Jellico to Summersville, WV

Today (11-19-11) was an adventure.

The drive from Jellico, Tennessee through the mountains of western Tennessee, eastern Virginia, and West Virginia was spectacular.  The mountains are beautiful.  At one point I drove around a bend into a valley and was faced with a straight wall of mountain.  All I could think of was “where is the pass through that”.  There wasn't one, there was a tunnel.  I never even caught the name of the tunnel, everything happened so fast.

In West Virginia I turned off I64 onto WV219.  I was headed for Watoga State Park.  I had done some research and the park had amenities I wanted and looked to be an interesting park.  The first thing I ran into was that 219 is not a good route for anyone uncomfortable with heights.  The road twists and turns and has some horrific drop-offs.  Then I got to the road to the park.  It was worse than 219.  At this point it felt like my knuckles were going to be permanently white from strangling the steering wheel.  But, I did reach the park.  Of course, at that point, I found that my research hadn't turned up the fact that the park was closed.  I'm not sure when it closed, but it was.

So back out to 219 and I wasn't going back the way I had come in.  The maps showed some roads going west that looked passable.  An hour or so later I found myself at an information center for the Monongahela National Forest.  The people at the center were helpful and I got the information that the there were no campgrounds within any kind of driving distance that had the features I wanted.  Plus I was down to a quarter tank of gas and the next gas station was twenty miles of twisting and turning.  At least it was mostly downhill so I didn't have to worry about running out of gas.  I was able to gas up just after leaving the National Forest.

Tonight I am staying in a campground in Summersville, WV.  It's around 60 or 70 miles west of where I thought I was going to be.  I have no idea what the park is like.  I arrived after dark and just found an empty spot to set the camper.  I drove over 400 miles today and tonight I feel wrung out.  Early to bed, I think.  I'll do some light sightseeing tomorrow and maybe some laundry.  Nothing stressful