coming we left Nags Head and began our trip to Texas. We had no plans for any stops along the way. We are having an interesting trip. Traffic has generally been good, very good roads except for a spot in South Carolina. We have been seeing an inordinate amount of police on the road and broken down cars. Don't know what is going on. In addition to that  we have seen 2 car fires and a fire at the Atlanta Airport that had flames going 50-75 feet in the air and a lot of black smoke. We tend to travel 225-275 miles a day, driving the motor home is not like driving a car and we are in no rush.

As we are going to be in Livingston, TX for a week we are busy making appointments. First was the motor home to get the broken window replaced, a battery monitor installed and some new batteries. I won;t even go into the battery saga in full detail but we have truely abused all the batteries in the motor home and are getting AGM batteries plus a better battery monitor to check on them. We need to go to 2 different Sams Clubs to get the batteries for installation so one day is dedicated to getting our batteries. Mostly we have filled up the entire week with things to do or appointments.

We will become Texans while here to begin our full timing life in the RV. With that in mind we need to have our wills etc. updated so have an appointment with a lawyer(who is an RVer) that caters to full time RVers and their unique problems. It is wonderful to belong to an organization with all this support. Makes our  lives so much easier.

After Livingston we need to go up to Dallas to get some wheel balancers installed and then we will spend some time in New Mexico. Except for the Balloon Festival we never seem to spend any time in New Mexico, just drive through.

Every time we try to visit the Outer Banks we seem to have something that goes wrong and our plans fall apart. I think this is the third time we have tried to come here and haven't been successful yet. We had planned to leave Wednesday but may leave on Tuesday. We will make that decision later today.

With Maria bearing down and changing her course we are giving up on the Outer Banks. We will be leaving the area and begin heading toward Livingston, TX. We have an appointment to have some work done on the RV while in Livingston including replacing the window that broke while in storage. Everything is working out for the best.

Today we drove down to Cape Hatteras Light House, We arrived there to find out all visitors had to be heading north by 12N in 45 minutes, Long drive for not much. Good thing we had decided to move to a commercial campground the day before and made a reservation as all campgrounds in Cape Hatteras were shut down.

   This is the lucky ranger who told us we all had to leave.

  Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, unique base

First thing we did today was visit the Wright Brothers Memorial. A new visitor center is being built, not much else going on. We toured the site and took our pictures. Brass sculptures of the initial flight were done and are quit fascinating and beautiful. 

Today we went up to Corolla and the northern end of the island. We stopped and visited the Currituck Lighthouse and the historic park. I can't walk very long yet but am working on it. It is not so much the knee when walking it is the repercussions later in the day, the knee slowly gets tired. Nothing unexpected, just frustration at not being able to do what I want to do.

Several items of note on our drive. The number of rental units is phenomenal. I never knew that renting an "apartment" was so popular. I guess groups or families get together and rent a unit for a week or two for vacation. We were just surprised at how many units are available. The road is only a 2 lane road, traffic in the summer must be bumper to bumper. There doesn't seem to be many restaurants or stores on the northern end to support what the summer population must be.

We had planned to visit the wild horses in Corolla but the area is totally commercialized. The horses are only viewable with a 4wd vehicle or a commercial jeep tour. Not like Assateague where the horses just wander around for everyone to see. Very disappointed in the commercialism and we were not interested in the jeep tours.

                                                            

Currituck Lighthouse

We woke up to a very warm refrigerator. We had put a timer on the refrigerator in an attempt to make the batteries last longer overnight. We ended up using more electricity than before. Good idea that didn't work out too well. We drove into town since we had a few errands to run. Stopped for breakfast and Tom didn't feel well. We ran the rest of the errands and came back to the cg. Tom was getting worse. Spent the rest of the day in camp.

Before we left we were chatting with one of the campground hosts. He has been coming to the Cape since 1958, sometimes family vacation and the last 5-10 years as a volunteer. I asked him where the Post Office was and he gave us directions. Of course there was a story that went with this. He just discovered the Post Office a few weeks ago, saw a USPS truck parked, looked up and saw the Post Office. He had been going past it for many years and never noticed it, drove many miles further to a different Post Office all the time. We had a good laugh.

On our way to shopping a truck passed us going in the other direction, the wind from this truck was massive, blew us all over the lane and then we heard a strange noise coming from the car. Stopped and found that some piece of plastic that protected the undercarraige had broken and the trucks wind ripped it loose. Stopped at a Ford dealer who took our Honda right in, 30 minutes later we were zip tied together again and on our way. Best of all no charge........

Today we moved from Assastague to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Only 220 miles but the last 100 miles just dragged. We left around 9 and didn't get to the campground until 3. We checked in and were told to go select a site then come back and tell the ranger. A bit different. We selected our site, went back and told the ranger. Then had to go back and get settled. As usual, no electricity, water or sewer. We sure are getting our boondocking(living off the grid) practice in.

Generator usage in Cape Hatteras is from 6 AM to 10 PM. People will usually start up around 8 AM and run them while breakfast is being made, then turn them off until needed for supper again. Sundown is around 7 and the campground settles into the pitch black and silence. You don't know what dark is until you camp in a National CG, no lights anyplace. No fires are permitted right now, so things to do are limited. We are 10+ miles from any civilization. At least we have the MH and can live off our batteries for a few hours.

Wallops Island Flight Facility

Today we went to Wallops Island. The Nasa Visitor Centr is well worth a stop, we took abougt 2 hours go to through. We found it very fascinating how busy Wallops is. They have about 200 varying size launches each year at this location. There is also additional locations around the world. Most of the launches are for research in government and in academia. Wallops can build and send up a rocket in the 2-4 week time frame, these are sat is to go to the space station with supplies.

What fascinated us were the balloons. We all know about weather balloons but they now have rsearch balloons that go up to 130,000 feet high and can stay up for 100 days sending data back. Awesome!!!!

The Wallops website is https://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/home if you are interested in additional information.

Last night and today have been interesting. Jose, a hurricane out to sea, is affecting us with heavy rain and very strong winds. We had decided to go to NASA on Wallops Island since it was raining. We didn't get very far before we decided to turn around. The wind was so strong we were being blown all over the lane. Not a nice experience.

We came back to the motor home, after meeting a few horses and one on the side of the road that decided to walk into the road behind us. I watched as it slowly walked down the middle of the road, luckily there is not much traffic.

Horses along the road

We have begun our fall trip with many changes in our lives. We have put our house up for sale and will turn around from our trip when it sells. I had knee replacement surgery in June and am still recovering from that. When the house sells we will begin our full timing life. We are planning a long trip to Alaska for one summer and another summer we will visit Washington, Oregon and Idaho. States that we have not really visited. Then onto Wyoming and Montana. Looking forward to visiting the western states.

Life is about change and embracing it.

This year we had no major plans due to the house being on the market. Between Harvey, Irma and now Jose we kept deferring leaving. I like to have paper maps and have made 3 trips to AAA as our routing changes to further and further north to avoid Harvey and Irma.

We plan to wander toward New Mexico with a few jogs and then on to Phoenix for the winter. If the house sells we will turn around and take care of that.

Right now we are at Assateague Island National Seashore. We had originally made a reservation for the Bay side(not the preferred side) since that was all available. When we checked in we asked if they had an Ocean side sight and they did. It is so nice here, breezy all the time. Sites are very nice and far apart. We are "boondocking". There is no water, electric or sewer. This is very typical of anything "national". Price is right though, $15/night. I will say without electricity, no street lights, this campground is pitch black at night.

As we came into Assateague we starting seeing wild horses, the major attraction of Assateague and the home of the famous "pony swim" each summer. We couldn't stop as we had the motor home. The next day we drove out and saw horses all over the place. After we came back, we really didn't have to go far. The horses were wandering through the campground. The Ranger warned everyone to treat the horses like bears, don't leave food out as the horses will eat anything. The Ranger also asked everyone st stay 10'-20' away from them. The only problem is the horses weren't told this. We watched our neighbor trying to pack up. A horse followed him around, every outside cabinet he opened the horse looked into. It was quite comical. I wish I had a picture of this.

Today the local forecast was breezy, 15-20 mph winds. Tomorrow it is suppose to be windy, 30+ mph winds. We walked to the beach today, the "breeze" was so strong the sand was stinging our legs. Nice beach except for the sand.

Horses visiting our neighbor

Our motor home

Sand dunes and beach across the road from our site

A Typical site

Most of the horses we see are eating

A view of the campground from the beach

Today we began our 2017 Fall Trip. We left late as neighbors kept stopping by and talking with us. We are heading for Assateague Island National Seashore to spend a few days and unwind a bit. We have been try to to get here for several years and could never it quite get it into our schedule. This year we did it. The trip is very interesting. First the Hampton Roads Tunnel and then the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge, 24 miles long and 2 tunnels. At least it wasn't windy so we were allowed across.

Assateague Island itself has the National Seashore, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and Assateague State park. Assasteague Island is known for its wild ponies and the summer pony round up that attracts thousands. The ponies swim from the Assatague Island to Chincoteague Island and then are auctioned off as a fund raiser for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department.

The history of the horses is a bit vague. One story is they are feral horses and the other story is that the horses are survivors of a shipwreck off the coast. No matter what, these horses are tough. Mosquitos, heat, wind and poor food yet they flourish.

Viewing wild horses in the US is a uniques experience but here they are, close to home. We have seen dozens of horses including in the campground......

Hopefully the blog will be better this year. Last year was a learning year. This year is fine tuning.