Gordonsville to Front Royal

We didn't rush to leave Shenandoah Crossing Resort this morning since check-out time is noon. We left the campground at 11:40 and drove to Gordonsville and stopped there just long enough to drop our post cards in the mail.

We took SR-231 north and drove past farms and horse farms. All of the farms were named and we saw farms that dated as far back as the early 1800' and late 1700's.

From Gordonsville to Front Royal

The farther north we traveled the landscape changed

From Gordonsville to Front Royal

and we saw cattle farms and fields of peanut plants and tall corn fields. All of the crops we've seen here in Virginia are healthy and green - not the stunted crops because of the drought in the mid-west.

From Gordonsville to Front Royal

We were now getting closer to the Blue Ridge Mountains and occasionally could see them in the distance.

From Gordonsville to Front Royal

We stopped at a Shell gas station just south of Front Royal and got gas in the RV ($3.39 a gal). We stayed on SR-231 until we reached Front Royal and then drove north on US-340.

We crossed over the Shenandoah River

From Gordonsville to Front Royal

and then just north of I-66 arrived at our destination for tonight at 2:00.

We're spending the night at the Wal-Mart Supercenter here in Front Royal. The weather forecast for today called for severe thunderstorms and we could see the weather moving in while we were stopped at the Shell gas station.

Mike had just walked Tinker and I had started to fix lunch, when the storm hit. We had heavy rain and small hail and then the REAL rain came down. The forecast was for wind gusts of 50-60 mph and we may have had that since the rain was blowing sideways and was so heavy we couldn't see the Wal-Mart sign 300 feet away.

The storm lasted for about 30 minutes and was gone. We've had light rain off and on since then.

We traveled 75 miles today and tomorrow only had about 10 miles to go to North Fork Resort. We've been traveling on Sundays and we want to start traveling on Monday, so we chose Front Royal to change our travel days. That's why we're staying here at the Wal-Mart when we're so close to our next campground - just to adjust our travel days.