Cruising through West Virginia and the Blue Ridge Parkway…

We sure enjoyed our stay in Cincinnati but we must continue to push eastward to Raleigh for some pre-weeding festivities prior to our daughter’s wedding. We had a one night planned stay at the Sandy Springs Campground in Stout, Ohio. Man we should have made a better choice of routes as we ended up on a state road that was not only very narrow but there were also lots of low limbs forcing us center the road at times. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic but it was still a bit disconcerting…

We pulled into the the campground  which was quite nice sitting on the banks of the Ohio River as we could look out our windshield and see Kentucky on the other side. The RV park is a nice little park and a Passport America park so it was a bargain for our one night stay. Hurry if you want to visit this park as it is up for sale. We drove around the area to sightsee a little, then simply relaxed at camp the rest of the day.

The next day was another travel day. We originally planned a one night stop in West Virginia but I just couldn’t find a park close enough to the toll road that would suit our desires. As a result we would go ahead and drive on through West Virginia. We had 289 miles to travel this day which is a very, very long day for us. Therefore we put together a crock pot (which we have had since we were first married – yes, it’s avocado green) for a dinner of Carne Guisada.  We stopped for lunch about midway at WV casino where with their free-play dollars we were able to leave with enough to cover the tolls and some of the diesel. After the stop we continued on down the road until we pulled in for a few nights stay at Fancy Gap Cabins and Campground located on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Fancy Gap, Virginia.

It’s been a while since we had been on the Blue Ridge Parkway so we drove quite a ways down it. We had never been on this part of the parkway but there was a place I wanted to see on it. We drove a short distance to the Blue Ridge Music Center. This cool little museum run by the National Park Service not only educated us about music and specifically the evolution of the banjo from its beginnings in Africa but there was also a daily jam going on between 1 and 4 pm.

Today’s music was a couple playing a mix of folk and light county and although we didn’t stay a long time to listen we really did enjoy this stop on the parkway. Afterward we drove along more of the parkway, took a short hike and also saw a nice black racer in the road along with a few deer. We then drove over to check out the town of Galax but were a bit disappointed in this small town which is also home to the Old Fiddlers Reunion. I guess I had higher hopes for Galax that what we found.

Back at the RV it was time to pack up for our last leg to the Raleigh North Carolina area…

NOTE: We are now in Raleigh NC at Jordan Lake Campgrounds to attend some pre-wedding parties for our daughter….

Driving an RV can be exciting…

We left the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and said a fond farewell to our very good friends Jerry and Kathleen knowing full well we will cross paths with them again some day soon. We stayed one more day than we should have since the day we left the forecast was rain, rain, and more rain… I hate driving in the rain…

We left around 9:30 and at least we were lucky that the rain didn’t get heavy for more than half the trip. This was good since we seemed to have several issues that forced us to find places to pull over. It began as we were heading north on Interstate 81 where upon turning on the wipers the one  on the passenger side came loose (which it has also done several times in the past). I am not sure why the part that supposedly clasps onto the wiper arm just simply doesn’t hold. Since the expectation was for a lot more rain I decided to stop, get a bread twist tie and tie it around the wiper arm to secure it. Thankfully it worked.

Then as we approached Winchester, Virginia we received an error on our Break Buddy which caused us to pull over again. This time it seems that it had just come “un-synced” since I simply recalibrated it and it was happy… or was it? We hadn’t gotten very far down state route 522 when it error coded again. This time I looked over the unit more closely and figured out that a leg had stripped and wouldn’t screw out to make it longer thus causing it to be off balance. So I simply screwed in the other leg thereby making it stable and once again all was well, or was it? Just before we turned on to state route 127 heading into the mountains it coded a 4 which is the indicator for a low battery. We never have had a low battery issue in the past so I started up the toad and ran it a bit while trying to figure out what caused the low battery. Turns out it was a turn signal that we inadvertently left on apparently when we initially put the break buddy on… sigh…

Well other than rain, steep 9-10 percent grades, and lots of winding roads the rest of the trip was uneventful! We drove through parts of West Virginia, Maryland and finally Pennsylvania. We came down the mountains and took route 51 into more mountains and rain until we got onto Interstate 68, then to PA 40 back into more mountains until we got to our site at Tub Run Recreation Area.  It is neat little COE park on Youghiogheny Lake that is very primitive (only electricity). A rough 4 miles of road into the park brought us to this little gem for our one night stay. Don’t expect any cell service or TV off the antenna here but for $21 per night it a neat spot to explore this area from.

  

Once we were set up at around 2:30 we drove around to sightsee a little and discovered that Frank Lloyd Wright has two building here called Kentucky Knob and Falling Waters. We hoped to tour them but with the charge of 20 bucks per person and our limited time frame we opted instead to stroll around the grounds and view the sculpture gardens instead. We also visited nearby Ohiopyle State Park where we originally had planned to stay until I had read about the steep entry road. I was sure glad we chose not to stay there as the park isn’t anything special for RV’s and the road was really not good at all for large motorhomes.

A last stop to see was Cucumber Falls in the state park and we were back to the RV for supper and some sleep. Tomorrow we will go to Fox Den Acres Campground near Pittsburgh where we will stay a week to explore in and around the city… sigh more rain tomorrow is predicted so we hope it passes through before we leave…