Fancy Gap

We made the drive home in two days. It was the same for the drive down. Neither one of us is getting any younger. Our stop was in Fancy Gap, Virginia. It was about halfway home and would be a nice spot to relax before the final run for home.

The KOA was great. It would be a five star plus in my rating. It was a bit out of the way, but it was well worth it. The cabins were laid out like the other KOA cabins; a double bed and a set of bunk beds. It had air conditioning, a television, and it smelled of new pine. The cabin was immaculate and had Adirondack- like chairs on the front porch. The shower house had private rooms with commode, sink and shower inside. I felt like a king.

After a good night’s sleep and a hot shower, we drove to a nearby restaurant just off the Blue Ridge Parkway for breakfast. I ordered the buckwheat cakes and sausage, thinking they would be like the ones served at the Ohiopyle buckwheat festival on the second full Friday and Saturday in October, but the cakes were thick and doughy and the sausage was so spicy I couldn’t taste the pork.

The drive back was fairly routine. We were more fortunate on the way home than driving down. Although we could see rainclouds all around us, we only got a few scattered drops. Dark clouds would sweep over us, but the rain always seemed to fall before we drove into an area. Some places the berm was wet, but the traffic dried the pavement. We lost about fifteen minutes when we missed a turn and had to drive through the town of Fairmont, West Virginia, but we were soon back on the right road.

The other deal happened where route 79 and route 68 meet. The traffic was backed up for about one and a half miles. The traffic was moving, but very slowly. When a West Virginia trooper sped by us with his lights flashing, I thought, “It has to be an accident.”

I was wrong. As we edged closer to the delay, we could see that it was a checkpoint of some sort. Police cars lined both berms wit their lights flashing. There were eight troopers in the roadway, four to a lane. They were checking cars, trucks, looking inside of trailers, etc. I thought “That’s than a drunk driver check point” but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Drugs?

It wasn’t that at all. Some prisoners had escaped the jail and the troopers hoped to apprehend them and to prevent them from getting any further away.

The rest of the trip home was quiet except for squirming and trying to find a comfortable spot for my bottom. Home sweet home; well it was really not. I had to visit my dad in the hospital with pneumonia, get my prescriptions refilled and go to the bank. The joys of vacation just kept on multiplying.