Wow…today we actually did some Fun Stuff©…although we had to sandwich it around some other administrivia to get things done.

We had originally insured Big Red with our long time insurance company USAA…after talking back and forth with the policy writer he was fully onboard with it being a better/safer truck than BAT was and wrote the policy after checking with their underwriters to make sure that it was OK…their statement that it was up to him.

So…we thought we were fine there…but then the underwriter shot the policy down since Big Red is technically a commercial truck…never mind that it’s not being used commercially. So since we had already exhausted just about every other option for getting it covered we reluctantly are forced to switch it over to National Interstate via Miller Insurance out in Oregon. We even tried Progressive as they have our house policy…but their agreement with USAA as a partner company prevents them from insuring a 5500. We had already renewed our house policy through June of 17…so we’ll just have 2 companies for a year and then next May will sort out the best option going forward…probably shift everything over to Progressive on a single policy through Miller…who can get coverage for the 5500.

At my last post…we were still in Pocahontas State Park seeing grand baby Alex…then last Thursday we left there and headed over to Longwood State Park on the Kerr Reservoir in southwest VA. We had a beautiful water/electric site #48 there and basically did nothing the whole weekend as Neil is still recovering from his cold. We did eat out Thursday and Friday nights at a couple of local eateries…the Lake House restaurant and pub and then the Lamplighter Pub. Food and beer were great…the Lamplighter had a dozen VA brews on tap and we sampled several of them.

Sunday morning we hitched up and headed for Dawson WV…where we again stayed at Summer Winds RV right off of I-64. Great spot for a day or two…nice breeze and full hookup sites. We did run into an Airstream convention or something…the two previous times we were here there were a total of I think 3 RVs here but both nights this time have been over capacity with several rigs boondocking instead of being in regular sites.

Monday we decided to get out and see the New River National Gorge and River…the New River runs about 400 miles in NC, VA, and WV through a really deep gorge in the Allegheny Plateau…we got some nice photos of both the largest waterfall (Sandstone Falls) on the river as well as the Grandview Gorge Overlook.

Sandstone Falls is a pretty wide falls…probably 300 yards or so and about 25 feet tall. The river bottom is sandstone in this area and it makes a quite striking view. We had to stick with iPhone photos only as Neil thought the real camera was in the truck only to find out when we got there that it was back in the house:-(. The falls is about 18 miles from the visitor center.

From there we headed back towards the visitor center and freeway…stopping in Hinton for lunch at a mediocre Italian place…then once back to the freeway continued on west another 10 miles then 8 miles north to the Grandview overlook which looks out over the gorge from about 1,500 feet above it maybe.

Yeah…it really does loop around like that as it meanders through the mountains.

Looking down at the left side of the above shot we spotted a loaded coal train heading south up the river.

With that…we decided we were done as it was almost 1600 and we were most of an hour away from the house so we headed home for dinner.

Tuesday morning we got underway bright and early for our next scheduled stop at the Buckeye Lake KOA in Buckeye Lake OH…it’s on the eastern side of  Columbus so we’ll work on Wednesday and then head into Columbus to look around on Thursday.

We ran over to Papa Boos for brews and bar food for dinner…it was our kinda place atmosphere wise with open sides…but they only had bottled beer and the food was average…but at least we didn’t have to cook it. We been seeing a lot of Ohio State ball caps here though…Neil will have to wear a t-shirt and cap from Alabama the next time we head out the door.

Interesting things we found on the internet this week.

Irish field sign.

Comic Jackie Mason’s thoughts on Starbucks…this mirrors Neil’s thoughts exactly. Venti is Italian for Six Dollars. Starbucks is overpriced and the coffee is burned and bitter anyway…don’t understand why anybody would drink the stuff. It’s just a status symbol…people like other people to think they have enough money to buy $7 coffee…even though they live in a 300 square foot efficiency apartment and drive a leased BMW they can’t afford.

Cyas.