Day One – Hidden Gems

We left at 9:30am and headed to Clover, VA.  It is kind of like herding cats, getting out of the house and tearing Paul away from home.  We are both excited to go but Paul has the need to say good bye to everyone.  We LOVE our neighborhood and, never fear, we will be back!  In the first hundred miles the “service engine soon” light came on, CRAP :(.  We decided it was because the gas cap wasn’t on tight enough… hopefully we were right!  On to I 95 around Baltimore and Washington DC.  The signs on the road were ridiculous and completely information overload with symbols, EZPass exits (tolls?) and roads merging everywhere.  Even  the GPS freaked out and thought we had gotten off the highway – my response was “just keep driving straight, it will catch up to us”.  And it did!  Too many cups of coffee and water and no place to pull over put Paul and I into a sweat, literally.  Then the light bulb went on and we realized the bathroom was in the back!  SCORE!  First Hidden Gem for the day. Getting gas in VA was the Second Hidden Gem – $2.04!  When you are sitting on an 80 gallon tank, every penny counts!  Finally off I 95 and tooling on route 360 toward Clover, VA.  A lovely divided highway which is luckily underused.  NO traffic, YEAH!

The REAL Hidden Gem is Hunting Creek Winery in Clover, VA.  Wonderful and so completely awesome and really, really AMAZING (did I make that clear?)   It is definitely off the beaten path and well worth the trip to see this place. Paul is a very experienced RV driver, going down the winding narrow roads to the Winery.  At one point I wanted to go in the back so I didn’t have to “white-knuckle it” but we made it unscathed.  (I might mention here that Paul took the wheel of our rental car in Ireland, landing in Dublin, sleep deprived, driving on the “wrong” side of the road in the “wrong” side of the car with a left handed stick shift…and we did make it to the hotel).  Any-who, the owners of the winery, Milt and Sandy, welcomed us with open arms and offered us a private wine tasting in their new tasting room.  Barrels of wine fermenting in the same room as the tasting bar and a unique feature wall made with reclaimed wood from Milt’s father’s barn.  So cool.  The wines were mostly dry reds and if you know Paul,  he was in heaven.  I like Petit Verdot and have not seen it anywhere except in California…Hunting Creek makes their own Petit Verdot and let us taste the 2010, which was out of this world.  Milt even took some wines from the barrel and blended their port before our eyes.  It was really flavorful, not syrupy like some ports I have tasted, Just a party in your mouth!  Everything we tasted, we loved.  Milt and Sandy were so wonderful and I am very pleased we got to meet them through the Harvest Hosts website.  This area is also one of the very few “dark skies” where we could see tons of stars and constellations.  It was truly a magical evening… we went back to the RV and put on some Amos Lee and did a little dancing (first time in the RV)  🙂

411 Miles