DISmeet at the Fort 2024?

[tigger92662]

@BenitaN That is a cool color

 

[4077]

@BenitaN Yah… that is a crazy looking ride! Enjoy!!

 

[4077]

I am about to go lights out at Emporia I-95 KOA… got here about 8:50 tonight (Wednesday). Had to get dog to camp K9, get hooked up and dewinterized, and have a LATE dinner before off to bed…

I have driven CT to FL so many times in last 24 years that I know where I should and should not go, yet sometimes I still say “let me just try”… well I wish I hadn’t tried (yet again) taking I-270 to the SW corner of the D.C. loop to 95 .

Like Forrest Gump says, “That’s all I got to say about that.”

To St. Mary KOA tomorrow…

G’night and have fun to all of you there for Halloween tomorrow!!!

 

[jbrostek]

@4077 OMG if you told me you where going to do that I would have screamed "DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" ABORT ABORT. I270 in MD and I395 in VA are the local NASCAR runs for the inexpereinced drivers.

Hopefully the rest of the run is smooth sailing. Im awaiting @MrsPAHunter's arrival here this afternoon and get here backed up the long long driveway and settled. Tomorrow we start the journey south...avoiding the DC beltway completely.

 

[Teamubr]

One more meeting and we should be on the road by 5pm CDT.



j

 

[4077]

@4077 OMG if you told me you where going to do that I would have screamed "DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" ABORT ABORT. I270 in MD and I395 in VA are the local NASCAR runs for the inexpereinced drivers.

Hopefully the rest of the run is smooth sailing. Im awaiting @MrsPAHunter's arrival here this afternoon and get here backed up the long long driveway and settled. Tomorrow we start the journey south...avoiding the DC beltway completely.

Ha well, today’s snafu is that just a little bit before I arrived to interstate 16 there was an accident on I 95 about 5 miles south of there highway is closed so now all of the highway is in the middle of a run down I 16 to US 17 to come back around and get on 95 south of the accident I guess at least I was in the position to be able to get off and make this really slow crawl around rather than being stuck further down past I 16 on the highway with the road closed.

 

[4077]

yeah, I know the people are crazy drivers when you get around to the going towards the beltway stuff so that’s not even the part that bothered me. I was thinking of myself. I shouldn’t go this way because I just know somethings gonna go wrong and there was an accident on the beltway and ended up being a 17 mile back up, but it did at least keep moving along so it was probably about 45 minutes or something getting through it.

 

[4077]

Well, 2 hours 40 minutes was final tally off highway to back on around the closure… it opened about 2 1/2 hours after… it was probably very close… maybe would have been 10 minutes faster had I stayed parked on highway, but you could have never known if it would be closed 2, 4, or 6 hours. Pulled into St Mary KOA about 8:30… got dog to park to poop… came back to get camper set up and it started to pour! Only 3 little dots on radar and they came right here… lol… good night.

 

[jbrostek]

Highway shut downs are the worst. At least you made it to the campground even if you got an expected fully clothed shower....

@MrsPAHunter made it here about 5pm. She did great getting her RV packed down my unfamiliar driveway. We got her settled and I finished up my last prep items while we chatted and then got dinner cooking. Jenn brought a very tasty dessert to share and we all enjoyed it. Before the food coma kicked in I got our clothes loaded into the RV. Just a few bathroom items to load in the AM and ill be all packed.

Tomorrow morning we do have to get the little trailer hitched up and cart loaded then hit the road. We have 8ish hours of travel planned for the day so the goal is to be on the road by 9am. That should get us to SOB by 5pm timeframe.

 

[Bishoparc]

I can't wait for everyone to see our site at the get-together. DW has been working extremely hard on decorations and I'm just blown away at everything she's done by hand. I'm almost in de-nile about how talented she is. I think she may have taken a "crash course" or she could be just "winging it." (Get it?)

 

[Teamubr]

My last meeting was quick. Two directors were dealing with an issue. The surgeon had to drop off to pick up a sick kid and someone suggested rescheduling. (And that someone wasn't even me)

We hit the road about 3:45. Arrived to our Harvest Host right at 9pm. It rained the last 2 1/2 hours, but no other issues.

Looks like about 8 hours tomorrow to get us close to the Fort.

j

 

[jbrostek]

Departure day!!!! Just now getting first light and some rain passed throughovernight. So this means time to get the last bits and pieces done. Checklist in hand for the final load up and then move on to my pre departure check list. Getting on the road by 9 should not be an issue at all.

 

[4077]

Leaving the Buc-ees just south of Jacksonville now hopefully 2 to 2 1/2 hours to the Fort!

 

[Boomer1]

We arrived this afternoon and are checked into our Airbnb. Missing the RV and the Fort but are looking forward to the Dismeet.

 

[Teamubr]

We are in Florida! Should be at the Fort sometime in the morning.

Slight change of plans for tonight's stay. I had booked O'Leno State Park. I picked one of the few sites that was listed over 50 ft. We left Murfreesboro,TN about 8am CDT and pulled into O'Leno at 5:30pm EDT. Chattanooga traffic was pretty good considering construction. Hit Atlanta about noon and it wasn't too bad.

For anyone considering O'Leno, the campground is a way back into the park. The "road" (I use that term loosely) in the campground is all sand/shell and barely one lane wide. Many big trees right at the edge of the road on both sides that wound around with very tight corners. I unhooked the car in case I had to back up to miss a tree or post. Not a big rig friendly place. We made it all the way around the loop to site 31, the last one on the loop, and there is aTT, gazebo and lots of decorations nicely setup on my site. They had obviously been there a while, but were no where around. I thought it was a campground host, the site had so much decoration. I found the actual host, who started yesterday, to confirm they were on my site. The poor host didn't know what to do. Since he just started, he didn't have access to the reservation system to know what other sites were open. The site next to mine was open, but it would have been very difficult to get into and I didn't know if it was reserved.

I pulled up the Harvest Host app to see if there was anything close that was taking last minute requests. Nothing near me. I have a website that shows all the WalMarts, Sams and Cracker Barrels in the country and if they allow overnight parking.

The Sam's in Gainesville was 25 miles away and listed as allowing over nights. A quick call to confirm and were were on our way.

I had booked the SP so we would have electric hookups since I figured it would be hot and I'd want the A/C. Sam's works and a few more hours on the generator won't matter.



Debating when to get to the Fort in the morning. We are about 2 hours away. I'll probably get in around 10. I can wait in the overflow, but it would be nice to have the site available by arriving a little later.

j

 

[jbrostek]

We had a good travel day. We managed to get on the road by about 9:30 not much later then planned. After discussing some plans the night before, we made the choice to stop at blue beacon in Fredricksburg for @MrsPAHunter to get her rig washed up for the trip. It took about and hour, but that was fine. We had one more stop an hour down the road for fuel in Ashland, VA around noon and a quick lunch bite. Then pretty much hit the road southbound. We made good time with one rest stop in the middle and made it South of the Border just before 6pm. We both got checked into our sites, and I got to work throwing together my planned dinner. Jenn joined me for dinner and she went back to her camper to walk Reba and settle in for the night.

Tomorrow we head for out next stop is RV self Park in Kingland, GA which is only about 6.5 hours down the road. So we are going to get going in the 9s again. From there just a 4 hour run to see the mouse!!!

 

[jbrostek]

Couple parting shots from SOB:




We didn't have a very long day today, just shy of 7 hours travel time, I thought about trying to get closer to Jacksonville when planning, yet had a tough time finding something in the 8ish hours range. With St. Mary's KOA not having two big rig sites availible, I found this RV self park.

We hit the road after 9am because we booked our sites for after 4pm. The ride south went mostly without issue. About 2 hours into the trip we stopped at a rest stop for a quick bathroom break, leg streach, dog walk and got back on the road. After hitting a rather gnarliy serious of pot holes and a frost heave all the sudden my truck started to misfire. We pulled off at the next exit and I ran my scanner and it was the #7 injector. I tried a reset that worked in the past when my #1 started to act up by shutting down the truck for a few minutes and then restart it. First attempt did not work, yet 2nd attempt did. The truck ran great the rest of the trip and after a stop for some fuel south of Savannah, we finished off the last 82 miles to our overnight stop. We pretty much arrived at 3:59pm......pretty good timing if you ask me.

We both got planted, pluged in and level. The setup is pretty easy, come your reservation time the site turns on. looks like they use lots of cameras to monitor.









Soon we will find some dinner down the block, once we pick we can figure out if we want to walk or if ill unhitch and we drive up.

 

[jbrostek]

WooHoo!!! Arrival day!!! With an expected mid way stop we are just shy of 4 hours from FW!!!! We expect to shove off at 9am, arriving at the Fort by 1. Think we may luck out with our sites that way.

Based on the posts I saw it looks like Jenn should be expecting a 500 loop assignment, and I should be in 2100. Defintely remind the cast memebers when we get there about that. If traielrs still have to go off site, I think we are going to tuck the golf cart trailer into the back of Jenn's site.