Trip:48
Nights: 167-169

We planned to be at Grayson Highlands State Park in SW Virginia this past weekend. Hurricane Helene had other ideas. When I checked Tuesday for alternate camping options in the state park system, I found 6 sites at Kiptopeke State Park, and nothing else. At least it made the decision easy. We had never been to Kiptopeke, so it was nice to check it off the list. Also, it's only 2 hours from home.

We had postcard perfect 75F and sunny weather all weekend. The park is right in the east coat flyway for migrating birds, and it's migration season. So our hastily reorganized itinerary was focused around birds. Also, we were meeting friends there, so campfire and beer time was also planned.

We arrived Thursday late afternoon, and got up Friday morning to go to the Cape Charles Nature Preserve, which features a 1/3 mile boardwalk to the Chesapeake Bay, and a man-made pond/wetland. Unfortunately the board walk runs right along the property line with a concrete manufacturing plant, and the noise from that place was annoying to both birds and people. We did manage to log about 20 species in the preserve, but almost all of them were around the pond, which was far enough from the plant that we could not hear it. Then we went back to the state park and followed a couple of trails where we again logged about 20 species. The hawk watch folks were there at the park, so we stopped by and saw a bunch of migrating hawks as they flew overhead headed south. They told us about seeing 18,000 migrating blue jays in 2 hours that morning, which explained why we had seen so many blue jays in our two birding walks that day. That evening we dined with our friends at Cape Charles Brewing, where the beer and the fish and chips were excellent.

On Saturday AM we had reservations to take a guided tour of Fisherman's Island, the southern most island in the Chesapeake Bay. As we met up at the Eastern Shore NWR for the tour, they told us the mosquitoes were particularly bad on the island right now. I brushed it off as hyperbole, but did add a second layer of bug spray. As we pulled into the parking area for the tour, the cars parking on the grass unleashed a cloud of mosquitoes unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was literally a black cloud of death hovering over the car. My wife noped out right there and decided she would be sitting in the car to 2 hours while we tramped around with the naturalists. Her friend decided to stick with her, and the husbands quickly decided this was a discretion is the better part of valor situation, and we told the rangers were were opting out and heading back to the NWR visitor center. Two folks there told us we probably made the right call. They pointed us to a local birding trail at the NWR that led to a WWII long range gun bunker. Even that walk was very, very buggy. I logged over 200+ blue jays on that 1 mile walk, and I definitely under-counted. After that we chilled at the camper for a while reading in the perfect weather, then headed into Cape Charles for ice cream. The women wanted to wander into some of the local shops, so the guys headed into the local Irish pub to wait for them. That evening we went out on a ranger led walk in search of owls. We failed to see any owls, but we did hear two eastern screech owls.

Sunday morning I headed back over to the hawk migration count while Michelle stayed back at the camper. I witnessed hundred and hundreds of Northern Flickers streaming south, as well as quite a few Sharp-Shinned Hawks and American Kestrels. It was a very eventful hour and I was bummed I had to leave to pack up the camper and head home.

The trip home was uneventful.

We attended the Lawrence concert at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD on Friday night. Lawrence was everything I expected. The opening act, Jukebox the Ghost, was a revelation. They've been around since 2008, and I had heard the band name, but somehow I managed to completely miss their music until this past weekend.

My loss, and in a big way. A 3-piece power pop band writing catchy, sing along chorus with intelligent lyrics and strong Queen influences is very much my vibe. Every recommendation algorithm on the Internet has failed me on this one.

Anyway, if you are also unfamiliar them, do yourself a favor and checkout the songs below.

Under My Skin

Everybody's Lonely

Jumpstarted

Girl

Trip:47
Nights: 156-166

Part 1

On Thursday, we went back to Audubon and spent 2.5 hours walking the trails to ID 21 bird species. It was a good day of birding. Then we went back, packed up the camper, and moved about 40 miles east to a new campground, Shady Knoll Campground in Brewster. It was wonderful and definitely a solid choice for your Cape Cod campground. Between the battery I didn't need and double paying for 3 nights, I'm way over budget for this trip. YOLO. After setting up camp, we went out for ice cream and had dinner at the camper.

We spent Friday in Sandwich, MA. We started at the Heritage Museums and Gardens. Our Lewis Ginter Gardens membership back home got us in for free. We started in the automotive museum, which is the car collection of JK Lilly, of the pharmaceutical company that I have ripped on several occasions on this website. I learned that electric vehicles existed way back in the 1910s. Imagine where they might be today had we not abandoned the idea for 100 years. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous, and we took a ride on a restored 1907 carousel. Also, there was an exhibit of impressionist art by New England artists. The docent there explained that to “get” impressionist art, you need to step back and get 10 or 20 feet away. And boom, I suddenly started “seeing” impressionist art. I think I made the guy's day when I thanked him for opening my eyes to impressionist art.

After the gardens, we went into downtown Sandwich and had sandwiches for lunch, because why would you have anything else in Sandwich, MA? Both of our sandwiches were fabulous. I guess I need to get to the UK, so I can have a sandwich in the original Sandwich.

After lunch, we hit the Sandwich Glass Museum, which covers the history of the Sandwich Glass Company, and contains a surprisingly extensive collection. Following the museum, we visited the Hoxie House, the oldest saltbox style home on the Cape. It was built in 1675 and is still about 90% original. The home is 100 years older than the country, and still safe to wander around in.

That evening, we cooked at the camper and played games. I finally won a game of gin rummy after losing every game on the trip so far. Then we extended our game library by learning backgammon.

Saturday was our last day of vacation. I wanted to make it a beach day, but 70F, cloudy, with gusty winds is not beach weather for us southerners. Instead, we went to the Monomoy National Wildlife Sanctuary, an important shore area for shorebird conservation efforts. A short 1-mile hike at low tide out into the tidal flats rewarded us with really great looks at a lot of birds, including several lifers. My shorebird ID skills suck, so I probably saw a much greater variety of gulls than I can take credit for. After birding, we got ice cream, again, and headed back to the camper to start to pack up and prepare for an early exit on Sunday. However, we had one last thing to do while in New England, dinner at a proper Irish Pub. O’Shea’s Old Inne delivered, with perfectly poured pints of Guinness for only $6, live Irish music, and a fabulous dinner of fish and chips. It was the perfect way to end our week.

The 2-day trip home, with an overnight stop at the same place we stopped at on the way up, was uneventful.

Part 1

Photo Album

Trip:47
Nights: 156-166

We left on Friday, Aug 30, and drove about halfway to Tobyhanna State Park in PA to spend the night. The trip was uneventful, if slower than hoped due to holiday traffic. The trip the next day, from PA to the Cape, was also slower than hoped.

We made it to North of Highland Camping area around 5 PM and discovered that the RV battery was completely dead. It was 100% when I left that morning. The car was charging the RV battery while it was running, so I don’t think the fridge should have drained the battery. It never has in the past, although maybe I never drove all day on DC mode before? So we were at a dry campground with no battery, with the next day expected to be a rain out. I managed to get the battery back to 10% by letting the car idle for a couple of hours, and that plus pretending we were tent camping got us through the night.

The next morning it was very cloudy, so the solar panels were barely functional. However, we were on vacation, so I left the panels plugged in and hoped for the best as we headed to the beach. We got about 45 minutes of beach time in and then the rain started, so we went with plan b and headed into Provincetown.

Provincetown is wild. Imagine Bourbon Street on a holiday weekend, but 80% of the crowd is gay. It was fabulous. We wandered the streets for a couple of hours, checking out the local shops before our walking history tour started. The tour guide was in drag, playing the part of Anne Hutchinson, who got herself banned from the colony for speaking out against the governing council. The tour guide is a stand-up comic who was quite funny and quite uninhibited. They check IDs to join the tour. The history content was fairly light and mostly used to set up the jokes. We did learn a bit about the origins of Ptown. After the tour, we took a break to get off our feet for a bit at Provincetown Brewing before heading to Mac's Fish House for a fabulous dinner. We ended the evening as we usually do when camping, playing gin rummy. I did manage to get enough juice back into the battery to allow us to use the lights that night.

I was expecting sunshine and blue skies on Monday. I did not get it. It was very overcast, and I needed to charge the battery. So we rearranged plans and decided to spend the day on Mid-Cape, where I dropped the battery at the Yarmouth Advance Auto. We hit the Wydah Museum. The Wydah was a real pirate ship that sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717. The wreckage was found about 20 years ago. The museum is full of artifacts from the wreck. It's the only documented pirate treasure in the world. It is a very cool museum and a must-visit if you are on the Cape. Unfortunately, they don't allow photos, so I got nothing to show you from inside the museum. After the museum we explored the towns of Dennis and Chatham, had fabulous ice cream at the Cape Cod Creamery, visited the Salt Pond part of Cape Cod National Seashore, and had a really great dinner at Chatham Squire, a local pub. After dinner, we picked up the battery and headed back to the campground.

Tuesday was a perfect blue sky, 70F New England day. We started the day birding in the National Park, then went out exploring Cape Cod lighthouses, lucking into one that was open for tours, so we got to climb to the top of it. After dinner at the camper, we went back out to Herring Cove Beach, which faces west, for a fabulous sunset.

On Wednesday, the battery was discharged again. We had been dry camping the entire time on the Cape, not using the fridge, and there is no way we were using more than about 15AH a day, yet the battery was down 70AH. (Or so I thought). I decided the battery was defective, as it's only 6 months old. Our big events for the day were birding at the Wellfleet Audubon Sanctuary, and a whale watching tour. After a little birding, we drove back to the Mid-Cape area to NAPA to buy a $140 lead acid deep cycle battery to get us through the week. When we left for whale watching, the battery was reading 100%. The whale watching trip was 3 hours and it was amazing. On the way out we got a very interesting lecture from the naturalist about the whales we'd likely see, their habits, history of almost being hunted to extinction, etc. Whale watching is hit or miss, as the whales aren't in on the deal. We saw 13 humpback whales that they could ID by the patterns on the underside of the tail, and one they did not recognize. Those patterns are like fingerprints, unique for each whale. We also saw 4 white sided dolphins and one gray seal. After the tour we went back to Mac's for dinner again, as it was so good the first time, we both wanted to try something else from the menu. We were not disappointed. When we got back to the camper, the new battery was down to 40%.

We had planned to spend at 7 nights at that campground, but the power issues plus an uneasiness about the campground led me to write off the next three night we had paid for and book a W/E site at a campground back in the Mid-Cape area, in Brewster. The campground, on the surface, was great. Bathrooms were spotless and the water pressure in the shower would blast a hole in your chest. A conversation Michelle had with someone in the women’s room explains it best.

“My husband is concerned we’ve accidentally joined something by staying here.”

I actually got a write-up (like I’m back in the college dorm or something) because the $10 LED twinkle lights I strung around the camper awning were “causing a disturbance.” Apparently, no external lights are allowed at campsites. Also, no showers were allowed before 8 AM, and if you arrived after 1030 PM (quiet hours) you were expected to sleep in your car. Look, I’ve been annoyed as the next person by the occasional loud, late arriving camper. However, it’s just part of camping. Shit happens, traffic, work, kids, whatever, and you arrive late sometimes. The idea that you can legislate that out of the camping experience is silly. The campground was covered in very aggressive signs threatening immediate expulsion from the grounds for any minor rule violation, and there were a lot of rules. The vibe of the place was just off. Lots of families have camped there every year for decades. But as a first timer, I felt out of place.

On the power issues, I’ve narrowed the issue down to two causes, I think.

Something in the camper was causing an unusual power draw. The fridge was off, so it was not that. A friend I called for help suggested the breakaway brake as a possible source, so I reset it, in case it had been bumped just enough to engage the battery, without actually triggering the brake. I don’t even know if that is possible. The only other thing that could draw enough power to matter is the furnace fan and pump. Both were safely off.

The other option - Advance Auto screwed up, the battery was not charged all that much. They commented as they handed it to me that it was fully charged, reading 12.9V. It went over my head at the time, but 12.9V on a LifePo4 battery is 30%. Also, I learned too late that the solar controller inside the camper requires me to pull the fuse for the solar panel before changing any settings. I did not do that, so the reading I was getting from the Lead Acid battery is possibly suspect. Maybe that 40% reading was bad because I didn’t do a proper reset? I really don’t know. It seemed to charge back up just fine when we were on shore power later in the week. I’m conducting tests at home to figure it out.

Part 2 coming soon.

Photo Album