Winter pros or snow woes? New problems as we attempt a travel day between snowstorms

Continued from The Reluctant Launch.

On Sunday evening (January 19), we watched a Nor'easter bring snow, ice, and wind to our campsite in Delaware, as we pored over our travel planning websites in one browser window and viewed Max Velocity's latest weather update in an adjacent window. A potentially record-breaking snowstorm would be hitting the Gulf Coast, and the chances of it then traveling up to the Carolinas seemed likely. Initially, we had hoped to take a long drive day to get down to Raleigh on Monday. There was a Harvest Host southeast of the city that we had been wanting to try for a couple of years, but our plans kept rerouting us in other directions. As much as we wanted to head that way, it seemed like the further east we settled, the higher the chance we'd be dealing with some part of the storm as it rolled in late Tuesday.

After much discussion, we decided to play it safe and position ourselves as far south as we felt comfortable, which was still in North Carolina, but west enough to evade the coastal storm. When we travel in wintertime, one thing that always boosts our morale is camping in beautiful places during their off-season, where we can easily grab a campsite and have great views without the crowds. We decided to check out our second-ever NC state park, over at Kerr Lake State Recreation Area, just over the border from Virginia. In the off-season, NC State Parks keep just a couple of campground loops open, and one of the open campgrounds in Kerr Lake was the highly-rated J.C. Cooper campground at Satterwhite Point. Tons of the sites have water views, and we were able to reserve one. We chose to stay 4 nights, by which point the storm should have gone out to sea, and we could decide where we wanted to go next. We'd have a few choices on which directions to head from this location, and in this volatile winter season, the more choices, the better.

The plan was set: Head out of Lums Pond early Monday morning and drive the 326 miles to Kerr Lake. However, actually executing the plan would be a challenge. First, we'd need to ensure that we could drive safely after the Nor'easter. We weren't sure if the roads would be clear enough. Second, we'd be skirting around DC on Inauguration Day and had no idea what to expect from traffic. These long drives in winter leave us little wiggle room if we want to get to our campground before sunset. Third, we'd be traveling during a major arctic blast. The same low jet stream that was causing the Gulf Coast storm was also causing crazy below-average temperatures in most of the country. While cold-weather camping is very familiar to us, having a drive day in such cold temperatures was not. And with all the issues our rig had been having with frozen everything, we didn't know how it would fare.

We woke up Monday morning to only a little snow, about 2-3 inches, but it was icy. A lot had blown onto the side of our rig and gotten frozen stuck, but as far as we could tell, everything was still in working order, including our plumbing. Our biggest concern was the condition of the roads. The campground loop was a sheet of ice covered in a coat of snow. A few trucks had been able to get around and had etched tire marks in the process, revealing the ice underneath. If the roads outside the park were in similar condition, there's no way we would tow. We continued packing, but when it came time to hitch up, we decided to first do our due diligence and take a dry run on the nearby roads, without the rig.

The campground roads were definitely bad, but if we went slow, we should be able to get out. Luckily, this state park has nice wide roads without obstacles. We cannot say that for a lot of state parks! Then, once we turned onto the road, things were mostly clear. If the side roads were clear, we expected the highways to be just fine. One obstacle down, two to go.

We got back to our campsite and got ready to hitch up. I had never scraped so much ice off the rig and truck in my life. I even had to take the ice scraper to our steps! Ice was caked in the tires and up the sides of our rig. Some of our blocks were frozen to the ground and needed to be pried up. We'd had that issue before after being stationary for two months, but we were only here for two days!

We hitched up and carefully made our way out of the campground. Ironically, the plowing started as we made our way to the park exit. Could have used it an hour ago! But, we were right; once we were on the roads, everything was fine. We were also happy to read that our trip was showing green traffic, even through the DC area. The map was ablaze with red road closure symbols, but I-495 was smooth sailing. Two obstacles down, one to go!

Luck seemed to be on our side, but this is us! No trip would be complete without a little drama. We were cruising down I-495, amused by all the electronic signs that alerted travelers to the generic "event" that was happening.

Suddenly, we were being flagged down by a gentleman in a small pickup. I rolled down my window and he yelled, "Your truck hatch is open!" We wish we could say we were surprised, but the latch on that truck cap hatch has been giving us problems since we first got it. Remember our Alvantor tent? We're pretty sure it slid out during one of the many times this hatch opened. We thanked the man and thought about how many hundreds of people probably saw it open but didn't even attempt to say anything. In fact, on our first leg of our drive to Lums Pond, it had also unlatched, and we didn't know until we stopped for gas.

We have the truck bed set up so that most things near the back are heavy and secured in some way, but we certainly don't want anything flying out and hitting someone. When towing, something could fly out and hit our rig! We also didn't want the cold air rushing into the truck bed longer than it needed to. Only, we were approaching the split on I-495 that separates local from thru traffic. We were already in position to take the thru lane and didn't have time to get over. We were stuck on the Capital Beltway with our truck hatch flying in the air, and it would be miles before we could do anything about it.

It was a high-stress situation because there is no safe place to pull over, and if something did fly out and hit our rig, we were up on a very high overpass with multiple lanes of traffic. We drove several miles before the local and thru traffic finally merged and we had a chance to get off the Beltway. Only, where were we supposed to go? We were barely out of the city, some roads were closed, and others wouldn't fit a rig our size. We saw one truck travel stop listed for an exit a couple miles down I-95, and so we got off there. The travel stop was squished into a corner of a busy intersection and too crowded for us to maneuver our way in, and so we continued on. I scrambled to find somewhere, anywhere, to could pull over. A few streets away, through more busy intersections and near the next I-95 junction, was an Exxon.

It wasn't the easiest place to get into, but unlike the travel stop, it was practically empty. We pulled over and latched our hatch. We couldn't believe how disgusting our truck and rig had gotten from all of the salt and sand on the roads. You can see it on the hatch photo above, but the grime was everywhere. This was by far the dirtiest our rig has ever been. But we can rest assured that, at least on the Delaware-to-Virginia stretch of I-95 and I-495, there is some diligent de-icing happening! We heard that the salting is nuts in this area because there are fewer plows. Valid theory.

While we were stopped, we decided to get gas and use the bathroom. That's when we discovered that our plumbing had frozen during travel. That has never happened to us before! The temperature was so cold that the air rushing under the rig must have frozen the lines. We wondered if we should have traveled with our 12V line heaters on. We had never done this before, and while we can't figure out a reason this would be unsafe or detrimental, we just never thought of it. We honestly doubt they would have helped in this situation anyway, given how brutally cold it was.

We didn't have time to be sad about our water situation. We needed to get back on the road. We made it another 115 miles before we found ourselves stopped again. We were hearing some noises in the back of the truck and thought the worst. Did the hatch unlatch again?! Turns out, what we were hearing was ice. Large chunks of ice that still hadn't thawed in the past 6 hours of sunshine, crackling as they detached from our vehicle.

Anthony went into the gas station to grab a cup of coffee and some food, while I did a walkaround to check the rig. That's when I saw it. Our fresh tank lines had become an icefall from overflow from our fresh tank. No wonder we didn't have running water!

How did this happen? Well, before we left Lums Pond, Anthony had mentioned that our fresh water sensor gauge wasn't reading properly, so he had to estimate how much water to put in before we left. Not too big a deal; our gray and black tank sensors haven't been working since the dawn of time, so maybe now the fresh tank is just catching up. When we unleveled ourselves at Lums before we left, we did notice some spillage from our fresh tank, usually an indicator that the tank was basically full. However, we were now way down in the back, so we assumed that once we were back on flatter ground, the spillage would stop being a problem. Well, guess what. It remained a problem!

To kick us while we were down, I also noticed a small gash starting to form in one of our tires. If you've been keeping track, we're attempting to drive over 2,000 miles on bum axles. Tire issues will undoubtedly be a frequent symptom of this. So now we'll be keeping a very close eye on this tire and will need to take it to a shop or get it changed out as soon as possible. We do wonder just how many tires we'll go through before we get to Utah. Place your bets in the comments below!

We had under 100 miles left to our destination, and timing-wise we were still in good shape. Because we were now further south, we were looking at a sunset after 5pm. We should have about an hour to get unhitched, set up, and figure out our water situation before dark.

Nothing like a little deja vu in the final hour to set us back even more! At our first NC State Park, we had a terrible time trying to back into our seemingly easy campsite. We assumed we struggled because we were newbies. But here we were, at our second NC State Park, in our 4th year of full-time RVing, struggling to get into our site! At first glance, it looked like a fairly shallow angle, but as I spotted Anthony on his way back, I soon noticed that the shallow angle actually consisted of two sharper angles formed by timbers, and our trailer tires were getting dangerously close to going over the timbers and dropping the trailer several inches on one side. We tried different ways of angling the truck and moving the trailer back and forth, but soon the truck was over the timbers, putting our brand new hitch at a very uncomfortable angle. We gave up and decided to unhitch the truck, reangle it without the trailer, and hitch it back up to straighten our rig. The plan worked, but we were left completely baffled. Were we really that rusty, or was this really just that deceptive of a site? We chalked it up to a combination of things. Yes, we probably were quite rusty after being stationary for 2 months. Yes, the site was angled a lot more strangely than we noticed at first glance. We had driven for 7 hours and were feeling the itch to just get into our site and work on getting water back. Then, to top it all off, the sun was setting behind us, snatching any ability for Anthony to see as he backed in. It's too bad, too, because if we were in better spirits, we would have quite enjoyed the sunset. We had a perfect view of it across the lake.

We were running out of time to get our icefall thawed and our fresh tank heaters attached, but at least this was a problem we had dealt with many times before! This time, we had even heavier duty equipment to assist us. After our mobile tech introduced us to his propane heater, which he used to blast our fresh tank lines, we bought one for ourselves.

It got the job done, and soon we had running water again. We weren't out of the woods just yet, though. The lowest temperatures of the arctic blast were headed our way over the next couple of days. The cold was one obstacle we wouldn't be conquering anytime soon.