Cave Mountain Lake Recreation Area, Virginia

May 5, 2024

Our travel day good weather streak held up once again as we journeyed further north along the Appalachian mountains. Our campground was fairly remote and the roads leading to it were twisty, but that's the way it is in these parts. Fortunately, we only had a couple of hours drive this time.

Another beautiful travel day!

Our campsite was quite nice, and our deck overlooked a small babbling creek. The first couple of days were gorgeous--sunny and in the 80s.

It's hard to see in this photo, but there is a creek right behind the deck

The view off our deck

We took a walk that afternoon around the campground and around Cave Mountain Lake.

A couple of creeks meandered through the pretty campground

Cave Mountain Lake

The next day, we drove to the James River Foot Bridge and walked a little of the Appalachian Trail.

We didn't realize that the bridge was named after a guy actually named Foot

The James River

The Foot Bridge in the distance

We saw lots of evidence of the November 2023 Matt's Creek Fire

Lots of rhododendrons succumbed to the fire, but part of this one survived

The rest of our stay proved to be cool and rainy. Saturday was Julie's birthday, so we drove a bit of the Blue Ridge Parkway through the clouds and had lunch at a pub in Lexington. Apparently, it was Alumni Weekend at the local Washington and Lee University, and the place was hopping and very loud. We've decided that we are getting too old for loud bars. They had great burgers, though.

Some of the "overlooks" off the Blue Ridge Parkway were of creeks rather than vistas

Not surprisingly, the view was not to be seen today

The fog did provide plenty of "artsy" shots, though

We took the short walk to Indian Rocks

Historic downtown Lexington, Virginia

The campus of Washington and Lee University

Looks like frat parties haven't changed much in the last several decades

Julie is a sucker for dogwood flowers These looked like they were made out of paper card stock

Rick's Corner:

This location saw our worst solar for a day EVER!  For reference, our standard daily electrical usage is 1.7kW-h (without conserving and without using electric for cooking and heating water). Our site was very shady with low hanging tree branches, so even on the most sunny day on Friday (clouds in the morning) we only got us 1.3kW-h.  Then on gloomy Saturday, we only collected 0.21 kW-h for the entire day.   Good thing we were only staying here four days!  Of course, we could have run the generator at this campground, but we are trying to avoid that as a matter of principle. Plus, the challenge of seeing how far we can push our luck amuses us. 😉

The poor solar panels had little chance under these conditions!

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