…brought us to a campground just north of Lexington, Kentucky. Roger had warned it might be a boring day spent primarily on I-64 heading due west. But as soon as we entered the western Virginia mountains, covered with their summer haze, the road began its twists and turns to maneuver through the passes while the green valleys and hazy peaks passed by.

It just got better when we entered West Virginia. There we saw coal, piles of it waiting to be trained away, and even more rugged mountains. A stop at the WV Visitor Center made us aware that Civil War battles and skirmishes took place in the land we were passing through. In fact, all of Appalachia, from the Natchez Trace up to southern New York State, was caught up in the conflict in some fashion.

Near Gauley Bridge, we stopped at the Hawks Nest State Park to view a broad vista of the New River and the Gauley joining to form the Kanawha. Beautiful stone steps, most likely the work of the Conservation Corps, take you down to the viewing platform.

At the end of the day, we’d spent the majority of the day on I-64, but we also managed to enjoy a lot of winding mountain roads taking a “long” shortcut on Rte 60 to avoid Beckley, WV. After passing through some of the most beautiful horse farms in the world, we rolled into Whispering Hills Campground, settled into a campsite situated on a lake, pulled out our camp chairs and watched the scenery below. Life is rich.