Driving Day — To Virginia

It seemed like a good time to start heading north. It was a gray day and we planned to go as far as Claytor Lake  State Park in Virginia, before continuing on to Shenandoah National Park. Harry & Sally were traveling with us. There were a couple of route choices. The first was to go back over Newfound Gap, continue up through the traffic of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge to I-81, then just take the Interstate to Virginia. The Park was not far from I-81. We didn't really want to take Speedy and the trailer over Newfound Gap again and didn't relish the traffic on the other side of the park.


So, we looked at an alternative route. It would go east from Cherokee, through Maggie Valley, over to I-40 East to Asheville, then north on I-26 over the Blue Ridge to I-81, not much longer in distance, but avoiding the Newfound Gap Road and the traffic. We didn't realize the road to Maggie Valley, US-19, was narrower, steeper and twistier than Newfound Gap—and the gray morning turned into heavy fog, then pouring rain. Speedy and its driver were not happy campers as we crawled along at 25 mph until we got to to Maggie Valley. This also meant that we went over the mountains twice, once through the Soco Gap to Maggie Valley and again on I-26 over to I-81. At least the rain stopped by the time we got to the downhill parts of I-26.

Once we got to the west side of the mountains, 85 miles later, it was a dry picturesque drive with blue skies, all the way to Virginia. It was probably that way from the other side of Newfound Gap. We pulled into Claytor Lake State Park at around 3:30PM. It was a bit of a disappointment. The campsites were nowhere near the lake. The campsites were arranged like a parking lot. They were nearly $30 for the night and there was an additional fee for Nina, Harry & Sally's dog—plus Virginia Sales Tax. We decided to move on.

The nearest federal campground we could find was at Cave Mountain Lake in the Jefferson National Forest, outside of Natural Bridge, VA. It was another 90 miles, but it was still early and back onto I-81 we went. The campground was 10 miles from the highway. Once we drove past Natural Bridge it was into the National Forest. The roads got smaller and twisty and went up hill. This was sort of deja-vu for Ellen and I since we took a similar detour into this same national forest last spring on our trip back from Tennessee after picking up the new motorcycle. It resulted in Speedy flying (literally) over a railroad crossing and nearly losing the fresh water tank.

But all turned out well this time. There were no bad railroad crossings. At around 5:30PM we pulled into a pleasant campground with well-spaced sites. It was only $7.50 for the night (no dog charge) and, although it had no hookups, it did have hot showers and lots of free firewood. We were just in time for showers, dinner and an evening around the campfire.