Day 3 - It's Great to be an American

Today started out great and seemed to get better every minute. I was awakened at about 5:30 by a garbage truck dumping huge commercial trash cans. I really need to get that as a ring tone. I needed to get up anyway. The water pump on our camper is making a weird noise. I'm not sure what's up with that. After everyone was ready to go, we pulled out of the parking lot at about 7:30. We needed to get gas and fortunately, there was a Shell station just up the street. This was not just a regular Shell station, but a good ole' "service" station. They actually had mechanics and full service pumps. I haven't seen those in a while. I asked the guy if he could look at my flat tire and he did. It turns out the valve stem had broken, so he fixed it and it only cost us $6. One of the guys there had an awesome mullet. The girls got donuts next door and we were once again on our way.

We got back on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the scenery was indescribable. We were oohing and aahing at every turn. We later saw a sign for Natural Bridge. This is a huge rock arch that important people in American history used as a travel way, including George Washington himself. So we decided to go visit. We knew we couldn't stay long, because I wanted to try to get to D.C. before rush hour traffic. We thought we would jump out, take a few pictures and be on our way. Boy, was I wrong. Natural Bridge, I'm sure, is a really cool thing, but it turns out is also a HUGE tourist trap. And they charge to see the bridge. For our family it would have been $50. If we were going to be there all day, I would spend the money, but not today. We looked at the vast assortment of souvenirs in the gift shop and I do mean vast. So we left without seeing the bridge or buying anything. But I got them good. I found a dime in the parking lot. Yay!

We stopped at a rest stop and had a little picnic lunch. The weather was very excellent, almost a little chilly in the shade.

We finally made it to our destination at about 4:00 p.m. The campground was really nice and we got a pretty good site even with a little shade tree. We checked out all the amenities,  ate dinner and then the girls went swimming.