Heading to Candy Hill Campground, VA

October 4, 2023

As we only had four nights at French Creek State Park, PA, on September 15 (Friday), we finished packing up and hitching up with a small incident.

In hitching, Bruce backed the truck up to to the pin and he was finding it hard to get aligned. So he asked me to close the tailgate so he could line up the truck using the tailgate camera. I closed the tailgate and instead of pulling forward as I expected, Bruce started backing up.

I yelled stop twice into to walkie talkie as he backed the truck into the pin. Luckily, it only made a small dent in the tailgate. He got out and looked at the situation. Bruce explained that he couldn’t see the pin box, so he thought he wasn’t close enough yet.

Bruce pulled the truck forward and backed up with the truck aligned to the pin. I dropped the tailgate after the truck was aligned. Bruce backed the truck up and the pin slide into the hitch.

Bruce got out and looked at the hitch handle. It wasn’t locked in, even though the hitch teeth were around the pin. He got back into the truck, pulled forward and then he backed up again. This time, there was the loud snap of the hitch locking into place.

We finished our hitching checklist and slowly pulled out. Tree limbs encroached the loop road, so even being careful, we picked up a few more light scratches.

We took back roads to the Lancaster Pike then, onto the Lincoln Highway, headed to I-81. While on the Lincoln Highway, we had another RV pull up next to our driver’s door. The passenger of the RV was signaling back, then down.

That was a clear sign something was wrong. Bruce pulled over and both of us got out to see if we could spot what was wrong.

Relief all around when we didn’t find the garage door open or the landing feet down. The tires looked okay. The windows were closed. We looked under the RV from the back and didn’t see anything.

We got back in the truck and had a discussion about what it might have been. We then got back on the road.

The scenery was lovely.

We pulled into a rest stop and Bruce headed off to get rid of the caffeine. While I was walking Nox, a trucker stopped me. He told me the middle wheel of the RV was bouncing up and down and it might be a good idea to take a look at it.

I thanked the trucker and said we’d take a look.

When Bruce got back to the truck, I told him what the trucker said. We decided that must’ve been what the couple in the RV had been trying to tell us.

Since the tire looked good, both temperature and pressure wise, we decided to continue.

I did play with my phone camera a bit to see how to get black and white pictures.

We arrived safely at Candy Hill Campground in Virginia. Since Candy Hill Campground was at the top end of our budget, we reserved only a week.