Back in the Shenandoah Valley

7/24

When I was backing to my space at the RV park last night I noticed that one of the torsion bars on my weight distributing hitch had come loose and the bar was just hanging down, definitely not doing what it was designed to do, and resting on one of my trailer safety chains; I hate to think of what could have happened if the bar had fallen on to the highway when I was at highway speeds. The little pin that holds the bar in place had broken out a week or so back and I went to a trailer hitch installation place and they told me not to worry because the weight of the trailer on the bar would keep it in place, that was several hundred miles ago. Well as I drive down the road and hit bumps and highway undulations and the trailer moves up and down I guess the torque weight can come off the bar momentarily and at some point it can come out. I don’t know if it happened on the road or just last night when I was backing into the tightest campsite I’ve had on this trip, all I know is that I feel lucky.

I asked around and a lady told me her husband might know someone so she called out to Buddy, who was in bib-overalls, who looked at the hitch and said he thought Allen could fix it and he called Allen. Buddy told me to go about 4-miles down US-340, past a commercial building on my right, he said it was some kind of mechanical contractor building, and then turn right at the next road that was “Allen’s Rd.”, yep; love exact directions but they got me there. Allen said he had fixed this kind of problem before and would work on it and call me when he was done but first he had to go out and see about two silos and if they could be fixed. Allen seems to be that person that every small-town has that fixes everything. He wouldn’t let me pay him. You can see that I really couldn’t drive into his shop area because this rig operator had gotten jack-knifed and now his tractor wheels were spinning, so I just disconnected the hitch from the Tahoe and walked it over.

I spent the rest of the day back up in Shenandoah National Park hiking and drinking in nature. What I did was one of those dumb hikes that I don’t like but sometimes do because it just works out that way. What I mean is first you go totally downhill for 2.3 miles and then you have to return back uphill for the 2.3 miles when you are not fresh, blah! And to really keep me on my toes before I left the trailhead at the parking lot I saw a rattle-snake, other than bugs, the only other thing I saw on the trail was another snake, a garter snake. The trail was well maintained and it was 83 deg on the mountain and probably a couple of degrees less in the tree and on the trail, it was 101 deg when I got back down to the RV park, pool time.

Oh yes, when I got to the top of the waterfall I was hiking down to what to my wondering I should appear but a group of Korean men and women hikers and one of the men was yelling a Nature and the others thought it was funny; different cultures.

And to celebrate what a good day I had I went out for a Virginia Ham supper; um, um, good!