After a nice quiet night in the campground I was up early for a hike on the AT! I'd wanted to do a loop with some of the trails in the park and the AT, however last night I had a very hard time following the trails in the park and I couldn't get a map of the park (they had plenty of maps to the nearest hospital but none of the park!) so I decided to stick to the AT since I knew that I could just follow the white blazes and not get lost! I walked the entire AT within the park and even a bit out of the park. It was mostly a green tunnel with not much to look at. I did encounter 9 thru-hikers! They all left a lingering odor on the trail as they past me!
After my hike I headed east on US30 toward Downingtown, PA to visit with my cousin, aunt & uncle and meet up with mom and dad. US30 was nice, but it was stop and go and I passed through several small towns and had to navigate several traffic circles. I stopped for lunch in York. I wanted to stop at Walmart and pick up a different non-waterproof mattress pad. Just before the trip I'd decided to get some real bedding for the RV, I'd been using what I was able to scrounge up from Mom and my collection of old sheets and it just wasn't working. The mattress pad I'd bought was waterproof and both nights I'd slept on it I'd woken up sweating, and it wasn't hot outside! The shopping center I pulled into so I could consult google maps to find the Walmart had a TJMax and a Ross - Ross had a nice queen size mattress pad and it was cheap!
After lunch I drove the rest of the way to Downingtown. I was a few miles from my Aunt & Uncle's house when I was driving up a hill and the RV lost power. The RPMs and the speed dropped, she was putzing along despite me having the fuel pedal all the way down. There were no lights telling me what might be wrong, she just wasn't going. At the top of the hill the van shifted into a different gear and picked up speed and was acting normal, until I got to the next hill, then it did it again. WTF?
When I arrived at Jeff & Susan's house, Jeff and my parents were still at lunch so I consulted the owner's manual for the RV - which wasn't helpful and got started trying to get the new mattress pad on the bed.
The mattress pad just would not go on the bed. It just wasn't big enough. I was baffled because the other queen size mattress pad and the queen size sheet fits. Finally after many frustrating attempts I realized that both the sheets and the other mattress pad were "deep pockets" made for pillow top mattresses and since the RV bed is bigger than a queen but smaller than a king it needed that extra size from the deep pockets. I needed a Walmart to get the mattress pan I knew would fit.
When my parents and Jeff came back my dad and I took the RV out for a test drive. At first it was just fine, then it lost power and the check engine light came on. When we turned it off, then back on again, it fixed the problem. However, the check engine light was still on. Rather than driving the RV back to Jeff and Susan's house we drove it over to Wal-Mart where mom and dad had parked. Luckily Jeff had picked them up so the Jeep was still there. Dad and I went into Wal-mart and I got a third mattress pad! We put it on the bed and it fit just fine! The key I think was that the Walmart mattress pad (and the sheets I bought and tie dyed, that's another post!) were made for thick pillow top matteresses and had deep pockets)
By the time we got back to Jeff & Susan's both Susan and my cousin Lauren were home! Lauren and I had a great time swimming in the pool and catching up! It's been way too long since we've seen each other! We had a fun evening chatting, laughing, and catching up! Susan & Lauren cooked a yummy dinner topped off by Amish Apple pie!
It was warm, but windy when we got back to Wal-mart. There's a car parked next to me and it appears that the occupants are sleeping in their car! That is of course what I'm doing, but somehow it's different when you have a RV!
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