First Year

After buying the HitchHiker and the truck (GMC 3500HD Denali) we faced what is known as the "Maryland RV License Dilemma".      Its the equivalent of  "you can't get there from here"   directions advice  and caused a several month delay in getting on the road.  

We drove the truck to Canada for our family's annual get-together in June 2011 at Clear Lake near Elgin, ON.    It was a smooth ride, about 1,000 miles round trip, and a good break in run for the DuraMax diesel engine.    The truck was affectionately named  "Truckasauros" by our son.   We got 17mpg for the trip (all non towing highway miles).   Fun in Canada includes fishing (of course), sightseeing and boating along the Rideau waterway,  and our Kids Fishing Contest.

 

Our first "trial run" camping trip with the RV was to Elk Neck State Park in North East, MD.    We stayed in site 11 of the North East loop.  This loop is open year-round and has full hookups.    We took advantage of  Maryland's Golden Age Pass  which offers 50% off of camping fees from Sun - Thurs nights.  While most of our attention was directed at getting to know the RV, we did take a several mile hike to the Turkey Point Lighthouse and met a nice couple from PA, who also camped in our same loop, on the walk back from the lighthouse.    

In late October we traveled to northern PA to see Pennsylvania's Elk herd.   My Dad used to subscribe to the PA Game News magazine and I recall reading about the Elk that PA re-introduced to the reclaimed strip mining areas near the Allegheny National Forest.   We stayed a couple of nights at  Rocky Gap State Park in western MD,  then drove north through central PA to  the small town of Benezette (pop.227) in Cameron county.  Benezette  is the location of the Elk Country Visitor's Center, a beautiful facility that has displays and a media presentation chronicaling the reintroduction of Elk to the area.  We were surprised by the draw that this has created in this remote area of the state as we saw busloads of people stop at the visitors center then head out to elk viewing overlook sites along the ridges in the area.   We camped at the Benezette Store campsite just off of  Rt 555 and a block away from the store/restaurant.   We registered for our site at the store and took a quick loop through the town.  Ginny was impressed at how realistic the elk lawn ornaments looked ...until one turned its head and looked straight at her!   We got back to camp only to find a small herd of elk grazing right in our campground.  People traveling the road saw them and were detouring right through the camp roads to stop and take pictures.   The Elk were nonplused by all this attention and kept on grazing.    We did not like that anyone traveling the road could roam through the camp scouting for elk, so we will not go back to this campground.   This area of PA also did not have viable cellular coverage.  We asked at the store and were told we could possibly get cell coverage at the visitors center or at one of the elk viewing areas on top of the ridges,  which is where we had to go to connect.

 

 

 

On our way back from northern Pennsylvania we stopped at Raystown Lake.  This is a great COE Lake in central PA, and seems to be a very busy place during the Summer season.   We were here in late Fall and nearly had the place to ourselves.   This suited me fine as I was able to make a routine back-in look extremely hard.  None-the-less we really enjoyed the site we were in as we had panoramic water views thru the trees.  This was just the type of camping experience we needed to round out 2011.  We will be back!