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Rain chases us home

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  Hwy 421 to i-40 to i74 to hwy 38 to hwy 501 to hwy 544 to Prestwick Club Drive to home Friday May 22 2026 Our next destination is Bandits Roost campground at Lake Kerr in North Carolina. We departed Raccoon Branch at 11am and headed south into North Carolina. It had been teasing rain all morning and as we approached Wilkesboro it started raining steadily. We set up in the rain and then pretty much stayed in all afternoon. My weather description in three words; Cold, overcast and wet! Towards evening the rain let up long enough for us to go for a walk around the campground, but it never warmed up and we never saw the sun. It soon started raining again and rained all night, sometimes heavily. pull-thru site #76 Saturday May 23, 2026 In the morning it was back to a light rain but the dampness and cold never left. The day time temperatures have never got above 50 degrees. After lunch the rain stopped briefly enough that we decided to take a drive into town, so at least we c...
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24 Miles on the creeper trail

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  Fries VA to Troutdale VA Tuesday May 19 2026 This morning we departed Fries Virginia and drove to Raccoon Branch Campground near Troutdale Virginia. This is a continued journey on Hwy 58; The road we’ve been traveling since Martinsville and a road we’ve traveled many times before. Our purpose for coming to this far western corner of Virginia is to visit Millie’s sister Betty. We had reserved our favorite site (#10) in the campground and set up the RV quickly. The day was still young, so we drove over to Betty’s house and visited with Betty and her son Jason. We sat outside in rockers on the long porch and caught up with family news. Jason has recently had a major operation, and we were glad to see he was on the mend. Soon we were discussing world problems and our solutions for them.   Each of us had some good ideas, none of them could be repeated under oath of course. lol Ai generated picture Back at the RV, we used our Starlink internet for the first time at this loca...
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39.1 miles on the New River State Park Trail

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  Meadows of Dan to Fries  May 17 2026 Sunday Next stop on our road trip is Fries Virginia. Pronounced “freeze”, not French “Frys” We’ve really been enjoying these short travel days between stops, we arrive with plenty of time and energy to take in a half day extra at the destination. The trip from Meadows of Dan to Fries was an easy drive on Hwy 58, a road we’ve taken many times before. Fries was new to us, located a few miles north of Hwy 58 we just passed by it on previous journeys. It’s a small town, only about 350 people live here. A Dollar General store is the only market, luckily for the residents, the larger town of Galax is nearby. town of Fries on the New River Fries sits right on the New River and in its hay-day was a mill town with several fabric and thread factory's on the banks of the river. The streets of the town are lined with the small mill houses so common in these company dominated towns of the south. The houses were owned by the company and rented to...
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Floyd Country Store

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Floyd Country Store   Friday May 15 2026 We are still in Meadows of Dan, it is still Friday.   This next stop in our tour is pretty special, and I didn't want it buried at the bottom of the previous post. God's country Not many miles north of Meadows of Dan is the small town of Floyd, population 449. This small remote town is on The Crooked Road, Virginia’s 333 mile Heritage Music Trail, whose mission is to highlight Southwest Virginia by promoting this region’s rich heritage of traditional music. Floyd has also become known as an artist colony, with several fine art studios and potteries. Observing the music scene outside the theater The Floyd Country Store sits right downtown and seems to be the nucleus of the music scene. You can’t buy beans or potatoes at the store; their main product is music. They have several different musical offerings during the week, but the Friday Night Jamboree, which features local and area bands, is the main event. The store has a stage, li...
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Meadows of Dan, Virginia

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  Nice ride through some Virginia mountains Wednesday May 13 2026 Moving day today, we don’t have far to go so we took our time packing up. We left the campground and drove the truck and camper to the nearby Planet fitness and exercised for an hour. I can honestly say I do not enjoy going to the gym, but it does make me feel better afterwards. Leaving the gym, we saw it was lunch time so before we left the parking lot, we ate the last of the leftover Jerry’s pizza. Oh, the irony, exercise and pizza, what a combination! It's a joke Planet Fitness! We then drove to Meadows of Dan Virginia on highway 58. We got to travel on some of the new realigned highway at Lovers Leap. It’s going to be a great improvement to travel through the mountains. We are staying at the Meadows of Dan Campground; it is our first time here. It’s a pretty basic campground, gravel roads and campsites, it has one bathhouse, a few pull-thru sites on the hill and about twenty back-in sites in a holler below the pu...
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Martinsville, Virginia

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  A short run to Martinsville Virginia Sunday May 10 2026 The campers are gradually dispersing, which is nice because if everyone tried to leave the park at the same time it would be grid lock on the narrow gravel roads that wind thru the forested campground.  We departed the Farm Park at 11am and except for a very short section of I-73 we traveled local roads from Denton NC to Martinsville VA. We arrived at Indian Heritage RV Park around one-ish and quickly set up on site 76, which sits high on a bank overlooking the Smith River. Indian Heritage RV Park on the Smith River Besides being a travel day for us, today is Mother’s Day and also Millie’s birthday. We had decided we would travel to our next destination before going to a restaurant to celebrate Millie’s day.  Soon we were ready to eat, and I asked Millie to choose which restaurant she wanted to go to. She picked my favorite eatery in Martinsville, Jerry’s Pizza. We enjoyed half of a large Hawaiian pizza and brought...
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