Before we kicked off this grand adventure, we promised ourselves we wouldn't whitewash this trip for our readers. Though we subscribe to plenty of them ourselves, too many travel blogs ignore the many, MANY frustrations that accompany long-term (hell, even short term) travel. Until we hit Richmond, our own journey had been (relatively) conflict free. That all came to an abrupt halt in a city we were dying to see again, when it seemed like everything that could go wrong with Elsie, did go wrong with Elsie.

In my latest installment for USA TODAY, I wrote about our nightmare in Virginia:

It started with a grind, a cyclical woosh, woosh, woosh, like a trowel cutting through wet sand. We first heard it as we pulled through the entry gates at Pocohantas State Park on a Thursday evening, and it only grew louder as we navigated to our site, windows down to monitor the damage. Mel, always our smarter half, stopped to film the noise on her phone should we later find ourselves — as we most often do — stuttering incoherently at the auto shop. After we unhitched, we stared at the wheel as if it were an IKEA manual, completely dumbfounded. “I’ve seen that look on my husband,” one woman told me, walking past with a small dog. “But I’ll tell you one thing: Staring at it won’t fix it.”

Check out the rest at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2016/07/29/road-trip-virginia/87658782/