May 20, 2021

 

We left Huntington this morning at 9:15 and immediately hit heavy traffic, in the form of big trucks. We started out on the 64, transferred to the 79 in Charleston, WV. This is where life got interesting, as we not only had the big trucks to contend with, but the beginning of the Alleghany Mountains AND heavy, constant road construction. The construction zones required the speed limits to drop to the 45-55 mph range, and usually at the bottom of a steep climb, giving us no chance to build up speed, this also affected the big trucks. These are long climbs, sometimes in the 1-2 mile range, when these trucks can’t build up speed at the bottom of the hill, then by the time they reach the mid-point they are lucky to be doing 20 mph. We did this up and down, construction zone game all day, really plays havoc with the fuel mileage!!

Speaking of fuel, Phil always tries to fill up at the end of the day, after we have disconnected at the campground (that way he doesn’t have to worry about running into something with the rig). When he got fuel at the end of the day in Huntington, it was $2.939/gal. At the end of the trip today it was $3.539/gal!

In Morgantown, we transferred to the 68. The campground, Sand Springs RV Camping Area, advertises itself as being in Morgantown, but by the time we got there, we were closer to Milton, WV than we were to Morgantown! At least the weather was nice today, sunny with temps in the low 80’s.

May 21, 2021

 

We drove back down into Morgantown today to take a look at the Morgantown Botanical Gardens. This is a community educational center, kind of like Master Gardeners, only on a much larger scale. It appears that the planting and maintenance of the various gardens relies on volunteers. It is set up so that you can walk the trails of the more wilderness areas, or walk through the more formal flower gardens. Lots of flowers in bloom when we were there, all very pretty!