Greenbrier State Park, Maryland

We took our time getting out of Pocohantas State Park today and when we stopped by the dump station there were 3 other RVs there.  The first two people used the two dump stations, but they decided to chat up a storm.  One unit was a small travel trailer and couldn't have had tanks larger than 30 gallons.  The third unit was waiting for the station that I would have used so I had to turn the RV around and come at it from the other way.  To make a long story short, it took us over 30 minutes for something that should have taken 5 minutes.

We finally got on the road and just our luck there was an accident in Richmond that took over 30 minutes to get around and then farther down the road north of Richmond there was another accident.  This one had been cleared up so only slowed us down for 15 minutes.  That seems to be the norm for the Richmond area with the unbelievable traffic on I-95 North.  Now I see why the Southwest traffic is so nice.

We ran into a very heavy rainstorm for 30 miles or so and that slowed us down also.  Are you beginning to see a pattern here?  We finally arrived at Greenbrier SP only to find the parking area for motorhomes blocked off.  I drove to the gate and the young attendant said he would move the cone and I could back up.  Yeah, right.  He then said I should turn into the exit road and park there.  The road was barely one lane wide and such a severe angle that you couldn't have turned a car into the parking lot.  Then his suggestion was to drive into the park and turn around in the parking lot about 1/2 mile away and then make a sharp left turn into the parking lot.  After all that, I told him I was going to park on the road and people could go around me.  No problem!

The entrance to the campground has a combination lock with a lower one for cars and a taller one for motorhomes.  Guess which one had black tape all over it and wasn't working.  Yep, the tall one.  Gerry got out and managed to squeeze in between the RV and the lock to open the gate.  The entrance way left me 4 inches of room on one side and about 8 inches on the other.  Not for the faint of heart driving in there.

We finally arrive at our designated campsite after driving 225 miles and had to park a 40ft MH on a 30ft site.  No, I am not kidding.  I knew in advance the site was small, but it is one of the largest sites in the campground and I had parked the 37ft Southwind there before so figured it wouldn't be a major problem.  We finally got the motorhome parked and almost level and called it quits.  Happy hour time and a two drink one at that.

Check the angle on the car.

The front step is 1 1/2 ft off the ground

Looking downhill

Up hill shot

I fired up the TV and got one channel of reception, so we will have to find some other form of entertainment.  We have a number of movies and will watch them the next few nights.

We have camped here a number of times over the past 47 years and have always enjoyed the park.  It is heavily wooded, has a lot of hiking trails, wildlife and a very nice lake with a beach.  The park is very heavily used on the weekend and they close the entrance and turn away hundreds of people on some weekends.  There are 4 camping areas with one dedicated to tent/popups, another much the same, an electric hookup area and a dry camping campground.  It is very hilly and the roads are narrow one lane wide and one direction.  We still love the park and highly recommend it if you can live with the limitations.

We had a very nice visit with Carolyn & Mann and will try and meet up with them another time this summer for a couple nights.  They like to camp in the Hershey Park area and that isn't that far from us.  Hope to see you guys soon.

Now I am going to collapse and do nothing for the remainder of the evening.   

Greenbrier State Park, Boonsboro, MD Pt 2

Lexa will be staying with us overnight on Thursday so we extended our stay here at Greenbrier SP for another two days.  I just hope our holding tanks can last that long before we have to go to the dump station.  

We decided to drive up to the cabin to get a fix on what needs to be done on Friday when we move the motorhome there for the summer.  The cabin has been vacant for 10 months and there are always some issues to deal with when re-opening it.  Jack had gone up last weekend and repaired the water pump so I didn't have to deal with that.  The cabin came through the winter in great shape and only needs a good cleaning and airing out.  

On the way back to the campsite we drove down by the lake and took some pictures.  Greenbrier SP is heavily used on the weekends by swimmers, fishermen and picnic users.  When I say heavily used, it is not an exaggeration by any means.  The park fills up early on weekends and they have to turn away users by early morning and actually have staff stationed outside the park keeping others from sneaking into the park.  Since they have many trails here, it must be a difficult job limiting the number of users.  Sounds like it would be a good training ground for the US Border Patrol agents who are on the US/Mexican border.  Plus, they would have the advantage of trying their language skills out on the ones sneaking into the park.

There is a church youth group camping in tents below us in the Birch camping loop.  They are mostly from the Southern Maryland area near the Chesapeake Bay area.  They have signs made out of bed sheets on each campsite with some kind of identification painted on them.  It looks like they have occupied all of the campsites there and when we drove through they were sitting in the amphitheater and filled every seat.  They looked to be mostly younger children in the 8-14 yr old range.  

We went back to our motorhome and watched an old movie that we had seen before, but didn't realize it until the movie was half over.  It was a good movie the 2nd time also.