To Washington in a Flash

Moving day! Friday the 13th! Oh, the Horror, the Horror...Not! (Wayne's World reference for my bro-in-law, Adam).

Heading to Maryland today, to a campground just outside of Washington D.C. While the trip is only a couple of hours long, I have been forewarned by fellow campers that traffic will be thick. We will be skirting around Baltimore along the way. Sonya was up early again today - she does not sleep well on the nights before we pack up and move to a new location. By 7am she has tea made and is washing dishes.

The drive was uneventful, which is good, very good. When you’re driving a one-ton truck and pulling about 15,000 lbs, uneventful is what you’re shooting for. We took the I-95 most of the way, which took us through the outskirts of Baltimore so we were able to see the skyline as well as the stadium where the Ravens play (NFL football).

The campground is called Cherry Hill park and is located in Maryland.

It is a very nice campground with a small indoor gym, a few playgrounds, a couple of dog parks, mini-golf, and a small theatre room. Although the pool is closed for the winter, there is an indoor hot tub and a sauna.

We toured around the campsite a bit after setting up. Tashy tried her hand at the Wizard of Oz pinball game and Isaac tried one of the other arcade games. But then Sonya and I had work to do as we have not yet booked campgrounds in Florida (or beyond that). Booking campgrounds can be a time-consuming process. First, we need to choose the approximate location of where we will be stopping on our journey. This has been an ongoing discussion as there are trade-offs between driving further between stops and being able to have a longer stay versus shorter but more frequent drives with shorter stays in between. We have found that anything less than a 5 day stop starts to feel like all we are doing is driving, setting up, and packing up. We have also found that anything more than a 6-hour drive is too long; with breaks and traffic, a 6-hour drive will take us 8-9 hours so, by the time we pack up and leave one location, this would have us arriving at the next location in the dark. We prefer not to drive nor to setup in the dark and it gets dark before 6pm at this time of year.

Once we have decided upon the area that we want to stop in, then we need to find the various campgrounds that are in that area. There are a number of sources that we use - KOA website, Good Sam website, Google Maps. After finding the campgrounds, we need to research them to ensure that they can accommodate big rigs and we usually read reviews to find out if they are decent, clean, and what amenities they have. Once we have chosen the campground that we like best, we try to book it. If it is a KOA, it has been a relatively simple process, using the o

nline booking. But in Florida, the KOAs were booked up and we had to call a number of campgrounds before finding one that had a site available for us.

After spending a couple of hours on this activity, it was time to get supper going. The kids and I watched The Flash before bedtime - we like our comic book heroes!