Powhatan State Park, Virgina

Our first trip in the Bijoux was to Virginia. My daughter goes to University of Virginia for her masters degree to be a in Sports Trainer . The house she was renting with 3 other friends lease was up and she wanted help moving out. So we decided to combine our trip to help her with our first camping trip.

We prefer secluded campsites with wooded areas between sites. We do not like camping in gravel parking lots lined up with other campers. While it can be very social, we prefer the solitude of with woods. This does limit us on available campsites .

Now we get to learn the ropes on getting and making reservations at camp grounds. We learned that National Parks fill up six months in advance, however they always keep some sites open for reservation requests one month ahead. State parks tend to have the type of sites we like and have more availability. 

While we wanted to stay in the Shenandoah Mountains National Park, initially there were no available sites. However, one month before we left, sites were available. We already had a reservation at Powhatan State Park and decided to stay with it since we had full hookups for the camper. Shananadoah did not have any hookups available. Since this was our first outing, we wanted full hookups. 

Powhatan State Park is on the northwest corner of Powhatan County on the historic James River. There are 29 sites with water and electrical hookups. The address is 4616 Powhatan State Park Road, Powhatan VA 23139. It has clean showers and restrooms that are managed by the camp host. Ice and campfire wood are available for sale. 

So many trails to explore.

Our site (site 18) had a large flat gravel area with a fire pit and picnic table. Plenty of room to back the trailer in . (Did it on my first try!) 

Our home for the week.

Screen room and fire pit.

This will be the first time setting up the camper. I checked the how level it was from side to side. It looked good, so I removed the camper from the car hitch. I have leveling block to drive the tire on if there is a large discrepancy from one side to the other. Now I needed to level the camper from front to back. This is fairly easy as all I need to do it raise and lower the lift. Once this is done, I drop the jacks on the back of the camper to steady everything.

Next the water and electrical needs to be hooked up. I do not not need the converter as there was 30 amp service. I set up the pressure regulator, filter and water hose. As recommended, I flushed the filter for five minutes to get clear water before connecting to the camper. After connecting to the camper, I also flushed the water lines in the camper (kitchen sink, bathroom sink, shower head and toilet). 

We only had 2 hours to set up as we had to meet Grace in Charlottesville for dinner at 8:00 and we are an hour away. We had purchased a screen room tent at Costco the week before and had just enough time to set it up. It was quite large (and heavy), but covered the picnic table well and kept the bugs out. 

We had dinner at Ten, a sushi restaurant in Charlottesville. We met one of Grace’s room mates, Rachel Delancy. It was located in the old town part of Charlottesville on the second floor above the Fitzroy.. The sushi was great and they had a nice wine selection. Apparently, Charlottesville is considered “wine Country” in Virginia.

After dinner we drove back to the campground and enjoyed a cocktail under the awning of the camper. Soon a rain storm moved in and we had to move inside. It was a long day, so we retired early for our first night sleeping in the camper.

Around 2:00am, our dog, Brody, woke me up. I took him outside thinking he had to go out. Fortunately, this happened as I saw that the awning had filled with rain water and was starting to collapse. I was able to drain the water before any of the support poles bent. I lowered the poles to create a steeper slope on the awning and the water drained off easily. 

It was a sleepless night. The rain continues all night and I kept waking up to check the awning. The change in pole height seemed to work as we had no more problems that night.

The rain had stopped by morning and the sun was shining. I had kept our old coffee percolator pot from the old camper and made a nice pot of coffee. Nothing like coffee grounds in your cup! Ah the memoirs return. Ha Ha. 

We had no plans for the day. It was nice to linger in the morning and wake up slowly. I as able to take a long hot shower in the campground showers and give Brody a long walk. This gave us an opportunity to do a little shopping for things we did not remember or think about for the camper. A quick trip to Home Depot in Richmond (30 min drive away) and I was able to get Command Hooks to give us someplace to hang our jackets in the camper. I also found Command Shelves to put near our bed for a place to put my alarm clock, cell phones and reading glasses. 

Back at the camp I was able to install my newly purchased toys, eat lunch and take a nap. We did learn one lesson. We had failed to wash the dog bed and blanket before we left. It really stunk up the camper when I put it in for the night for the dog. Luckily the campground had a laundry room where we were able to was the dog bed and blanket. The camper smells much better now.  

The screen room did not do as well as we thought. The rain came straight through it and everything under it was wet. The weather as dry warm and sunny and it dried out nicely. This is great because I was able to take it down and pack it away. I had purchased it at Costco and will be returning it tomorrow. I will do a better job of looking into screen rooms for the next trip.

Sandy found a distillery nearby, so we decided to check it out for dinner. It was called the Three Crosses Distilling Company.. The drinks were good, but the food was fantastic. We got A Cherry on top Goat Dip starter (whipped goat cheese with cherry jam and sliced cherries). Then we also got the Up in Smoke braised short rib. The short rib had a house cherry bbq as a use that was to die for. Yum!