Thursday, June 13, 2019

Canadian Maritimes June 10-12, 2019


Day 1 Monday June 10, 2019 Today is the beginning of a new adventure. This is the first day of a approximately 3 month trip to the Canadian Maritimes with Fantasy RV Tours. We will be one of 24 RVs on the tour counting the Wagon Master and the Tail Gunner. We will join the tour group in Montreal Canada on June 19th and leave the tour on August 18th . The total miles will be in the 6,500 mile range.

We departed home about 7:15AM, stopped for breakfast at Bojangles and headed out for our first night just outside Martinsville VA at Indian Heritage RV and Campground. On the way we stopped at a fuel station just off hwy 421 near Liberty NC to check it out for a stopping place in the future. It has fuel pumps and a fair amount of parking for big trucks. I decided to go ahead and top off the fuel tank since we had stopped anyway and the price for $2.89 which is good right now for diesel fuel.

We arrive at our stop for the night about 12:30PM, checked in and set up in pull through site 60, which allows us to park without unhooking the toad since we don't plan to go into town tonight. After lunch I began working on a severe problem with the Laptop Computer I am writing this bog on. There was a corrupted system file on the laptop and it was preventing several of the programs from running including my blog writing program. After about 6 hours of continuous work I finally got it running properly again after I reinstalled the Windows Operating System Software. Then I had to reinstall most of my other software. At least I got it working without having to buy a new laptop. I brought my old laptop just in case but it is so slow I dreaded using it.

It rained off and on all evening and with the higher elevation here it is several degrees cooler than at home.



Day 2 Tuesday June 11, 2019 We departed at 7:30AM for Lewisburg WV which is about 150 miles away. Highway 220 was a pretty drive through some mountains and valleys but the road was very crooked so I had to really watch my speed around the curves. We arrived about 12:30PM. We have reservations for two nights at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds Campground just outside Lewisburg. We were not totally thrilled with the small campground. The loop street through the campground is full of mud holes and some of the sites are muddy and the ground is soft on several which is a problem for our heavy motorhome. We were told to pick any site that we wanted, so we found one site that had a gravel bed big enough for us to park on but it is near a busy street but that is the best we could do.


After setting up we drove to White Sulfur Springs WV which was the reason to come to this area on our way to Canada. I watch the TV program Barnwood Builders, which is about Mark Bowe and his crew that salvages old log buildings. Mark has a retail store in town and I wanted to check it out and maybe meet some of the people from the show. All of the crew was in Pennsylvania taking down a building. We were able to talk to the lady we have seen on the show that runs the retail store. I don't remember her name.




We stopped on the way back to the campground in Lewisburg at a coffee shop to get a coffee and cupcake. 








We returned to the campground for awhile and then drove past the small town of Ronceverte to Hokes Mill Covered Bridge (one of two covered bridges in Greenbrier County). It several miles down a narrow paved road back up in the hills. It was originally built between 1897-99 but was restored in 2002 but has since be defaced by people spray painting their names on the wooded structure. It is not used now but is a reminder of past history.








We have decided to leave tomorrow even though we have paid for two nights. Our next scheduled stop is a 380 drive so we will find a place about half way there and stay the night to break up the driving.

Day 3 Wednesday June 12, 2019 We were on the road again at 7:30AM with plans to stop in Morgantown WV and Boondock at the WalMart there just off our route on I-79. Again we had to travel on some very crooked hilly roads getting over the mountain. There is not any great roads from Lewisburg to get over the mountain except to drive about 100 miles out of the way. We got behind a truck hauling a rather large sailboat. I think the boat was at leat 50' and so wide it was taking up over half of the narrow mountain road. He had a lead vehicle directing traffic to pull over in some of the narrower sections of the road. We followed him for about 50 miles at about 25-30 MPH. We finally got around him when we got to US-19 which is a four lane road.




We came up on some road construction on I-79 that had traffic going down to one lane with those orange plastic barrels set out to create the driving lane. We were behind 2 or 3 18 wheelers and the wind from them blew one of the barrels over and it started rolling into the road right in front of us. I tried to miss it but I hit it with the lower right front corner of the front end and it flipped and hit down the passenger side in three places. It didn't break anything but did scratch the paint in three places and bent some metal in one place. If we had been traveling a few seconds later in the same area it would have probably hit flat on the front and them got hung up under the motorhome and caused a lot of damage.





We stopped for fuel at Morgantown WV and then stopped a few miles down the road at WalMart for the night and to get a few supplies.


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