Friday July 8, 2011

Following the advice of our camping neighbors, we headed out today by way of the outflow of the Summersville dam.  It is pretty impressive even though the power plant was not in operation.  The Gauley River is really beautiful.  This was one of the points where the river rafters and boaters could enter the river and ride the rapids down stream.  This is an impressive waterway.  By the way, there is a humorous story about the naming of this dam.  It seems that most dams are named after the closest town (which is not Summersville [about 5 miles away]).  The closest town, now covered by the lake, was a very small mining and lumbering town by the name of Gad.  The powers that be decided they did not want to name the dam Gad Dam.  (Say it aloud and you’ll realize why they named the dam Summersville Dam.)

Our next stop was a little bit of backtracking back to the overlook of the single span bridge over the New River Gorge.  We took the short trail from the visitor’s center to view the bridge, a mighty construction, and to marvel at the engineering feat.  We chose not to climb the steep 600 step stairway down the cliff to view the bridge from the bottom.  Not because it wouldn’t have been a great picture, but because we didn’t want to climb back up the 600 steps to the top.

We drove back up to the turn off for Hwy 60.  Our neighbors warned us that this was a very twisty mountain road, but as we drove through the small villages we found it to be a very pleasant country road and were relieved to be off the interstate for a while.  We were told about the very picturesque Gauley Falls and were encouraged to stop for photos.  Once again having some local guides helped us to enjoy our trip.  The Falls are indeed picturesque and we took quite a few pictures.

After our many stops so soon on today’s trip, we needed to just drive or we wouldn’t make it to our Cub Run Campground on Nolin Lake in Kentucky.   We did stop for lunch, though.  Once again we asked Rosemary for a lunch spot.  She suggested CJ Maggie’s American Grill.  With that interesting name, we programmed in the address and proceeded to follow Rosemary’s directions not knowing that to get there we would have to drive over the Big Sandy River into Ohio and then over the river again and back into Ashland Kentucky.  We laughed as we added another state to our trip.  CJ Maggie’s was an award winning restaurant that specialized in American cuisine and the stop was worth it. Across from CJ Maggie's was an Episcopal church that Yvonne just hand to get into and see.  It was quite pretty.

Then it was back on the road to Cub Run.  This was a long day on the road.  There were definitely sights that we should have stopped at.  For Stanley it was the tour of the Bourbon Distilleries and for Yvonne it was Lincoln’s home.  Next time (if there is a next time) we will not have these long days just to get to the next campground. 

We arrived at Cub Run around 5:00, set up, and got ready for another long day’s drive to the Serdahl’s home in Mountain Home, Arkansas.