Spring Road Trip Wrap Up - Saturday and Sunday March 18th and 19th - Beckley WV to Wheeling WV then home - no hikes

There isn't a ton to report for the rest of the trip home.  We went to Wheeling Saturday mostly on I-64 and US-35.  It was a pleasant early morning start to the drive and the trip went well. Wheeling was all about visiting Wheeling Island Casino, someplace we used to visit once or twice a year when we lived in PA.  It was very fun and we got lots of play time.  

After the casino we ate at Cheddars, one of the less common members of the Darden restaurant group of which Olive Garden is the best known.  I absolutely loved my blackened salmon meal and it was a very good value. The atmosphere was lively in the bar and the appetizer croissants were delicious.  

The Hampton Inn we stayed at was very full of high school students hanging out in the lobby and the hotel had actually called earlier to see if we could go for a normal room instead of the suite I had reserved.  We were very worried that we'd be facing a long noisy night with people slamming doors and stomping up and down the hallways etc but thankfully it was quiet.

The drive home was mostly back roads.  I pounded out 70 fast miles on I-70 from Wheeling to New Stanton PA but then we took US-119 and US-219 all the way up into New York.  It was an enjoyable and low traffic drive and I feel like I covered a lot of new ground overall this trip.

This was a very successful vacation, one of the best we've had in years. We hiked and walked a total of about 40 miles.  There was lots of new territory, a new favorite city (Lynchburg) and even some nice warm sunny days to reward us for our long journey south.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 27, 2024 - Canadian Cruise Vacation Day 8 - Bar Harbor, Maine

Image
Bar Harbor was a gorgeous place to drop anchor.  And since it was the only port that was too small for us to directly dock at, we literally did drop anchor there. Unfortunately, the health issues continue to plague our group and I was the only one well enough to go on shore.  I enjoyed the shuttle trips both ways.  It’s really weird to walk from a very large boat to a relatively small one while neither is anywhere near a dock.  The trip TO Bar Harbor I was on a contracted dinner cruise type boat (good sized) but on the way back to the ship I was on one of our ship’s own tenders which are really fancy lifeboats but somewhat better equipped.  For lunch I ate at West Street Cafe and had a spicy chicken sandwich and coleslaw.  Though there are a few deep fried items on the ship, they seem few and far between so it hit the spot as did the blueberry mule.   Other than the trips to and from and the lunch, Bar Harbor wasn’t my favorite.  Far more than an...
Read more

Sunday February 4th 2024 - Oak Rim/Power Pole/Explorer trails - Tug Hill state forest area near Rodman NY - 3 miles, just 223 feet elevation gain

Image
Link to our hike plot on Alltrails . Yesterday's hike was from ' 50 Hikes in Western NY ', the origin for this hike was the similar and often similarly challenging to follow ' 50 Hikes in Central NY ' book.  The book wrote up a whole series of different trails in the Tug Hill region as though it was a 2 day backpacking trip.  It is certainly possible to dissect those 2 day plans and work out the individual components but he absolutely doesn't make it easy since he doesn't really call out the breaks between the different trails.  Thankfully, Alltrails had a number of them plotted individually which is more useful for a day trip.  I thought Tug Hill was relatively close to home so I was kind of surprised when it came up at over a 2 hour long drive but we had time so we stuck with it.  The Tug hill region is pretty interesting.  It's a HUGE area (bigger than our 2 smallest US states) and very rural and known for heavy snowfall. Since this hike was  alm...
Read more

March 29 - April 1, Memphis and Camping near Nashville

Image
By Brian Gilbar We both woke up on Sunday a bit congested (I suspect from the casino air) and it's also spring allergy time so we took a bit of time getting up.  We did one load of laundry while getting ready to head out.  We stopped at Zaxby's (chicken place) in Collierville for breakfast/lunch before a hike.  I had never been to one before.  The chicken was delicious but everything was quite salty.  Probably good before a long hike to have extra salt in our bodies! We then headed to do a 7 mile hike at Herb Parsons Lake.  The trail goes around the lake.  It was quite chilly at first, about 49 degrees and quite windy.  We had decided to wear shorts as it was supposed to get up to 68 degrees today.  It did warm up eventually.  The trail was beautiful and we didn't see too many people, although there was a mix of hikers, bikers and runners.  Chris had been on this trail before when he lived in Memphis, probably 7 or 8 years ago, ...
Read more