#273 Lost River, West Virginia Trout Pond Recreation Area

Trout pond was another one of the federal places that we stopped at 2 hours up the road. I wanted to take the scenic route and I gotta tell you it was the scenic cat path. We were on the main road it was 220 n. I assume it’s the same highway I knew of in Greensboro. I figured it was a bigger road from Covington north, it wasn’t that big. If a person was in a small car or even a normal size truck only, I suppose it would have been just a normal two-lane road. In my experience when you're pulling the rig it seems a little bit terrifying because you had to stay laser-focused the whole time. It's just one of them small roads and we were on it for a long time. Google Maps said it would take about an hour and a half to two hours. I think it took 4 hours plus to get from Bolar to Trout pond. I guess if I feel the need to do this again, I might go up the big road and take a left instead. It was kind of hard on me. I’ve often tried to figure out what makes a road feel like a good one. For a long time, I couldn’t quite figure it out. It occurs to me it’s all about the shoulder. If there is a 4 ft shoulder on both sides it seems like such a nice road. When it’s 4 inches it seems scary. I think it’s because there’s no room for error so at least in this part of the world it means you’re white-knuckling it for hours.

Now we've crossed into West Virginia. As you get near Trout Pond you pass right through a town but then down a wiggly road six to eight miles till you get to the campground.

I say all this and still, I did enjoy it but it was a bit much. We had installed a Pac brake recently and just in time. We needed it the whole time we were on this trip. A Pac brake is a compressed air actuated valve that closes off 90% of the exhaust. This makes you slow down without using friction which keeps you from overheating your brakes and it's a wonderful thing. As we got to about 1 mile away a saw a small sign at a left turn. It said trust me do not turn here to go to the campground your GPS is lying to you. Continue for one more mile to enter Trout Pond. I thought to myself, what a nice person to help us all like that.

We arrived at Trout pond and got settled in. Somebody was on our site we had reserved. I talked to the campground host and it was probably just an oversight. He said the one we had reserved was no better than the one that was available across the way. He wanted to know if I wanted the guy to move and I said well honestly the available one is fine with us so we just took it and didn't make a big stink about it.

Each time we stopped somewhere my goal would be to continue to try to structurally put the ceiling back to normal. I started from the very front of the rig working across the bedroom mattress area into the bathroom and the living room. I was just making as much progress as I could. I was probably about done with the bedroom at this point. This was a pretty nice milestone because every time I worked on the bedroom, I had to deal with moving the mattress around somewhere else to set up the jack. Moving a king mattress all-around was kind of hard because it was a king mattress in a tiny house. It was very difficult and I had to get it ready for sleep every night. When I got the bedroom done it wouldn't be quite as stressful. We tried to walk in the woods each time when you were at the place. We walked around the lake at Trout pond and we saw some interesting sinkholes. These sinkholes are what created the Trout ponds. I read the signs and all but the water was very clear. We enjoyed being here and continued a pretty strenuous hike around the lake. It about wore us slap out. We took some nice lake pictures and I got things done to the ceiling of the RV. I have to say the colors were not very elaborate but once you're in at this deep you can't very well give up. All you can do is keep on plugging along and hope that you'll see some better fall colors before it's over with and we did see lots of pretty stuff it's just not as breathtaking as I wanted it to be. At trout pond that something else kind of weird happened. I heard the air compressor for the air bags running a lot more than it should. The next day I noticed my battery was dead and I had to get a jump start.

I think the two-problem s were unrelated but the airbags didn't work after that, The motor that operates the air compressor had died but I began to realize that I can only go about one day without cranking the engine or the battery would be dead.

After a few nights, we're ready to move on to the next place

21st 4 nights 38°57'06.2"N 78°43'57.0"W Trout Pond Campground Rd Lost River, West Virginia 26810 Phone: (304) 897-6450 Subtotal: $40.00 Quantity: 4 Nights Thank you India for our 50% off all Federal camping, lifetime senior pass anyone 62, would have been 88.00 Total $44.00

From Bolar MTN get on 220 N and stay on till Moorefield, West Virginia go through town to get on why 48 to Wadesville, West Virginia At Wadesville Head southwest on W Main St toward Trout Run Rd