Fox Fire KOA
Friday, 19 - Monday, 22 April 2019
Nobody in West Virginia seems to recycle. When I've asked people about it, they just shrug their shoulders. Maybe this is a field some entrepreneur should take a look at. But in the meantime, I've accumulated bags full of milk jugs and wine bottles and lots of paper and cardboard. Of all the campgrounds I've visited only the first, Camp Creek State Park, collected water bottle-size plastic and aluminum and the second, this KOA, collected everything. Both are relatively close to state lines, which may explain why they're the only ones. But one of the reasons I chose to come back here was to rid myself of all this recycle material I couldn't bear to throw in the trash.
Friday, 19th
I've been getting so tired, and my arm's been hurting so much, that I was getting almost desperate for a day off. The forecast for today was a lot of rain, which seemed the perfect time to be not doing anything. Which is nearly what I did. I spent a couple hours figuring a rough plan for what I still want to see in WV and where to stay and how to get there. I covered a whole chicken with herbs and spices and stuck it in the crock-pot. And I watched all three Jason Bourne movies. Helps relieve tension.
Saturday, 20th
Today is Anna's birthday, so I called to congratulate her. It sounds like she and David had a good trip to Scotland, and I'm glad they're home safely (before Brexit wreaks havoc with travel). Today, it was still raining off and on, and I spent most of the day trying to catch up on my blog. I was a week behind, thanks to so many days of traveling constantly and staying where there was no wifi signal. I'm pleased to report that the pain medicine seems to be helping Dexter - he's putting weight on that foot more often and has mostly stopped licking it.
Sunday, 21st
Happy Easter! Again, the day spent on my blog, but at least I'm nearly caught up. The rain mostly stopped but it was quite cool all day, helped along by a strong breeze that made me wish people reported the wind chill temperature more often. It's too cold to put the dogs outside and I think they're pretty bored. Quite a few people here for the Easter weekend, little kids riding bikes or fishing or walking large dogs. When I take mine out I have to dodge the others, but at least this is a fairly large campground. The dogwoods are blooming like crazy - I saw one that had both pink and white blooms on the same tree - really pretty.
Monday, 22nd
This was a very warm, sunny day, so it was the get-things-done day. I wrote down the driving routes to the things I want to see in the next few days. To the extent I could I made reservations for the next several campgrounds - most state campgrounds won't take reservations this early but assure me there'll be room. I even picked out the first campground in Ohio, which won't open until May 1st so I had to make reservations online.
In one of the last few campgrounds I picked up a bad batch of water - it tasted okay but was so brown it was staining pipes and dishes. So I spent hours and hours draining the water tank, which happened v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, and then trying to flush it out and refilling it. Very tedious but I think I got most of it out. I dumped the sewage tanks and did laundry and trimmed my hair and took a shower and shook out the dogs' beds and swept the floors.
You may remember that, in preparing for this trip, I made loose-leaf notebooks with background information for each state. I put the first year's worth inside the cabin and stored the others in the downstairs storage area. (Well, "the others" up to Texas, where I'll be reunited with my storage unit and will pick up those for the remaining states.) So today I exchanged the ones inside for those for the next year. That was more difficult than I'd expected, though, because I'd forgotten that I've collected tourist information in each state, so these inside notebooks are much more bulky than the ones stored - meaning it was hard cramming the used ones into the space the unused ones had occupied.
While I was down there, I pulled out a few summer clothes and stored the heaviest of my winter ones. The forecasts are for gradually increasing warmth, but no more of those freak snowstorms. I'm leaving out a few sweaters, just in case, but storing my winter pajamas, for instance.
I ran out of day - and energy - before I ran out of things needing to be done. I'll do the dishes in the morning before we leave and finish catching up my blog while I still have a wifi signal.
I expect to spend the rest of the month in northwestern WV where, everybody tells me, there's nothing worth seeing. But it's all new to me, so I'll go see if it's not worth seeing. I can tell by the maps that I won't be running out of mountains, though I guess that'll be happening in a month or so: a guy from Indiana staying near us tells me Indiana is flat with corn and wheat fields. Flat is not what I've got in West Virginia, so I should enjoy it while I've got it.
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