July 9, 2012 Roanoke, Virginia

We are in Roanoke, Virginia. It is mile marker 115 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We are parked at the Cummings shop. John wanted a leak checked, it is the hydraulic hose. He is just having them replace it, the bus is 10 years old and it will save problems down the line. The nice thing about Cummings RV service centers is that they have hookups, so we can stay in our home in the parking lot.  Not ideal, but we don’t have to pay for a hotel.  We spent our last day in the mountains hanging out. Reading, I started a new basket, John killed some Martians on his computer. It was pretty hot. 92 with 70% humidity.  Had the old wet towel on us, with the fan on, but finally  broke down and turned on the generator and turned on the AC.

4 views of the totally finished basket, all shellacked and done.

Asiatic day flower. I have been looking for them ever since I saw them in the book. This one is blooming in our campsite. They only live a day, and I guess only in the morning, they were gone by pm.  I was walking up the trail to the ridge for sunset when I heard banjo music. Not sure if I should be worried or not, but banjos and the Blue Ridge mountains go together. I came upon this young man playing.

He is from California, but it still just sounded right.  The view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

a couple sunset shots

and the banjo player in the sunset. Here is the bus at the Cummins service center.  For those of you like me, who had no idea what a Cummings was before we had the bus. The bus has a Cummings engine. The have hook ups at their RV service centers, so we can stay in the bus. Beats having to rent a hotel room.

If we run out of power looks like there is plenty next door.  Roanoke had no power after the big wind storm for about a week. John called to make the appointment for service and they were running on generators and it was pretty hectic. They have power now. I’d hate to camp in this parking lot with no AC.  The bus up on a gigantic jack.