West Virginia - Day 12

Flatwoods KOA

Friday, 12 April 2019

I’m back in chipmunk country. I’ve spotted several already in this campground.  They give their position away by rustling around in the dead leaves, then when they see me and the dogs they run into their burrows, then turn around and poke their heads back out to watch us.

And yea! I found out at least one reason why I’m seeing so many Ontario license plates.  A couple who came in late last night were given the site right next to me (who knows why when there are so many vacant spots the office could at least space us out a little).  This morning I saw their Ontario license plate when I was walking the dogs, so about 9:00 I noticed they were getting ready to leave, and I ran over and asked why I was seeing so many Ontario folks traveling through West Virginia.

The nice woman said they were on their way home.  They’d spent the winter in Florida and were now headed back north, and West Virginia was smack on the way.  She said they could go farther west and use I-75, which runs through Cincinnati up to Toledo and then into Ontario, but she said it’s a terrible road.  (Since I’ll be spending May in Ohio, I guess I’ll get to see for myself.)  She said I-79 is a much better route, and the West Virginia mountains aren’t too big a problem.  It runs via Pittsburgh up to Erie, and then into Ontario.  Apparently she and her husband do this every year, so I guess they’ve got it figured out.

I’m sure that’s not the only reason for Ontarians (or whatever they’re called) to be in West Virginia, but that’s likely why a lot of them are.

I spent the entire day today – from 6 AM until 5 PM except for breaking to walk the dogs – figuring out upcoming travel plans.  I ended up with 4 days of itineraries, 4 nights of campground reservations, and directions to all those things. I’ll be spending most of that time in or near the black-out zone for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and most of it in the Monongahela National Forest which is mostly in the mountains, so I can’t expect to get a wifi signal for days.  I figured I’d better get it all worked out in advance.

But that took time, as you can tell, and some hard decisions.  One of those was to bypass the eastern panhandle, which I really don’t want to do.  But I could find almost no campgrounds over there, and not a lot of road access either.  Most access seems to come via Virginia – I’d go east on state routes and pick up I-81 or US Rt. 340 to head north into the panhandle.  If I did that, I could maybe go to Harper’s Ferry, for instance, and spend one night somewhere in the panhandle, and then take those same roads back down.  Since I don’t like leaving the state I’m spending the month in, the alternative is a whole series of WV back roads and would surely mean 2 or 3 nights in those campgrounds that don’t seem to be there.

In fact, I’m finding whole chunks of West Virginia where there aren’t any campgrounds at all.  Or maybe they’re there and just aren’t open for the season yet.  But they don’t show up in tourist materials or online, and I don’t know where else to look for them.

Anyway, tossing out the eastern panhandle means not seeing places I missed when I was in Maryland, so I wanted to be sure to get to at least part of the WV side of what’s in Maryland’s western hook.  And I needed to factor in the time it takes me to navigate these back roads, which are the only choice for driving in all of eastern WV.  And then find campgrounds that are open in the areas I’ll be driving in.  I wouldn’t have dreamed it would take as long as it did to get all that figured out, and by 5:00 I’d still only planned as far as next Wednesday.  But by then I should be back nearer a wifi signal.