Virginia - Days 30 & 31

Fancy Gap KOA
Saturday, 30 and Sunday, 31 March 2019

I've spent most of the last 2 days catching up on a week's worth of blog entries.  I find I get really tired about 4:00 or so, and my brain doesn't want to work very well.  Since I've never been what you might call skilled with computers, a slow brain doesn't make blogging easy.  When I keep going and seeing new things every day, it creates a backlog.

This campground is built on the side of a mountain so all walks with the dogs involve uphill and downhill.  Undoubtedly good for us.  Lots of wild rhododendrons all over.  We've had mostly sun, and on Saturday I put the dogs outside for a couple of hours.  (Gracie dug a hole to lie in; good thing I've got this nice new folding shovel.)  Overnight, a cold front started moving in, along with some pretty strong winds, so today we've mostly stayed indoors.

Friday night this campground filled almost completely up.  I couldn't believe it.  Yes, it was a weekend and yes, it's gettin' on for spring, but I don't think I'd've picked this weekend to go camping.  But they gradually left and by Sunday afternoon there were only about 5 of us left, aside from the seasonals.  I guess everybody else was just passing through.  As I will be tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately, there's a freeze predicted for tonight and tomorrow's route takes me over the mountains into West Virginia.  I know there're several rivers to cross, and we all know bridges freeze before roadways, so I think I'll wait until later in the morning to start.  Theoretically, it's only about an hour drive from this campground to the next, so I've got some spare time.

Because of tonight's predicted freeze, I've already drained and put my water hose away.  When it's cold, the hose is really stiff and hard to deal with.  Having luckily been educated soon after WWII, I still had the benefits of some classics in my schooling.  Every time I wrestle with a stiff water hose, I think of this statue.

Death of Laocoön

It's one of the most famous ancient sculptures - excavated in 1506 - now at the Vatican.  Laocoön was a Trojan priest of Apollo who warned Troy about the Greek's present of the Trojan Horse (and was apparently ignored).  He and his sons were killed by 2 sea serpents, as this sculpture depicts.  Yep.  Water hose wrestling.

I think I've figured out how to produce photos of my travel route maps that aren't so fuzzy you can't really tell what they're of.  It's only taken me a year, but I've finally discovered some of the editing aids for photographs that my computer has.  The map photos I take from a ways back, when I'm trying to take in a lot of map - like with Friday's map - are much clearer than when I take a close-up of a smaller area.  So I think if I take the photo of even a short distance from farther back, and then use the photo editing tools to get it closer, the maps might be legible.  I haven't tried it yet, so we'll find out tomorrow.

On Saturday I saw a Hairy Woodpecker (it isn't hairy) here.  To me they look exactly like the Downy Woodpecker (it isn't downy), except there's a 2½" difference in size - enough to be noticeable.

Hairy Woodpecker

They're the smallest of the woodpeckers so it's easy to know that's what I'm looking at.  Cute, huh?

I talked for a while with a man whose wife died 3 years ago, and he's now sold everything and moved with his 2 small dogs into a pretty large 5th wheel.  But he doesn't have any kind of plan for what to do next.  He said he and his wife had planned to retire and buy an RV and travel around, but it sounds like without her he's only got as far as the retire and move into an RV part.  Losing one's spouse ... one of the hardest things life can throw at you.

Being beyond question in the South now, I hear southern accents all around me and my accent is seriously coming back.  A few days ago, I heard myself say I was "fixin' to" do something and I thought yep, you're back in the South.