Crisscrossing The Appalachians

April 20-27, 2019

April 20-23
Stone Mountain State Park in Roaring Gap NC was our next stop, 152 miles and we were in the Appalachian Mountains. It’s been a while since we’ve been hiking in them and this area didn’t disappoint. We had site 40, a nice long back in where we were able to get our Dish satellites working. Verizon signal was 1 bar of 1X so no internet, the visitor center did have wifi which we stopped in to use so we could check emails and check in on Facebook.

Site 40 

Stone Mountain SP is a beautiful park with lots of trails, many of which we didn’t get a chance to hike. We hiked to the waterfalls.

We hiked to the summit of Stone Mountain, which is a large granite dome.

The legs let me know they weren’t used to doing hikes with much elevation gain, made for a great nights’ sleep.

One day we took a ride to Grandfather Mountain State Park to check out the Mile High Swinging Bridge. Without internet at the RV I didn’t check out the trails at Grandfather Mountain so didn’t come prepared to do any real hiking. L

Another day we headed to Mount Airy NC. Mount Airy is the birthplace of Andy Griffith and there is a section of town dedicated to the Andy Griffith show. Some of you know that at times Dave will walk down to the beach pulling his fishing cart and whistling the theme song from the show. 

Had some great ice cream here and good conversation with the owner

April 24-25

The need to get West Virginia off of our RV state map we headed to the West Virginia State Fairgrounds in Fairlea WV. 175 miles up and into the Appalachians and we arrived. While not exactly a picturesque setting the location was what we needed, and we had a Verizon signal.

Our one full day in the area was a full one, it was also the 30^th anniversary of my 29^th birthday. Our first stop was the New River Gorge National River Visitor Center where we got our first view down into the gorge.

We love old “ghost” towns, our next stop was Thurmond WV which at one time was an active train town along the New River. Thurmonds' demise came with the advent of autos and better roads, though there is still an Amtrak stop there. 

A nice day use area where you can walk by the New River.

One of the things we always enjoy is visiting caverns. Lost World Caverns was located in the town we were staying in. A family-owned business with an enjoyable self-guided tour of the cavern. After our tour, we spent a bit of time talking with the owners about the different caverns we’ve visited around the country.

April 26-27

Our WV sendoff was wet and rainy, splashing thru inches of standing water as we hooked up was exciting but soon while drenched, we were on the way. Our 205-mile ride started out rainy but about an hour in the skies cleared and we had a great day to travel down the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. Our next stop was Shenandoah River State Park, a beautiful park about 8 miles south of Front Royal, where we had no Verizon but our site afforded us views of the southern skies so our satellites worked. Site 21 was nice and level with water and electric, we really liked this park.

We’ve visited this area a few times before going full time so we didn’t do any of the nearby caves as we’ve done them before. We’ve driven the Skyline drive a few times so we didn’t get out on it again. This time it was all about its location in relation to Washington DC, our next stop.  Instead our visit consisted of getting chores like grocery shopping and laundry taken care of.

Our full day here though was about getting a hike in and finding a VA geocache, both of which could be done together. Our hike took us along the River Trail to Culler’s Trail, to the Shale Barrens Trail, found the geocache then finished our hiking by taking the Red Trail Ridge Trail to the Big Oak trail then back to Culler’s Trail making for a nice 5-mile hike with some decent elevation gain. Nice to have the legs not protesting the elevation.

Until next time…