We made it to West Virgina and we are wondering about camping in Kentucky and West Virginia. Last night we stayed at the Elizabethtown Country Crossroads and had a less than satisfying accommodations. The sites were very haphazardly laid out in what used to be a nut orchard I think. The surface of the roadways and the sites was made from large pieces of crushed rock and I doubt that there were more than 3 or 4 level sites. We were faced so steeply downhill that even lowering the rear end all the way was not enough to get level.

One thing that made that worse was that it rained very heavily for a good half hour right after we got there and, being faced downhill (which is very unusual), we found several new leaks. We used a bunch of towels and paper towels but no huge problem. A couple of the leaks were from windows but most seemed to come from the roof somewhere. I already knew about a couple of them but they are not usually a problem in Arizona and California so I have ignored them up until now.

The reason we picked that place to stop was that there were not a lot of choices in the area – no others? We don’t plan ahead – we just don’t like the stress of being on a schedule. The stress of finding a place on the fly is far less because we, if we have to, can spend the night in a parking lot – we are self-contained. We like to see how the day is going and then set a target destination and then search for camping.

Traveling through eastern Kentucky was very pretty. The hills and fields were all green and there were lots of white board fences but we didn’t see many horses.

We stopped at the West Virginia welcome center about 10 miles into the state to verify what Carol had already figured out using Streets & Trips and the internet: there were only 3 campgrounds in that part of the state. West Virginia has almost no camping in the first 2 hours after entering the state from Kentucky.The first two were private; a KOA, and Jim’s Campground and both of them were very pricy – $45-$50 per night and all we wanted was electricity in case we needed A/C (cooling off here a little). When we saw those prices we decided to try the state park that was the third alternative so we headed for that.

The directions to the Kanawha State Forest Campground said that they did not recommend RVs longer than 26 feet. Carol called them and they said “don’t worry, bigger ones than that come here all the time” so we decided to go for it because we love state parks.

You cannot believe the road that we took in here – by far the hairiest drive ever in the GMC including US-1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) down the Big Sur coast from Carmel to Cambria – it makes that seem like nothing. It would be real fun in my (long-ago-sold) Porsche but not in a “12,000 pound antique hotrod with plumbing”. It took a long time to get here and it will take a long time to get out – at least the way out will be easier now that we know where this is.

The campsites come in ‘standard’ and ‘primitive’ for $26 and $20 respectively. The standard site has water and electricity. The water has super-high pressure but tastes good and the electricity looks like a 20amp circuit but has no specs and it is not obvious where the breaker is located. Fortunately, we won’t need A/C tonight – so why didn’t we try a WalMart you might ask. I don’t know would be my answer – we should have considered it but we didn’t. Topping it all off, once we got here we found that we had no cell service – both AT&T and Verizon do not get in here at all. So I am writing this tonight and will upload sometime tomorrow (Tuesday).