Camp at Braley Pond

We tried to start a fire in the fire pit but the wood was too wet and we couldn't find enough dry twigs to collect to really get our fire going.  The ground was covered in snow and ice so that didn't help our search very much.  After about an hour we gave up and went back into the van to make some dinner and settle in for the night.  This is what our failed fire pit looked like the next morning.

We turned on the furnace to get it nice and warm inside.  We had some soup my mom had packed for us and George cooked some chicken he had bought at Aldi.

Then we got the bed out, climbed into the bunk and went to bed.  Around 2am George got up to check on the furnace because it was not blowing warm air anymore.  When he got down he also noticed that the refrigerator was no longer on, which was also running on propane.  It was very odd.  He turned the furnace off then on and relit the fridge.  The furnace came on again and started to blow warm air, but then the fridge would go out and then the furnace wouldn't blow heat anymore.  What a mess!

By 3am George decided to turn the generator on and run our small space heaters.  He would run the space heater for about 30 minutes and then give them a break and turn the generator off.  It went like this all night.  We discovered that we lose about 10 degrees an hour.  When it's 21 degrees outside it can get very cold very quickly!  Needless to say we did not get a very good nights rest.

This was our camp  at Braley Pond in the daylight.

We walked over to the pond then headed back to the van to get on our way.

We drove towards Staunton, VA to find an RV service center for our propane issues and a Ford dealer for our windshield wiper issues.  These were the roads out of Braley Pond.

We stopped at Fisher Auto Parts and they directed us to O'Baughs RV Service Center.

O'Baugh's was able to get our propane issues fixed and directed us to O'Baughs Ford for our windshield wiper.

Ford wasn't able to help us with the issue so we decided to set aside our wiper issues and get on the road.

We headed towards Reid's Gap and got on the Blue Ridge Parkway around milepost 14.

We drove until we came to barricades around milepost 61.  The Parkway was closed due to snow and ice.  We decided to camp at North Creek in the Jefferson National Forest.