We had decided yesterday that we would try to return home from the Lexington, Virginia area via I-64W across West Virginia to US-35 N into Ohio, branching off on US-23 N towards Columbus, Ohio and eventually getting on I-75 N and following US-23 N through Sylvania, Ohio (by-passing Toledo, Ohio), into Michigan, and home.
We needed a place to stay this evening, and I needed to order some parts for the coach from Prevost Car, Inc. so Linda researched campgrounds while I looked up part numbers on the Prevost CatBase Viewer. I got the parts ordered and she identified two possible fairgrounds: the Gallia County Junior Fairgrounds near Gallipolis, Ohio and the county fairgrounds near Chillicothe, Ohio. She called the phone number for the Chillicothe fairgrounds but never got an answer. A woman answered when she called the Gallia Country Junior Fairgrounds and said they had 50A full hookup sites and we were welcome to stay there for $20. Deal! Gallipolis is only a few miles into Ohio on US-35N and the fairgrounds were only a mile or so off of the highway with good access from a major road. She also found a listing for a Good Sam RV Park near Chillicothe, but the listing said their season ended on October 15.
L-to-R, me, Linda, Marilyn, Mary, and Ron.
After a light breakfast we prepared the coach for travel and helped Marilyn gather and move all of her stuff back to Ron and Mary’s mini-van as they got their A-liner ready to travel. Checkout time was 11 AM, and we had both planned 5 hour travel days, so we were in no hurry to leave. We were all packed by 10:30 AM, so we took a few group pictures, had our goodbye hugs, and made our exits just before 11 AM.
Welcome to West Virginia!
The weather was perfect today, with clear blue skies and temperatures climbing into the 60’s. I-64 through Virginia and West Virginia is a designated scenic route, and it should be. On the trip through western Virginia and into W. Virginia we often had the highway to ourselves. This is mountain country and the road is rarely straight or level. We had numerous long grades (up and down) and several that were marked 7% for up to 5 miles. Reminiscent of our travels through the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, I was downshifting manually a lot, and on one long uphill had to drop into 2nd gear to keep the RPMs around 2000. Unlike the trip over the Bighorns, I knew better how to drive mountains and the engine coolant temperature never climbed above 198 and the exhaust pyrometers stayed below 1000 degrees, typically 900 degrees or less.
I-64 joins up with I-77 in central W. Virginia and becomes the West Virginia Turnpike. Traffic got noticeably heavier from here on. We paid two tolls of $3.25 for a motorhome towing a car. The WVT has toll booths staffed by real people, no tickets to take, no machines to feed money into. Nice. We tend to avoid toll roads not so much because of the cost, although that can be excessive, as the unattended mechanisms make it very difficult for us to pay tolls.
Welcome to Ohio! (The bridge over the Ohio River was being resurfaced and down to one lane in each direction.)
We found the Gallia County Junior Fairgrounds easily and pulled in around 3:40 PM. The place was deserted except for one car and a “campground” was not obvious. Linda called the phone number she had used in the morning and did not get an answer. We both walked around, peered in windows, knocked on doors, but nothing. She eventually found signs with trailers and arrows and followed those to what might have been a campground, but no evidence of 50 A full hookups as we had been told.
The stop gave us a chance to rest and nibble, but after about 45 minutes we decided we needed to make other plans. Remember, a true traveler has no fixed plan… In looking at our (out-of-date) Trailer Life Directory (2010) we returned to the listing for Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH (a Good Sam Park). It said they closed October 15, but we called anyway. They were still open! And they had space! And they were only another hour up the road! And that was the direction we needed to go anyway!
Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH as seen from the driver’s position in the coach. Our site was ahead to the left but we had to circle around to the right get lined up so we could back in.
So that’s where we went. It was less than 2 miles from an exit off of US-23 which was only 4.5 miles from the junction of US-35 and US-23, so it was not out of our way to come here. We arrived around 5:45 PM. Although the sun had disappeared behind a thickening cloud cover it was still daylight. We opted for a back-in full hookup 50A site as the pull-through sites did not have sewer connections and getting to the dump station from those sites the next morning would be more difficult than we wanted to deal with.
We unhooked the car in front of the office where the road was widened for large RV to pull over while they registered. I walked the route from the office to our site to check for adequate turning radii and an absence of encroaching tree limbs. It all looked good, and we were got parked and leveled easily. After hooking up the electricity and sewer line and making the interior ready for use we went for a walk around the park, as we often do. Sun Valley is mostly seasonal trailers and park models, but it was in nice shape (which is not always the case).
We had leftovers for dinner, but really, Linda’s leftover meals are still a treat. She was very tired and went to bed early while I stayed up and worked on photographic image post-processing, redoing the picture of our coach on our website home page, and catching up on writing blog entries. I also had a long conversation with Joe Cannarozzi, our mobile mechanic, who will be working on the coach starting on Wednesday.