Our Road Trips

8/15/15

8/6-8/15

The Summersville Lake area is very picturesque…a beautiful lake surrounded by sheer cliffs leading to beautiful mountains. We suspect this is a gorgeous place in the fall when the leaves start to turn. When we left the campground, we went to US 19 and turned north towards the town of Summersville. About 3 miles north, a road goes back west and leads to more campgrounds and a marina plus several boat ramps. The locals use these facilities a lot, as nearly every car or truck we see has WV plates and the vast majority of them have an empty boat trailer attached…lots of folks enjoying the lake. We went into a country store/campground registration building and Barb got a visitor’s pass so we could check out the campground with a map they provided. The prices are also on the back of the map, pretty proud of their camping facility considering the prices. But we drove through the campgrounds, marina & decided we were quite happy with the place we chose, Battle Run. If we come back this way, we will try to stay in the same place.

We drove on into town and stopped at the Chevy dealer looking for a little clip that holds the back of the seat on…have to order it and give them $15 for a $.40 part. I’ll try super glue first, thank you. We then drove north of town and located the Kirkwood Winery & Isaiah Morgan Distillery, stopped and had a tour & tasting of their products…lots of fruit flavors. We bought a few bottles of wine and drove back into town and stopped at the Walgreen's and picked up the prescriptions I had ordered online…what a cool way to keep up with things. We then drove south, made a pass through town, found a car wash and cleaned our nasty dirty car. We stopped at a lighthouse that wasn’t even close to the water (we suspect it is a tourist attraction and that’s it) and decided to not attempt the 122 step climb to the top.

We stopped at the Long Point Grill and had a pizza for dinner…delicious pizza made with Alfredo sauce instead of tomato based…it was very tasty. Steak, mushrooms, bell peppers & onions on a pizza…nice!! We came back to the camper and sat outside watching the activity for a bit and then turned in…fun day!

We wake up to rain and it rains off & on all day, sometimes pretty hard. So we just hung out at the camper, working on this blog and watching NCIS episodes from 5 years ago. I did some pork chops on the grill and we had a nice dinner…nice lazy day. We deserve days like this.

We drove to Hawk’s Nest State Park on Friday which is on the edge of the New River Gorge west of US 19 about 8 miles, really pretty spot high over the river. There is a tram ride down to the river and a jet boat ride supposedly back to the US 19 bridge. We signed up for both the tram & the jet boat, thinking about the jet boat ride we took in Idaho in June 2014. Big disappointment! The boat was woefully under-powered and the pilot seemed more content to save gas than give us a decent ride…never entered the rapids at all. But the scenery was nice and it was not real expensive, so it wasn’t a complete waste. On the way back, we stopped to get a few groceries and the power goes off while we were checking out…never a dull moment. We head back and the traffic lights are out 15 miles up the road, so this blackout is covering a pretty big region. The power was on at the campground but not where we wanted to get dinner…so we sat and waited at the camper and then went to the restaurant and sat in the dark and chatted with some of the other folks waiting for power. It finally came back on, we ordered another one of their tasty pizzas and headed back to the camper…been an exciting day.

We got up early and packed up, most everything was wet from the rain that came with the storm that took out the power. We check out about 930 and are on our way. It is going to be a long day, about 370 miles of mountains, 2 lane roads & interstate. The first stretch is to Charleston via US 60, a 2 lane road through the mountains along the New, Gauley and the Kanawha which forms when the New & Gauley merge at Gauley Bridge. There is one place where a sign tells about the bridge that was destroyed by the Confederate Army…lots of history in this area. Near Gauley Bridge, there is a particularly curvy section that also has 8% grades in places…exciting driving. But what you don’t expect is semis with 53’ trailers, but we met one in a bad place. The trailer was mostly in our lane and a rock shear face wall on our right…it was pretty intense for about 10 seconds. But all is well, we didn’t hit anything or get hit and went on our way. From Charleston to east of Leitchfield is a nice highway and then the fun began again. About 15 miles of little skinny 2 lane road and what seemed like steady traffic coming at us. We are camped on a really pretty lake/reservoir created by the Nolin River behind the Nolin Dam, a lake that covers between 3000 & 6000 acres, depending on how much water is here. The locals must love it, LOTS of boats, jet skis, etc. The campground is mostly full, it being a weekend. A lot of them left this morning. We are here for 5 nights and are going to visit Mammoth Cave & the National Corvette Museum and also do the Corvette factory tour in Bowling Green. This will be our 3^rd attempt…hope it works.