Well folks, thank goodness it finally happened! We took an exploratory drive on Father’s Day weekend and checked out some possible camping areas. We actually put about 600 miles on the car in a day and checked out a lot of places, but finally settled into the places that would be the most interesting. I guess technically I did 2 videos on the Beartree Recreation area and the Chipmunk camping loop and the Beaver Flats camping loop. The first video was the “Father’s Day drive video”, and the 2nd video was the “Beartree Recreation Area” video. The Father’s Day drive gives a better explanation of the area around the recreation area and some of the things I had wanted to check out, while the bear tree recreation area video really gives more about the camping and facilities at the campground. For me it was my usual high stress holiday weekend camping experience, because of the huge crowds. And I don’t mean like, concert style crowds or festival style crowds, but large families with all their kids and friends stuffed into camp sites with their generators, bikes, skateboards and darts, etc. We were also pretty frustrated that the campground was open yet the facilities that support the campground were not. Of the 2 loops and 78 campsites there were only 2 bathhouses open and just four toilets total between those two men’s bathrooms. That was totally unacceptable, at the very least they should have had Porta Johns.  Someone was not thinking.

I can sort of understand the swim area and beach being closed, the lake picnic areas and group facilities. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taken care of. And that frustrated me and I think scared away a few subscribers who were Trump Supporters and  thought I was complaining about Him. I mentioned that the facilities should have been better taking care of and the administration was responsible. Well that’s not a statement about a person, that’s a statement about our government. That’s not to say anything against any person, regardless of their post in the government, because our government is made up of a lot of people. And each and every one of those people have the responsibility to point out what’s the right thing to do. And the right thing to do in that situation was to maintain the campgrounds so they are ready to be used when the time comes. Instead, the campground had been abandoned as though it was never going to be used again. At least the way I saw it that day. So anyway, we left the 2nd day as the lines outside the bathroom was beginning to get more than 10 people. It was clear that anybody wanting to use the bathroom was going to have to wait over an hour. So we moved on to a better camping situation. Though I will say that this campground has great potential if properly maintained and cared for.

So we zipped up the road into the deeper Mount Rogers recreation area and lucked out on the most appealing site to us in the whole campground. We had driven through this campground twice before and this one site had always been the one that we liked the best. So we definitely lucked out. The video about the National Forest Hurricane Campground was more or less short and sweet. I hate to say that while videoing it I was slightly exhausted and not really thinking very straight about the upcoming edit to make it a video appealing to my viewers. So in the end it’s a little weird, but not really too bad. The host at this campground was a really nice guy who had hosted the same campground the previous year. He was a full time RVer, and when not hosting this campsite through September, he toured the country in his class a RV. I would like to get more time with him and possibly an interview, but he was busy doing some other things and wasn’t overly enthusiastic about being interviewed. I had a neighbor next to my site about 40 feet away who was also interesting. She was a history professor at Wake Forest College and had an old dog and a one-year-old puppy. Akela in his whole heart wanted to play with both of them, but she said the older dog was not very friendly, and the younger one was fairly timid and not well behaved. So as usual we had to entertain ourselves with sticks. Akela did help me collect quite a large amount of firewood, and even tried to chew me some into tinder, but it was mostly all slobber. We brought out the electric chainsaw and sawed up a log for firewood, but I had no way to split the wood, and it was so soaked on the outside it would not burn. So our fire attempt was a fail. But we had an excellent stay at the National Forest’s Hurricane Campground. We expect to be back.

During our stays at those 2 campgrounds we also visited the Grayson Highlands State Park and the wild ponies, and White Top Mountain, and did some 4 wheeling/ Overlanding to the junction of many trails at “Scales”. It would be fun to go back up there with the trailer, I’d be scared to death of meeting that farmer with his cow trailer again.  I wish I had more time to explore that area and the drone was working on half charged batteries because I don’t fly it enough and it self dis-charges when not used.  But we did get a couple of good videos out of the trip, and will be back to cover more of what’s up there. It’s an amazing area with the chief national Forest campgrounds and some free campgrounds that I’d like to explore. Perhaps in another video and blog.

So thanks for stopping by! It looks like we have a little more time coming up with vacations and holidays. So we may be back on the horse keeping up to speed with the blogs in the videos with some level of quality. Please leave me comments about what you like or even dislike. It helps so much to know that somebody is actually looking through these things. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay outside having fun.

Rick and Akela
Going NoWhereFast