August 12 - August 22: Loft Mountain Campground in Shenandoah National Park

We departed Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield VA around mid-afternoon to shop at the grocery store before heading to Loft Mountain Campground for an unknown length of stay. The pre-two week due date window for our newest grandchild would begin during our stay. We stopped by a nearby Kroger's and then ate dinner in the parking lot. We knew that we were going to be cutting it close to arrive at Loft Mountain before dark so we ate a sandwich quickly and got on our way. We made it to the campground with a little bit of light remaining and filled up our fresh water tank at the dump station before picking a campsite.

We picked a campsite in the outer loop hoping for better cell reception than the last time we stayed at the campground. Since it was a Friday night the campground was fairly full. We stayed at that campsite Friday and Saturday night, then at another campsite Sunday night and finally a third campsite from Monday through Saturday night. I only wanted to reserve a site one or two days at a time in case the call to babysit came along. We made a trip to the dump station when we moved Sunday since we had to pack up anyway to move to the other campsite.

A cool front had come through at the end of the week so when we got to Loft Mountain Friday evening it was in the low 60s and dropped to the low 50s Friday night. The weekend weather was beautiful but Monday was a rain-out with temperatures never getting out of the 50s. Jane ended up making brownies in the oven to take the chill off in the camper.

Since we had explored the campground and some of the nearby hiking trails on our last stay, the focus was on quilting/sewing for Jane and quilt design and cycling for me. I actually rode on Skyline drive a few days which I'll put in the RV living achievement chest. I don't actually have a chest it is only virtual.

My quilting effort focused on creating a Visual Basic (VB) script that would read an Inkscape project file I create. That script was created and the next step will be to add to the project file so that polygons are created automatically from line segments I created manually. I referred to the effort as creating a mask but creating a mosaic might be a better analogy.

Loft Mountain Campground has a multitude of deer and rabbit. I don't thinking hunting is allowed so that is probably a major factor. Most of the deer were does and fawns but we would see a buck once in a while. The does were pretty comfortable around people/campers but the bucks were usually more skittish. On my Sunday morning jog, there was a buck that was coming right towards me. I had my phone on me so I decided to stop and see if I could get a picture. I was able to take a couple with him on one side of the road and me on the other. Here is the better picture of the two. Not that I'm very knowledgeable, but due to his small antlers I was thinking he was fairly young.

Since the cell service wasn't very good at Loft Mountain and the pre-two week due date window was now open, my daughter was getting increasingly nervous about the cell service and us being a little over two hours away so we ended up visiting her on Sunday in the Richmond VA area and then heading back to Pocahontas State Park on Monday after staying Sunday night in her driveway. So my next blog update will be about our second stay at Pocahontas State Park and possibly about the arrival of our newest grandchild.