Magnus Moves! Massachusetts and back, Day 6

Sunday 14 July
Claytor Lake State Park, Virginia

 

I knew we had camped at this park just last year, in May, but when we arrived I had no memory of the campground at all.  When Molly and I went walking about, I found out why--we were in campground "A" or "B" before, but now were in loop "D". And furthermore, on the very edge of "D" in site #1.

The other campground was crowded and had lines of RVs in a field, much like an RV park. But this one was more state park-ish, with a road circling through and camp sites nestled back into the trees on the outside of the loop.

Trees, trees. So many beautiful trees. We could barely get a Starlink satellite signal at all, and in the end our speed was at best 29 MBPS but mostly less. When we tried to watch a show, it dropped off four or five times in a 37-minute episode.

But it was usable, although we were close enough to town that the hostspot on my AT&T phone would have worked as well.

What jogged my memory at first was when Molly and I went for a jog. I promised her a one-hour jog, so we started off down the paved trail by our campsite. It only went a little ways before splitting into smooth, well marked trails through the pine forest. We went on down to the lake and checked out the swimming area--tons and tons of people (It was a Sunday afternoon, after all), but nice. Very nice. And we went along the lakeshore trail for a ways until the tail we'd planned to take split off to the right, so we went along that. Soon it split and one of the options was the Claytor Lake trail which went up to a "Lake Overlook".  I remembered that. 

So that's the way we headed. The trail became more challenging with roots cutting across to trip the unwary jogger, but luckily I tripped only a little and never fell down. As we climbed--not much of a climb, but a gradual ascent--we went through a field or two of berry bushes and I started thinking about bears. It wasn't the time of day for bears, and although we'd been warned that bears live in the area, none had been seen in the park lately. Or so I hoped.

But soon we were passed by a lady jogger, going slowly but much faster than me. She had music playing loud enough to hear about four yards away. I figured she'd scare off any bears that we might encounter.

 We made it up to the lake overlook, not very high but pretty. The signage said it was .9 miles. And then back to the campground. I had to make a few detours to fill up the whole one hour, but we made it. It was very hot but very shady, so we were sweaty but not suffocating.

The water heater is still broken, so Ed took a cold shower but I cheated and just showered my body under the ice water, leaving my hair. It wasn't all that greasy, anyway. Just a little sweaty.  Then we went to eat at The Mason Jar, the nearby restaurant with the rave reviews.

And it was indeed pretty good, but ridiculously expensive. $55 for two people with no appetizers, no desserts, and water for our beverage. And add a tip on top of that!  Ed had rib-eye, which was okay enough for the price, but then he substituted a salad for one of his side dishes and they upcharged us for that, I think 3 bucks. And I added sweet potato fries onto my apple-cranberry salad, which added 4.50. 

This makes twice I've spent more than I ought on this trip, and this makes the end. No more!  With the one exception of our one good meal planned for Cape Cod, I'm ordering the cheapest thing I can stand.  Even if it's an appetizer and a side dish. That's it.