Raccoon Branch CG in Virginia

 Sunday May 21, 2023

We departed the campground at Lake Murray (Dreher Island State Park) at 8:45 this morning. There was no line at the sewer dump station so we were only ten minutes or so emptying our holding tanks and getting out on the road.

scenes from Raccoon Branch

I planned a route without any interstate highway travel. There was one section of a state road north of Gastonia North Carolina that was limited access, but there was little commercial truck traffic. The main road of our route was Hwy 321, we traveled it from Columbia SC to Boone NC a distance of 150 miles.

scene from Raccoon Branch

We stopped for fuel and lunch in the Linclonton NC. No special reason why we chose this town, we just needed both. Leaving the limited access section of 321 we found a busy commercial area with lots of food choice’s but poor parking for an RV. We settled on Popeye’s chicken sandwiches eaten in the RV in the adjacent Ram/Jeep/Chrysler dealer parking lot. It was Sunday and they were closed and besides I’m sure they would be welcoming of “The Silver Bullet.” 

Blue line is travel from Dreher Island S. Carolina to Raccoon Branch Virginia

We arrived at Raccoon Branch Campground at around 3 Sunday afternoon. This small National Park service campground only has about 25 sites, eight of them having water and electric service. This a very old campground built for travelers from another era, big rigs need not even try to park here. Besides the camp host, there were only three of us here, a couple in a tent and another small travel trailer. We had reserved our preferred site here, number ten; it is in the corner a little removed from the other sites.

Us in site ten

We spent the afternoon, lounging around, resting from our long travel day. The camp host stopped by for a chat and I guess to make sure we were the folks who had reserved the site. We asked him about the status of nearby Grindstone campground which has been closed for over a year due to a failed septic system. He said they are still in the engineering phase and no construction is yet planned. Grindstone was the nicest campground in the Jefferson National forest and should be a priority project, but it’s a long ways from the powers that be in the swamp. Maybe it’s because campers in general are a demographic is not demanding of things we “deserve!” Maybe Hunter can sell the campground to china and they can fix it!

Movie for the night was ‘Cold Mountain.” The story takes place during the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) but is not so much a war docudrama. It is the story one confederate solders long journey to return to his love on Cold Mountain and her surviving the harsh times during the war. I rated it a 7, Millie was 7.5. In retrospect, the travels of Inman (the male lead character) as he struggled thru many challenges was very much like Homer’s The Odyssey. It makes me wonder if the author or the book consciously made the similarity or if it was merely coincidental.