In Virginia

We headed out this morning towards our daughters house in Annandale, VA. Tonight we're camped at the Newport News Park Campground in Newport News, VA. $30.45/night for water/elect. Driving here we got a good view of some of the Navy ships. There were two aircraft carriers and assorted destroyers and such. When I was in the Navy, we went through an overhaul at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Our quarters were in "temporary" WW-II houses. The claw foot tub had a piece of galvanized pipe sticking out of the wall that was the faucet. Every pay day, on the way home, I stopped by what used to be a Dairy Queen type place and bought a brown paper grocery bag full of jumbo steamed, spiced crabs. What a feast!!
The shipyard was my first introduction to strong unions. I was the ships engineer and we were having some work done on the ventilation system. A sheet metal worker was installing a new duct. Problem was, there was a piece of metal of some type that had to be removed before he could do his job. I saw him just sitting there and asked if there was a problem I could help with. He said he was waiting for an iron worker to remove the piece of metal. He explained that a sheet metal worker like he was, could only work on metal up to a certain thickness; after that it fell into the Iron Workers trade. I said, go have a cup of coffee and the offending metal would be gone when you returned. He said if that happened without the iron worker he called doing the work, the union just might file a grievance and shut down all work on the ship until it was resolved. That's the way the system worked and if you ever hoped to get out of the shipyard, you just didn't fight it. That plus swapping 5# tins of coffee and boxes of 45 caliber ammo. to get work done that had not been officially authorized. The Captain used to just smile when I told him what was going on. He'd been down that road before.

Leveling. Shortly after buying the 2000 Lazy Daze, I had Big Foot levelers installed. They are certainly convenient and gave me three years of trouble free use. On the other hand, leveling a 27' RV really is easy. It rarely takes more then perhaps five minutes; ten at the outside. Ever since I bought the new LD in April, 2008 I've made mental notes about just how often leveling was required. Not very often as it turns out. Only perhaps 20% of the time; maybe less. So far on this trip we've stayed in six campgrounds and have never needed to level. I'm going to skip the levelers, pocket the $3,000 and save the added weight. Besides, if Carol & I don't stay away from those bakeries, I'll need the surplus weight carrying ability just to haul us around. :-)

Alex called earlier. Her surgery went just fine. That's a relief. Anytime anesthesia in involved, there is a risk.

In the morning we finish the drive to Alex's house. We'll "camp" on the street as we've done in the past.