South into North Carolina

We left the farm in Virginia on Wednesday, heading south with the plan that we will eventually winter in Florida.

We stopped for the night at Hinnant Family Vineyards, part of the Harvest Hosts group of merchants/hosts who allow RVers to stop for the night on their property. We were directed to park on a field a little way uphill from the gift shop and winery. Since there had been a lot of rain on our drive from Virginia, we were a little concerned and asked about the wisdom of parking in the field. We were assured that it would be okay, but we still walked it, and considered different routes to get into the field and where to park within the field.

We decided to take the route that had been pointed out to us, across one grassy field, through an opening in a fence (can be seen ahead of Gracie as she is going across the field), and across a gravel driveway into the other grassy field where we were to park...

... zooming in on the picture above, you may be able to see the water squishing out from the tires of Gracie as we went across the field... uh oh...

... we made it across the first field and the gravel road and most of the way up the small hill on the second field before Gracie came to a stop as we started the turn around at the top of the field... uh oh. She wasn't going any further forward. We disconnected the Jeep and considered our options.

We decided that there wasn't a lot we could do about it on Wednesday afternoon, so we walked back down to the winery to let them know our situation and to check out their facilities.

They have a nice facility...

... the Christmas decorations up made it festive.

The view across the vineyards off the back patio that we enjoyed.

A look down a row in the vineyard. They grow Muscadine grapes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_rotundifolia). I think that we would find these kinds of grapes at an old homeplace near crop fields that my Dad rented when I was a kid -- they had very thick skins and big seeds but were oh so sweet!

The lady in the winery had suggested that we might check with one of the folks in the warehouse in the morning to see if they had any ideas about ways to help us get unstuck -- way in the distance is Carl walking back from the warehouse... no assistance there...

... but Carl had decided that he thought we could back down the hill to the gravel road and that would be able to get us out -- and that worked! He needed to go quite a bit faster than we would normally travel to make sure that Gracie did not get stuck in the low area next to the gravel road, but, ultimately, it all worked out!

We got the Jeep hooked back up, and were on our way further south on Thursday morning!