Recent Blog Articles

Part One: The Simplified Kitchen - RV Style

Ashley Longnecker / November 06, 2015

I've been thinking about my kitchen, a lot. I cook everyday (nearly) and before we moved in to our RV, I was an avid baker. While I still love to bake, my kitchen has dramatically shrunk in size, resulting in less space to really bake like I used to.

Crazy Mountain Road in Pikeville, TN

Ashley Longnecker / November 05, 2015

So, when you make a reservation at a new campground and they send you a verification email, you should probably read it. They may have directions that differ from your GPS and they may save you from having to replace your transmission in your truck...again.

It was a beautiful drive from Knoxville to Pikeville. We thought we were going to be staying to closer to Chattanooga but, in order to keep cost down, we decided to stay out of the major city and head to Pikeville. 

When we get to this back road and Jonathan starts up this hill and he begins questioning if this is the right way. I had been asleep for a bit so I wasn't paying attention to where we were. He's telling me to look and see if this is where we need to be, I snapped back with, "of course it is...look at the GPS" and he's all like..."I don't think this is going to work!"

We came upon 5 tight switchbacks...while climbing up a mountain...hauling our house. We started panicking. This is how transmissions die! CRAP!! Luckily Jon noticed that the tranny was running hot so after one of the switchbacks there was a place big enough on the side of the road (on the mountain) that we could pull over and let it cool down. I got out to make sure our trailer brakes were ok and woah, just look at the view. 

The Virginia Creeper Trail and Abingdon, VA

Ashley Longnecker / October 27, 2015

We made it to Abingdon, VA and found this really cute little city park called Sugar Hollow Park and Campground. It is so cute and for $16/night we just couldn't pass it up. We got the last RV site due to the Rhythm and Roots Festival that weekend. 

Hard Goodbye in K-town!

Ashley Longnecker / October 27, 2015

We got to Knoxville a day early. After our 17 mile ride in Abingdon we decided to head on to K-town so that Jon could have a full day of work Tuesday. Jon’s brother and sister knew that we were coming early but his parents had no idea. I planned a family cookout at the campground and we were able to get Dan and Cheryll there without them knowing what was going on...until they pulled into the campground!

We had a nice dinner and got to catch up with family that night. It was good to see everyone and we were able to tell Dan and Cheryll that we were actually staying in K-town for a whole month! 

By the way, we choose to stay at Volunteer Park Family Campground due to thier cheap monthly rate.

Now, why a whole month? Good question. We had a lot of things to do!

Lets start with decluttering our trailer. Turns out, we didn’t need as many things as we thought. I didn’t think we loaded our new house on wheels with anything extra but...turns out you don’t really know what you need until you are on the road. We had several empty drawers/cabinets after a couple runs to storage and Goodwill. It was a good feeling for awhile. They got filled with other things that will be more useful on the road.

We traded out our huge zero gravity chairs for bag style chairs in order to free up some space in the basement. I was able to get rid of a few more things in the basement so that we could store our bike trailer in there. 

We had a goal to get rid of the bike rack on the back of the RV since it’s not supposed to be back there anyway. In order to take the rack off of the back, we needed to get Jett a bigger bike with 20” tires so that we could rack his bike on top of the truck with ours and Adali’s bike. We also sold Ada’s Strider bike since she picked up riding two wheels in no time. Now her bike can be stored in the basement as well instead of the back of the RV. For now, the bike rack is in our storage unit until we figure out if we will need it again or not.

My parents! My parents were able to come down from Indiana and brought my sister and her 3 boys too! It was SO great to see them. Even though it rained the whole time they were here, the kids were still able to play outside since our neighbor had left and his lot has a large cover over the lot. My nephews brought their skateboards and showed off some of their new tricks. They also brought their guitars and it was so nice for Jonathan to have people to jam with. Can you believe that we had 12 people in our house at one time and no one got angry?!?! It was so awesome to have a house full of people I love. I am so thankful that they were all able to get down here for a weekend. 

One more thing that we wanted to accomplish is getting our kids Passports. We opted for the books on the off chance that we will get the opportunity to fly to another country. We know that we will be visiting Mexico and Canada in the next year, but that will be via land, not air. We hope that we will be able to have the Passports in hand by December.

Jon had a conference for mid October and I was lucky enough to get to go and tag along. We were in San Antonio from Wednesday until Sunday. Yes, this is all our luggage :) We have learned how to pack light! 

Lynchburg Redeems Virginia for Us

Jonathan Longnecker / October 19, 2015

After our quick stay near Richmond, VA we drove down to the Thousand Trails park near Lynchburg. And when I say near Lynchburg I actually mean like 30 minutes away. Nestled back about 5 miles off the main road in Rustburg, VA the park was very much off the beaten path. Beautiful drive, though!

We got there right before Labor Day weekend and barely found a spot to fit our monster rig. It was packed. After squeezing into the spot and starting to get setup we noticed that the polarity was inversed on the 30 amp plug. Thankfully our surge protector caught it and wouldn't let us turn the power on. I found the maintenance guy and he was able to fix it for us - which was a huge relief because it would have been a pain to move.

The next day or so were pretty crazy there, but as soon as the holiday was over nearly everyone left. After that is was really quiet and relaxing.