Thistle Meadow Winery was a nice stop on our way to Mt. Rogers. While checking e-mail that morning, we found one from Grindstone Campground, our next stop. It seems their water pump for the campground was broken and they were waiting for parts. They wouldn't have water for at least a week! Well, we thought we would have water hook-ups so we didn't fill out tank when we left Lake Powhatan. We decided to keep our reservation and CONSERVE, CONSERVE, CONSERVE!
Our drive to the campground was not long, but it was along some Virginia backroads. We even traveled for a way on
The Crooked Road, part of US58 through southwest Virginia. The road is aptly named and I was glad we weren't on it for more than a few miles!
Due to the water problem, our campsite was ready when we arrived at Grindstone. Many people cancelled their reservations due to the lack of water. The campground had bottled water (gallon and two gallon containers) if anyone needed drinking water.
The campsite was beautiful, nestled in the trees at
the foot of the mountain. As usual, Bob checked for Internet and television. Well, when there is no cell phone signal, the Internet definitely won't work! We found that television was also a no-go in the trees at the base of Virginia's tallest mountain!
Since we arrived early in the day, we decided to drive to Damascus, Virginia, along The Crooked Road. Damascus is a small tourist town in the Virginia mountains. It offers mountain biking, zip-lining, hiking, and water sports. We didn't see anything that interested us for the afternoon so we continued on to Abingdon. After a pizza lunch, we headed back to our campsite using the interstate. We made a stop to pick up trail maps at the ranger station so we could plan our activities for the next 4 days.
Back at the campground we decided to walk the nature trail. It was supposed to be 1/2 mile, but it seemed a lot longer to both of us. We had to be careful on the bridges as they were wet and slippery.
The next day we decided to hike a portion of the Mt. Rogers Trail. It goes to the summit of Mt. Rogers and back again for a total of 14 miles--too far for us! We did walk a little over 3 miles up and back again for a total of 6 1/2 miles.
Along the way we saw some interesting fungi. These orange mushrooms were growing on a downed tree. Notice how one is off to the right of the cluster.
Then we found a tree that looked like it had barnacles---it was just another fungus.
This tree had burls all the way up! They looked gnarly!
We stopped our hike where the trail began to get steeper. During our descent to the trailhead, we did pass two more couples hiking, but other than that, we had the trail to ourselves..
On our last day we drove to White Top Station to walk a section of the Virginia Creeper, a former railroad that was one of the first Rail to Trail conversions.
We walked from White Top Station to Green Cove Station--it was all down hill which meant......our trail back was all up hill! Next time we are in the area, we will rent mountain bikes and ride the trail from White Top Station to Damascus.
We enjoyed our hike along the creeper trail.
After our hike we drove to Chilhowie and had lunch in the Riverfront Cafe. The food and service were good and the prices were the most reasonable we had seen in a long time.
Once back at Sol, we packed up our outdoor stuff as the next day would be another travel day---on to Shenandoah National Park!
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