6-2-17 Covington, Va to Harrisonburg, Va: the long way round.

[TerryD]

Well my first real trip is under my belt and I'm pretty happy with the Xterra!

I started out Friday around 11:30 am, leaving the house headed on a mostly unknown route headed north from my house toward Harrisonburg, Va. Now this normally would be about an hour and a half drive, and it wound up taking me almost 10 hours of driving. The terrain ranged from nice paved roads all the way to some mild crawling in low range and straddling places. As usual, my picture taking in the rough stuff just flat didn't happen. When presented with a challenge I get very focused and things like picture taking or dropping pins on my GPS just go out the window.

This was a solo trip, just me and the dog. It was one nights camping in a nice little campground near West Augusta, Va. I also met up with another member from Overland Bound in Afton, Va yesterday for supper at Blue Mountain Brewery before riding the Blue Ridge Parkway from there to Buena Vista, Va and hopping on RTE 60 to get home from there. All told, I covered about 350 miles and the Xterra performed amazingly. I really want to get the lift done now and re-gear to 3.54, but those will have to wait a while. I'm going to be looking more seriously at sliders now, as I tagged both step rails pretty good (hush Jim @JOSX2 ) and also got some good contact with the radiator and oil pan skid. New shocks are pretty high on the list as well, I'm kinda sore from the constant wallowing back and forth on the trail that a good set of shocks could have controlled better.

I did the post trip checkout this morning and everything seems to be in great shape, just a little dirty. I'm really looking forward to going on another run soon though!

Starting out:


Lunch Day one. This is a little roadside site I had scoped out a few months ago and decided that it would be a good place to stop and eat my $3 Wal-Mart salad.



The dog doing the only things she's really good at...



This is a good idea of my view for most of the day. I had been looking on Google Maps for months figuring out this route. Most of it worked out, there was a large section of it that has been closed to vehicles for some time and designated as horse trails. However, I really enjoyed the parts that were open on day one. I had ZERO cell service for the majority of it, but managed to have intermittent contact on my home repeater and carried on a few QSOs with some of my buddies around here.



After being blocked on those horse trails, I did find Fort Edward Johnson on Rte 250 between Head Waters, Va and West Augusta, Va. This was a Confederate fort during the Civil War and there are still trenches dug at the top of the mountain where both the Confederate and Union held the fort during the war. There is a little 0.5mi walking trail around the top of the mountain and the dog thought it would be good for us to stretch our legs, so begrudgingly I agreed and we were off.

The trail leading up to the summit:


From there, with my track for the day exhausted, I headed for the campground I had picked out for our nights stay. I pulled in and paid my $5 for the night and picked a spot near the exit of the loop, right next to the creek (river?) that encircled the campground. I got right to stringing up my hammock and tarp and once that was done, supper was in order. I had picked up a ribeye to cook on my Coleman Peak1 and chopped some of it up for the dog's supper as well.





While I was working on my supper, the folks in the camp beside me came back from fishing. They were a really nice fella named Rickey and his 4 y/o son (who's name I should have written down) from Richmond who'd left momma, who's a school teacher, at home to finish up her school year to do some father/son stuff. We chatted a bit and I gave his son a couple Kit-Kats I had picked up for snacks. After that, I took the dog for a walk and then settled down in my chair to read till dark. It was a great evening and as much as I like my kids, it was so nice just sitting and reading without a constant noise trying to get my attention.

 

[TerryD]

Day 2:

My day started about 1:00am when I was awoken by a horrible pain in my foot, I had apparently shifted in my hammock and my left heel was jammed into the side and was aching something awful. It took about an hour to get my position fixed and my heel to stop hurting. About that time a vehicle came into the camp and they setup camp, very quietly I might add so I applaud them, but there was still the lights flashing and all that that kept me up till around 2:00am. I awoke again at about 7:30am, feeling pretty good and enjoying the quiet of the campground in the breaking daylight.





And breakfast was in order. I bought a Thermos brand small insulated food jar just for this!! I boiled my coffee and oatmeal water, made the coffee in my french press and my oatmeal in the food jar while my cast iron pan was warming up on the single burner to make the sausage. It worked exactly as I had planned and even fit my mess box without removing anything that was already in there. I'm pretty tickled with that!!



Now, my family is out of town right now. The wife took the kids with her mom to the beach for 5 days. I didn't go because I couldn't take Monday and Tuesday off with what little notice I had, I didn't want to burn vacation days, and I'm not spending 5 days with my Mother-in-Law, anywhere. So they were traveling yesterday while I was doing the first leg of my trip and we'd just texted each other when we needed to, and let them be delivered when I hit signal. Camp, however, had no signal. I had been out of service for almost 15hr by the time I was ready to leave camp. I had left word with a friend back home who could raise me on the repeater if I was needed and given my wife his cell #. But I couldn't get into any repeaters at camp either. So after packing up camp, I headed to find some cell service and check in with the family and post a picture dump on IG. I only had to go about 8 miles toward Staunton before I found signal and hung out in a little gas station lot in Churchville, Va for about an hour, checking my stuff and talking to the wife. Once that was over, I topped the tank off and headed back for FS 95 to get to FS85 that took me over to Reddish Knob.



From the lookout at the top of Reddish Knob. These are the foundation of the old fire watch tower that used to stand here. FS85 goes from dirt to pavement in the shadow of this and there's a neat little campsite there that I'm wanting to get some use from in the future!

From this point, the trails got a little more challenging. I'm afraid I didn't get any pictures of the Xterra doing anything interesting though. Here is a picture from the top of Flag Pole Knob though.



I actually backed up to where the Xterra is parked there. It was a neat little climb up from the main trail with some burms that I was sure were going to max out my limited travel and I did, on the second one, have to add a touch of throttle to bounce enough tires over to get back in contact and be moving again. From there, there were a few ruts I had to straddle to get through. I then came upon a Y in the trail. A cautious look at the map and walking out the trail told me that going straight at it could end very badly for me. I could probably safely get down it, but there was no way I was getting back up if the trail was closed on down the line. So I picked the left turn and followed the route I had planned in the first place. This route was a little rough with plenty of loose rocks laying in the trail and water running down the trail in many places. It was here that I bumped into a rental JKU coming up the mountain. We exchanged a quick chat about trail conditions in our respective directions and I was off again, winding my way down toward Switzer Lake.

Just near the bottom, I happened to smell something cooking. I glanced in my mirror as I passed a dispersed camp site and there sat a crew cab Taco with RTT and 270* awning. I had to stop! Again, dummy me didn't get any pictures but I did meet a nice couple out enjoying the beautiful day, Ben and Judy. I checked out their Taco for a bit and chatted, gave them my number and told them about OB, then I was off. I was due to meet up with Mike @Exped4x4 in Afton for supper and I was running behind, still with no cell service or radio contact.


*****EDIT*****
Got in touch with Ben with the Tacoma today and he gladly sent me some pictures of his rigs to post here. So here is his decked out Tacoma!

 

[TerryD]

So after making it off the trail, I was still out of cell service and a couple hours late for meeting up with Mike in Harrisonburg. I decided to just bust tail on 33 toward Harrisonburg till I got signal and try to get a hold of him to see what the plan was. Just outside of town, I finally got service and checked in with Mike to find he was also running late, so we decided to punt and just meet up at Blue Mountain Brewery for an early supper and decide what to do from there. We were within 15min of arriving there at the same time, him on his bike and me hauling mud covered blue tail up the interestate.

We had a good meal, a couple cold brews on the patio and decided that it was too late to get into another trail with him having to drive back home that evening so we parted ways and I decided I wanted to take the Blue Ridge Parkway home. At the top of Afton Mountain, I picked it up there and just cruised home listening to a nice bluegrass program on a local station. It was a beautiful ride and I got a few good shots from the trip.

I made it back to the house around 9:30pm and waited until Sunday to unpack. I checked the Xterra over Sunday morning before it got hot, checked the fluids, and just did a basic inspection to make sure I hadn't wasted a tie rod or ball joint. Everything came out good though. I did tag both step rails, two skid plates and clipped the pumpkin of the rear diff on something as well. So all in all, a very good trip.

 

[TerryD]

In 34 hours I managed to go about 350 miles, camp one night in a neat little campground, meet some new people and have a great supper with a fellow OB member. All in all, it was a great weekend and I'm looking forward to working out another route and having another ride!

This is my route. The blue is the planned route, the Red is my first day's travel recorded by my GPS, and the Purple is my second day's travel.