Day 3 Thursday July 29, 2021 We only have about 50 miles to drive today and we can't check into our campground until 2PM unless we want to pay a $20 early arrival fee which we don't. So we waited until 10AM to leave the winery and had planned to stop at a rest stop alongside I81 a few miles from the campground and wait until just before 2PM to head to the campground.
Just as we were getting to the on ramp for I81 we noticed lots and lots on 18 wheelers on I81 North (the direction we are headed) just stopped, both lanes full of 18 wheelers as far as we could see just sitting like they we in a parking lot. We eased up on the on ramp and asked a man that was walking along the merge lane that had got out of his vehicle what was going on. He said there was a 18 wheeler wrecked further up the road. He had already been sitting there 30 minutes. We got merged in to the travel lane and the traffic would creep up few feet then stop dead still for awhile. It took us one hour to travel 1 mile to the next exit where the traffic was being diverted off I81 to a side road VA-11. The wreck was several hundred yards past the exit. So now we have two lanes of heavy 18 wheelers, cars, motorhomes, campers, etc. exiting onto small town streets and then onto VA-11. It took us another hour and 30 minutes to go about 8 miles to the next accessible entrance to I81 North.
We finally got to the Rest Stop and used the restrooms and walked round to stretch our legs and then fixed a sandwich for lunch. So we only had to wait at the Rest Stop about 30 minute before heading on to the campground. We had to kill some time this morning but sure didn't expect to do it sitting on I81. We arrived at 2PM, checked in and was led to our site B13 at Endless Caverns RV Resort. Like a lot of other campgrounds that have the word “Resort” in their name I would not call this campground a Resort. It is nice enough, have several amenities but has dusty gravel roads and gravel campsites. The guy (Mike) that led us to our site said they normally water down the streets but they were expecting some rain so they were holding off. But it does have swimming pool, bath houses, hiking trails, a catch and release fishing pond and access to the caverns which we will tour before we leave. We got setup without any trouble but now our Jeep is covered in dust and so is the lower part of the motorhome. About 30 minutes after we finished sitting up we got a light shower of rain. Just enough to make the Jeep look like it has a bad case of huge freckles.
I opened one of the basement storage doors and discovered we picked up a “hitch hiker” at one of the Harvest Hosts locations the last two nights. My paper towel roll in the area I store my tools had been chewed by a mouse. I got out one of our trusty old wood spring mouse traps and inserted half a peanut in the trigger. Just after we went to bed he tried to get the peanut but instead he got caught. He won't chew anymore of my towels. Mouse are bad in an RV because sometimes they will chew the electrical wires which is bad news because the wires are hidden behind walls, etc. and are difficult to locate and repair. This makes two mice we have had in this motorhome but both times caught them the same day we found they were in present.
Day 4 Friday July 30, 2021 After a good nights sleep we drove the few miles to New Market VA to the Jackson's Corner Cafe/Coffee Shop for, you guessed it, a Latte and goody for breakfast. New Market is a old historic town with a lot of Civil War history in the area. There is still a lot of old buildings in town. Highway VA-11 runs through the center of town. The highway runs roughly where some of the pioneers wagon trains traveled through the area.
After a good Latte and getting caught up on our Internet stuff we walked around town a bit and went in Jon Henry's General Store in one of the old historic buildings. We found some fresh produce and honey. The building has been an Inn, a Bank and other things and now a store. The old bank vault and safe deposit boxes are still in the building. Lena found her four decorative plates she couldn't do without in one of the old stores.
We left town and drove about 5 miles to the RT 11 Potato Chip Factory. The lady in the coffee shop said they are really good. I have never though about how potato chips were made/cooked. And we have never heard of this brand.
They have viewing windows so we got to observe almost the entire process, except the peeling process. There was a employee at the viewing area explaining the process. The peeling machine can peel 100 lbs in about 22 seconds. They can process 25,000 lbs of potatoes a day but they don't cook everyday so they process about 50,000 (a tractor trailer load) a week. We got lucky because they were cooking this morning. They buy potatoes from several East Coast states including North Carolina. She said they buy some in North Carolina from the Elizabeth City area. Buy they are not sold in North Carolina grocery stores.
They have been in business since 1992 and decided to cook small batches to produce a quality chip. Their cooking style is more like Kettle Cooked style. They leave the slicer in small batches and drop in the hot sun flower oil for about 8 minutes. One hundred pounds of potatoes only yields 25 lbs chips because the water in them evaporates off and exhausted in to the air outside. A local cattle ranch feeds the peelings and reject chips to his cows. She said the cows love them. Lena said anyone that eats the meat from these cows and get their meat and potatoes all in one step. She also thinks that maybe is where the term “cow chips” came from.
Almost the entire process in automated. Pulling out the rejects, adding some all-natural unrefined real salt from the West Virginia salt mines and fluffing them up just before they go into the bags is all the manual labor we saw happening. After viewing the process we could chose a bag of any of their 8 flavors to try. We tried Salt & Vinegar, Lightly Salted and Salt & Pepper. We liked Salt & Pepper the best so we bought a large sacks of individual packages.
On the way back to the campground we stopped at a car wash to get some of the dust off the Jeep. We couldn't hardly see out the side and back windows because of the dust.
Day 5 Saturday July 31, 2021 After a good breakfast we decided to do some exploring. We drove through New Market out to the Mount Jackson community to Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. There are not too many covered bridges remaining and I like to get photos of them if I can. It was built in 1892-1893 and spans 204 feet. The materials were cut and quarried nearby. It was burned by vandals in 1976. The original timbers were salvaged and the bridge reconstructed using steel undergirding and concrete piers. It was reopened for traffic in 1979 and is still in operation. It only has a 10' overhead clearance and it looked like someone had tried to go through it with something too tall and had broken about three arch braces. There is a small gravel parking lot near the bridge and a picnic table under shade trees. There is also a short trail down to the river.
From there we drove a few miles to the Virginia Museum of the Civil War. The grounds were the former grounds/farm of the Bushong Family and the location of one of the last battles the Confederate Army won during the Civil War. It is now owned/operated by the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), an undergraduate state supported college. We paid our entrance fee and watched a well made video that explained some of the history of the battle and the part that the cadets from the Institute played in the battle. The Bushong home and barn as well as many buildings in New Market were used as hospitals after the battle. The museum has a large collections of the weapons and other artifacts from the war.
Body armour
After finishing the museum tour we went over to the Bushong home and toured the house and several outbuildings. The original home was built in 1818 and is still there but not open to the public. They built a larger home in 1825 after the family increased. This house was open and still had some of the original furniture. The New Market battle was fought all around the house and farm. There had been three days of heavy rain before the battle and the wheat fields were muddy so with all the men walking through them during the battle the ground became very soft and muddy. Several of the men lost their shoes in the mud during the battle and the field was called the Field of Lost Shoes.
Bedroom
The family was almost self-sufficient. They raised crops, had a blacksmith shop, raised chickens, had an ice house where they stored ice they cut from a frozen pond nearby in the winter. They moved the ice inside the building, covered it with straw and then the melted ice kept their milk and butter cool.
They had a carpenters building, meat house, a large loom for making cloth, a wheelwright shop, a large barn to store crops and livestock and a summer kitchen that was used for cooking during the hot summer months with an attached wash house.
There was also an outside brick oven.
Interstate 81 runs right through the New Market Battlefield and there is a walkway under the highway where so you can get from one side of the battlefield to the other.
The property stayed in the Bushong family until 1942. A 1911 VMI graduate, George Collins, bought the property and made it available for the Museum on the 100th anniversary of the battle to preserve the history and for educational purposes.
After leaving the museum and battlefield we decided to drive to the town of Shenandoah about 20 miles away. We were a little disappointed as there was not much to see in the small town. The brochures made it out for a little more than we could find. We did get a good lunch at Rudy's Dinner. On the way back to the campground we got on I81 again and got right into another traffic backup. YUK!! We set awhile, creeped awhile and finally got to an exit, so we got off and got on hwy 11 that took us back to our campground.
Today's temperature was very pleasant. The coolest day we have had in several weeks. So we were able to set outside and enjoy the nice cooler air. Later a family came in with their fifth wheel camper on the site next to us, so we got to watch them setup. Sometime that can be very entertaining but they did a good job.
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