Road Trip

 

My last two posts were real snoozers.  In fact, the last one got no acknowledgments and very few reads.  But they were what they were, a chronicling of  our life as full-time RVers and a way to let family and friends interested in what we are up to to see exactly that.  We've been at it twelve years, not every day is an adventure in exploration, sometimes it is just life.  But this post is back to adventuring, mostly.

We're going on a road trip.  No truck, no camper, just the little SUV and a suitcase.  Cyndee has lined us up four days for a visit to the National Park System's newest park, New River Gorge.  The park is long and skinny, following the path of the New River as it cuts its way through the Appalachian Plateau in West Virginia.  The New River is anything but new.  It is older than the Appalachian's themselves at more than 330 million years.  

It is a seven hour drive from our current location so most of two of our four days will be spent getting there and back again.  But we should be able to cover lots of ground in the two full days between.

Our route takes us through north-west North Carolina, a thin sliver of east Tennessee, Virginia, and finally, West Virginia.  The entire route was heavily forested and mountainous.  Gorgeous drive!  The weather was perfect for the drive up and we arrived at our base camp, a Best Western in Beckley, WV late in the afternoon.  A nice surprise when we checked in was the the hotel had a deal with a restaurant that shared their parking lot.  Hotel guests got a 10% discount on any meals they ate there.  Being it was an Outback, and that we hadn't been to one in years, we took them up on the offer.

We spent the evening in the hotel planning our route of attack for the next couple of days.  Being spread out along a river with only a couple of places to cross the river it took some strategizing on how to get to what we wanted to see with out spending the whole day ducking in and out of the park to connect to the needed roads.  Then there was the weather.  Unlike our drive in, the next two days were forecasted to be heavily overcast with frequent rain.  So with the hour-by-hour forecasts from the Weather Channel we made our plan.

New River Gorge NP
is one heck of a long,
skinny park.

Overcast and early the next morning we headed for the farthest north point we were going to visit, Cathedral Falls.  In fact, it was even further than the northern most point of the National Park and not associated with any park, just a pretty falls alongside a narrow, winding mountain road.

Evidently there are a number of these falls as indicated by the sign proclaiming the West Virginia Waterfall Trail.  Sounds like that could be a whole trip to itself.

Next we were off to the park's primary visitor center, Canyon Rim Visitor Center.  This is the most easily accessible of the park's four visitor centers.  It's just off highway 19, a major north/south route through this part of WV.  Highway 19 is also where the famous New River Gorge Bridge crosses the river at an elevation of  876 feet above the river.

If the picture looks gloomy it's because it was.
Mist and rain was our companion for the day.

That elevation and long span make for some great views from the river gorge's rim.  I would have preferred a bright blue sky dotted with some fair-weather clouds for these pics but it was just not going to happen while we were there.

Hiking out to the above viewpoints it rained on us a couple of times and despite having umbrellas we were getting pretty wet.  Managed to keep the cameras dry but that was about all.

We'd seen the view from the top as well as having crossed the bridge a couple of times already.  Now it was time to get down the cliff face and see the view from the river.  The road to do this is called the Fayette Station Road Driving Tour.  It's paved, but just barely and most of it is a one-way with switchbacks and hair-pin turns.  The part that comes down across the face of the cliff has 12% grade in some places.  The manual shifting paddles on Cyndee's ST Edge came in handy.  They got a workout.

Having said that, this road was the main trail/road for wagons and vehicles for nearly 100 years.  The gorge itself was a busy industrial center for 80 of those years.  Railroads eventually lined both sides of the river and more than 100 busy coal and railroad towns dotted the landscape.  A vehicle bridge connected these communities in 1889.  Coal was mined and trains ran constantly until the 1960s.  The original bridge was closed and condemned when the New River Gorge Bridge was completed in 1977.  A replica of the bridge opened in 1998 and is now a sought after place to see.

The scenic drive was a three-for-one.  The road itself was something to experience, the views of the New River Gorge Bridge were awesome and scenic, and Fayette Station Bridge (aka Tunney Hunsaker Bridge) was worth the drive (if you're a bridge engineering fan).

About those views:

The rail lines are still active.  This is one of two very long 
freight trains to pass in my short hike to the bridge and back.

Steel girders, wood driving surface.

Double track on east side, single track on the west.

What looked like a trickle of water from atop the bridge 
is an impressive river at eye level.

These little thumbnail photographs don't do justice to just how impressive this bridge is.  I came across a graphic that does well to put some emphasis on what is being seen.

So that takes care of the northern part of the park.  It was time to jump out on the highway and head south to find the entrance to the central part of the park, in particular, the Thurmond Historic District.

Thurmond came into being in 1873 when the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was completed and W.D. Thurmond thought this spot would be a strategic location to develop a town.  He purchased 73 acres and got down to business.  Thurmond soon became a center of commerce, carrying shipments of coal from the surrounding fields.  As the coal and timber industries grew, the town and rail yard grew to meet the needs of the community.  Thurmond became one of the busiest stops on the C&O line.

Seeing what we saw it is hard to believe that this place was ever described as thriving or bustling.  What remains is just so darn small.  But in 1910 the depot was at peak activity and Thurmond boasted shipment of freight tonnage to be more than Cincinnati, Ohio and Richmond, VA, combined.  That same year 75,000 passengers passed through the town depot.  Two hotels, two banks, a movie theater, and other town amenities served visitors and residents alike.

Other than the depot, the above picture encompasses all that is left of Thurmond.  The National Park System acquired the property in in 1995 and started a very long process of stabilization and restoration.  But even with restoration, the whole of the town can be seen in a single photograph.

Thurmond's railyard industry was centered on the servicing of steam locomotives.  Between the depression and the advent of diesel locomotives, Thurmond became irrelevant by the 1940's and declined rapidly.

But Thurmond has always been of historical importance.  The impact Thurmond had on coal, timber and rail (both freight and passenger) was crucial to West Virginia, indeed the country.  Hence the National Park's interest in preserving this ghost town.  The depot has been converted into a Visitor Center, although it is still an active stop for Amtrak to this day.

Thurmond Depot/Visitor Center.
Looking south.

Looking north.
That's a coal loading bin on the left.

An added bonus to visiting Thurmond is the bridge that must be crossed to get there.  I have never been on a bridge of this kind before.  It was simply a very narrow path that is an extension of the railroad bed.  There are no signs regarding vehicle width limits or right of way for direction of travel.  You are left to figure it out on your own.  Sure glad we were not in our dual rear wheel truck for this trip.  I seriously doubt it could have crossed without scraping the sidewalls of the tires on the tall concrete curbs and guard rails.

The only way to get into or out of Thurmond is this 
tiny, one-way, one-at-time bridge over the New River.

The roadway is not the only active part of this bridge.  The railway is also still in use.

Those rails are shiny.  This thing gets used.
In fact, that's a locomotive in the distance idling, waiting
for the signals to clear so it can join the main line.

Everywhere we were able to access the river, it never 
failed to impress.

Our initial plan that we had worked out after dinner on the first night was to do half the park in each of the next two days.  We had the first half done after visiting Thurmond and we had managed to get our sightseeing and picture taking in between the rain showers.  But the forecast for the next day had changed and showed deteriorating conditions.  Time to adapt on the fly.

We had some daylight left and the visitor center for Sandstone, the southern-most visitor center, would still be open for awhile.  Sandstone was also easily accessible, just off State Highway 64.  The other visitor center, Grandview, is more remote and has brief operating hours.  We'll leave it for tomorrow and hope we can squeeze in some sightseeing in the brief of breaks rain.   

The Sandstone Visitor Center was well appointed with exhibits, some interactive.  However this area of the park was not well developed in terms of trails or vistas or wildlife viewing.  One claim to fame is Sandstone Falls.  It is a waterfall right on the New River.  Access to the falls is a drive well south of visitor center, a crossing of the river and then driving back north nearly as far south as you had gone.  The weather was closing in on us and the day was fading so we had to settle for a distant view of the falls from an overlook.

Being high above the falls a good deal away, my telephoto lens made the waterfall look more like a rocky rapid.  But I was assured this was really a fall, albeit a short one at only 12 feet.

Day two started off as the weather forecasters had predicted.  It was raining hard when we woke up at our normal 6:30am and took a leisurely breakfast hoping for a break in the rain.  That break (sort of) came mid-morning and we headed out to see what our last visitor center, Grand View, had to offer.

Grandview Visitor Center was the most rustic of the four 
we visited.  Even more rustic than the remote Thurmond 
Historic District.

For a brief few moments it appeared that upon our arrival that we were going to get that break in the weather we had been hoping for.  But the break barely lasted long enough to get out of the car and photograph the visitor center.

Regardless, we grabbed the umbrellas and headed down the trail to this location's claim to fame, a Grand View.

Put the iPhone to work and shot this panorama.

Look closely and you can see the thin ribbon of a 
railroad on the inside curve of the horseshoe.

From this last picture it seemed a sure bet that the day was going to be a weather wash-out.  We revised our plan again and devised a driving tour taking County Roads 16, 61 and 41, winding our way from the southwest side of the park, across to the mid-east and then north all the way to Highway 19, well north of the New River Bridge.

Our drive took several hours, winding our way through incredibly vegetated mountain roads.  Our whole time on this drive and we saw only a small handful of other vehicles.  I got the impression that the weather was not the reason for the sparseness of traffic.  This route had the appearance of little use all the time.

That's it, we're done.  Our New River Gorge adventure was a welcome break from the routine daily life we had developed while sitting in one spot for so long without a volunteer gig.  And wouldn't you know it, for our drive home we had perfect weather.  Dry as a bone and not a cloud in the sky.

There were pressing matters waiting for me back at base camp.  Two more pieces of aging equipment are in need of replacing - a ventilation fan and our automated TV satellite system.

The ventilation fan is actually a premature failure problem.  There are two of these hooded fans on our rig.  One in the living area and one in the bedroom near the shower.  The one near the shower is the one that needs attention but it is not the first to fail.  The living area fan failed in 2014 and now the bedroom fan (exact same make and model) has failed identically.  Both have suffered from broken lift arms.

Looking up from the inside you can see the broken lift arm.

The fans are an "any weather" type of fan.  The external (rooftop side) is covered with a hinged hood that lets the fan be operated in inclement weather without that inclement weather coming inside.

The hood can be raised and lowered via 
a hand-cranked knob on the inside.

The living room fan is nice to have and comes in handy when used as an auxiliary to the vent hood on the stove.  It can move a lot of air and get rid of heat and cooking smells quickly.  The bedroom fan on the other hand is critical to the operation of the rig.  This fan must be run when taking showers and sometimes even when doing laundry.  If not, water vapor condenses on the ceiling, walls and windows and it "rains" in the bedroom.  And that can be disastrous, ruining woodwork and wallboards and encouraging mildew throughout the rig.

But now the bedroom fan has failed and it failed in exactly the same way as the living room fan did.  Both lift arms snapped.  It is clear that MaxxFan has design flaws.  Two fans, four lift arms, all failed exactly the same.  Inspecting the lift arms it can be seen that they are of a cast metal, probably pewter or magnesium.  When I replaced the living room fan in 2014 the new fan had the exact same lift arms.  The fan I got just now has a revised design.  The lift arms are made of stamped steel.  Much better.  I guess they finally caught on to the problem.  The only problem is that I am stuck with the living area fan that still has the deficient lift arms.

Installation wasn't a big deal.  The hot roof was the only drawback.  I used my collection of ropes to get the old fan off the roof and the new one hauled up.  The only thing not made of plastic was the fan motor and lift arms, so not a heavy lift.

Not so for the next project, replacing the satellite dish turret.  That thing is a bulky, oddly shaped hunk of metal, gears and multiple electric motors weighing about 65 pounds.  You don't just throw it over your shoulder and climb a 14' ladder.  Well, maybe if you were a young man and in good shape.  Neither of which I am.

Fully automated satellite dish.

So out came the ropes again and with Cyndee on a guide line and me hauling, we got it on the roof without incident.

What brought on this expensive maintenance chore was that our eleven year old dish system had developed some serious "slop" in its numerous drives.  The gear drive in the turret base had worn down to nearly nothing, letting the whole dish wobble and turn in the slightest breeze.  The tilt and skew motors were also getting weak and likewise getting pushed around by the wind.  I talked to Winegard about a rebuild and they just laughed at me.  They said it would be twice the cost to fix than just to buy a new one.

Three hours later we had a upgraded satellite TV dish and control system.  Technology had significantly advanced and we now had dish system that was operated through a 6 oz control box (the old controller was a 5lb behemoth) that is operated via an app on my phone.  And it is "smarter" too.  It now interfaces with the GPS on my phone making acquiring satellites faster and more accurate.

A few days later we took the old turret and dish to a metal recycling operation and got a whole $4.00 for our scrap.  Beats having to pay somebody to take it off our hands.