This was day 1 of our nearly 3 month Canada Maritimes trip. We had to close up the Lake House and winterize the boat. The service shop was quite surprised when we requested a winterizing appointment in the beginning of August. We will miss the lake. August through October are great months to be in the mountains and on the lake. However, I’m sure we will enjoy our first major RV adventure in the Northeast. I can’t wait to experience Fall Colors in Nova Scotia and Bar Harbor, ME.

Of course I had to make some cookie dough balls to take with us. It is funny how we rarely ever ate snacks before, but with the RV we seem to enjoy an after dinner dessert on occasion. When we do, I’ll pull a couple of cookie balls out of the freezer, pop them in the oven and top them with ice cream :-). I hope that all of the hiking and biking we will be doing on our trip will counteract the implications of this new habit.

OK, so now the cookie balls are in the freezer and we are on the road when I figure out that we are about to drive right by an apple orchard we discovered, and fell in love with, last year. It is Barber Orchards in Waynesville, NC. We pull up Google Earth and determine that there is ample parking nearby for the RV. I run in and grab a dozen apple cinnamon donuts, apple cider and then throw in some fruit and veggies for good measure. We quickly eat 2 of the donuts and throw the rest in the freezer, which is now getting quite full of food we should not be eating, but will thoroughly enjoy!

lots of donuts in those bags!

Individually packaged for easy access 🙂

We continued onward via I-26 through Cherokee National Forest, cutting through NC and TN. It was a beautiful drive with sights of misty fog lying down in the mountains.

We spent our first night of this journey boondocking at Whitebarrel Winery, outside of Christiansburg, VA. This small winery participates in the Harvest Host program (www.harvesthost.com) and therefore, offers their parking lot to RVers for overnight stays. We arrived early afternoon, enjoyed a wine tasting and purchased a couple bottles of wine. We then drove the Jeep over to Blacksburg, VA, about 20 minutes down the road. We had a nice date night. We went to the show and saw Jason Bourne and then had dinner at Bull and Bones – Brewhaus & Grill.

It was a good first day!