The Rolling Hills of West Virginia

While in Gettysburg, we needed to get the tow light cable repaired. For those who don’t know, this cable connects from the RV to the car and runs the signal and brake lights on the car. At the campground, Russ met a guy a few sites down from us who as it turns out runs the mobile Middle Creek RV Service with a buddy of his. Rick and Lance came over to check out the situation and ended up spending a couple hours on something that they thought would be pretty simple. Three mini-fuses did need to be replaced but that didn’t solve the problem. Bottom line, after taking the cable back to the shop, returning the next night, and spending another couple hours, they finally got everything working. They took it as quite a challenge, and if you’re ever in the area in need of their services, we’d highly recommend their work and professionalism. They don’t have a website yet, but you can reach them at 717-337-3405.

Shortly after leaving Gettysburg on Thurs., it began raining and continued to do so the rest of the day on the way to Harpers Ferry and all of the next. It’s always such a joy to set up in the rain (not!) but thankfully we haven’t had to do it often. It cleared up for a beautiful weekend though. We stayed at the same KOA as two years ago which is located just outside the entrance to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (http://www.nps.gov/hafe). The rain gave us a little time to kick back and relax from the previous busy week plus it was 50s Weekend with all sorts of activities including a sock hop! The campground still has the small Civil War museum with the cannon outside which they fire off on Sat. evenings, and it appears they’ve put a lot of work into the campground since last we were here that includes a pet exercise area.

Sat. was a beautiful day, and we headed over to the park but took the back roads into town. I won’t go into a lot of detail of the town’s history as you can check that out on our blog entry in Aug. 2007. It was National Trails Day celebrating America’s hiking heritage with several planned ranger guided walks plus a tent with special hiking exhibits. We chatted with a guy with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (http://www.patc.net/) whose purpose is to maintain the trails in the Mid-Atlantic region, and in 2008 they logged over 83,000 hours of volunteer service! Further down the line we began chatting with hikers Dee and Luann Drinkard who are with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (http://www.appalachiantrail.org/ ), an organization whose sole purpose is to protect and promote the AT. They are hoping to one day fulltime RV as well, and we thoroughly enjoyed talking with them, us learning more about the ATC and them about fulltiming. Looking at a map they had, Russ calculated that on our travels we’ve probably crossed the AT about 20 - 30 times by car or on foot, most of the time without even realizing it.

When we arrived in Lower Town Harpers Ferry, we decided to take the walk up to Jefferson’s Rock which we had not done last time. Your walk begins by climbing these stone steps which are part of the Appalachian Trail. At the top is St. Peter’s Catholic Church, and continuing another couple hundred yards brought us to our destination. What a view from there! Thomas Jefferson was said to utter that it “was worth a voyage across the Atlantic”.

The town is located where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers converge amidst the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The red sandstone supports you see in the picture were put in place in 1860 so as not to endanger the lives and property of the town below. By the way, did I mention how terrible the gnats were at the campground and in the entire area? You can probably tell by the expression on my face!

After returning back down, we took one of the ranger guided walks telling the history of the C & O Canal. The second stop was where the two rivers converge and covers three states. In the picture on the left, I am standing in WV, the hills on the left are MD and those on the right are VA…pretty cool, huh? Our walk continued across the footbridge towards the canal, but we stopped admiring the scenery, watching some colorful kayakers, and never continued down the steps with the rest of the group. We even saw trees growing out of rock in the middle of the river, something that always amazes us.

On our way back an Amtrak train passed on the track across from us, and closer to town we paused to listen to a dedication ceremony being done that day for some recent improvements to the AT. That night we watched the full moon rise over the hills from the front window of our RV…could anything be more relaxing and beautiful?

The next day we visited the nearby flea market. We always enjoy walking through, seeing what everyone’s got to sell, and generally save lots of money because we don’t have a house to put stuff in! But we always end up spending a few bucks on this and that, and today was no exception. From here we again drove the backroads to town, venturing along some of the side streets, enjoying the small town atmosphere, and taking in the breathtaking beauty of the area. On our drive back to the campground we passed the ruins of the Shenandoah Pulp Factory. Built in the late 1800s, it closed in 1935 and was destroyed a year later in a massive flood. And as you can see in the photo on the left, we weren’t the only visitors that day!

On a couple medical side notes: we thought we’d give you an update on our friend Scott. His chemo and radiation treatments are done, and now he’s spending the next several weeks rebuilding his strength before surgery. The doctors seemed to be pleased with his progress and he’s actually able to eat again. His minimally invasive surgery is scheduled for June 26, and at that time they will remove his entire esophagus through three slits, and pull his stomach up to attach to his throat pipe. He’ll be in the hospital two weeks, then a couple weeks of recovery, and he’ll have to eat smaller meals throughout the day, he’ll be back to normal. I know he’ll appreciate your thoughts and prayers for a successful operation and speedy recovery.

Russ’ mom is doing okay, having some good days and some not so good. She was moved into a rehab center/skilled nursing facility a few days after we left, and they’ve had her doing some walking therapy, getting her up and about more. Unfortunately, the extra moving around has caused her ankles to swell really bad for some reason, and she still has some sort of infection in her body (her white count is up) so they’ve started her on a new antibiotic. The doctors also think she has been experiencing mini-strokes so we pray that she remains comfortable and in no pain.

Tomorrow we start our trek out West for what we’re dubbing our National Park Tour. Stay tuned!