A long push to the end of the day

Friday was a long push to get to the end. Even with a 7:00 am departure from Fort Belvoir, we seemed to run behind schedule all day, forcing us to cut visits short. Our focus was on fueling and left us no time for ride and drives. Our first stop in Chester, VA was at a Hyundai dealership. There were a few static displays, but not the crowds of the past couple days. We were already behind, and so we left within 30 minutes.

Duke lived up to expectations as a beautiful campus, and it was a great place to stop and hold an event. Student orientation doesn't start until August 19, so there weren't too many co-eds around, but those who were on the Quad stopped by to ask about the vehicles.

I wouldn't have minded kicking back and enjoying some down time at Duke, but we were still running late and we had another 135 miles ahead of us before Charlotte.

Here we are at fuel stop at Duke.

Before we got to Charlotte we had a couple of issues, one from Mother Nature, the other technical. Before we reached the UNC campus, we had to pull one of the Touransover and run a few checks on the vehicle. Fortunately, everything seemed to be in order and we were able to quickly get back on the road and to the next event. The UNC fueling stop had its own share of problems. The location chosen for the mobile fueling wasn't the best, and it took some time to get the fueling trailer set up, which added to our delays. We've relied heavily on mobile fueling along the way, and this was the first time we've had a problem. Clearly, permanent stations are the way to go, and hopefully this tour will help make more of them a reality.

Of course I have to close on Mother Nature. She threw us another massive rain storm right before we ended for the evening. The Volkswagen crew and vehicles handled it all well, and we were definitely glad to call it a night.

By the way, we're posting videos of our travels every day. Make sure to scroll down and click on the more videos link on the left hand column to catch our adventures on Youtube.