For us Aussies, cruising in the USA is all about the timing - timing to avoid tropical storms and timing to work within the limited 6 month visa that most of us have. In our case, our visa "window" started when we arrived in Puerto Rico back in May, so we have to leave the country before November. The result is that Crystal Blues is resting securely on her own in Reedville, Virginia, while we have headed off on a cross country land cruise with a flight back to Australia thrown in for good measure - there is no rest for the wicked. W
e'll be camping in the back of the truck for the next 10 days,
have tent, air mattress, camp stove and pepper spray for the bears. What
could possibly go wrong!
We drove out of the northern neck of Virginia just three weeks ago, heading west into the Blue Ridge Mountains. By nightfall that first day we had gained a lot of altitude and adopted a new weather paradigm - fog, cold and torrential rain. We woke next morning to a flooded tent, with our air bed almost floating
inside the tent. Ok, so we were still learning how to setup the camping rig.
After drying out (we found a coin laundry at the next town) we traveled about 450 miles southward on the Blue Ridge Parkway over 5 days, reaching the Smokey Mountains, camping each night in Park Service camp sites, mesmerised by the staggering colors of fall in this part of the world. Then, crossing into the Carolinas, we climbed and climbed to the highest point in the eastern USA, before entering western Georgia as we continued south through spectacular country.
