Chef Chris

Jul 12, 20206 min read

Gambrill State Park-- Saw Huck Fin.

Updated: Jan 24, 2021

Day 3 [continued]

Holy smokes, that was a crazy ride.

Up, up & up we go further into the mountains.

Some narrow roads, some gravel roads, and some serious white-knuckle gripping of the steering wheel moments.

Scenery was pretty much all woods and a few dilapidated-old-run-down shacks,... conjured up the sound of banjo music and visions of moonshine.

So, recall the "remember this" instruct in my last blog post? During our ride up, up, up to Gambrill, I noticed that our rig seemed heavier than before. Seemed sluggish, like it was having a harder time getting up the mountain. Then it dawned on me,...

I DIDN'T DUMP.

Ok, Ok, so,... there is a 37 gallon water tank on the RV.

When you use the water it goes into one of two waste tanks.

The black tank, waste from the toilet. The grey tank, waste from the sinks.

When you refill the water tank,

you should also then dump any/all waste water.

I did not do that.

Instead of 37 gallons of water on board, I had like 74 gallons of water on board. Let's see, a gallon is roughly 8 lbs. So, that would be 592 lbs instead of 296 lbs.

Whoops...

We reached the GPS point. However, no sign of the campground.

We passed a ranger station with a maintenance yard.

Now we are heading back down the mountain. Something isn’t right.

We approached a parking area that was at the head of some trails.

We pulled-in here to re-assess our location and gps destination.

No campground address. We decide to head back-up and go to the ranger station.

Keep in mind I am driving a 29 foot rig with at least 296 lbs of extra waste weight,

and doing a pretty darn good job, I might add.

Got to the maintenance yard where the ranger station is.

First thing I see on the gate is a sign, "No RV turnaround".

F@*k it, I am going in.

What sign?...

A young lady behind the desk at the Ranger Station said,

as she scrambled to get her mask out from her back pack,

"Oh, that door is not supposed to be open."

"I am sorry, but I need some assistance." I say as I walk in anyway.

She kindly showed me on the map where the campsite was.

Turns out it was down the mountain a little further than we had gone.

We were heading in the correct direction after all.

Note, I really feel that the campsite directions and park signage could be better.

Just sayin...

Finally made it to the campsite.

We need to head to the bath house where our dash pass should be hanging on a board.

They were no longer doing face-to-face check-ins due to covid.

Sure-nuff, there it was.

Next, I needed to do a dump. LMAO...

OMG, are you serious, that's the dump station...

So, there is this hose in the rear bumper that connects to a valve under the rig.

Feed the hose into that thing in the ground and let her rip.

It was disgusting. Really. Enough to put me off of RV-ing. Glamping looses some big-time glamour points for this. Thank God I had latex gloves, and a mask (which nicely turns out to protect me from horrific offenses to my nostrils, as well as covid).

Wow. This place is pretty remote. Very wooded. Found our place, a nice little spot tucked away in the trees, quite secluded. A little stream flowed behind our site with a little bridge. It was nice... but have to admit also a little eerie,... no one checked us in and no "people" activity to be heard or seen.

There were a few cabins around us but, again, no activity, no people.

After a quick site set up (rug, cook station, chairs and burner) we needed to find some wood.

Wood bundles were up by the bath house, which was not too far away.

$5 per bundle, put the money in a little box. No people, no activity. No other $5 in the box.

Feeling isolated... again taking in the remoteness.

The boys want to go fishing. Cool.

Sure, I have two poles, el cheap-o’s. The kind of poles one must flip the leaver over instead of pushing a button. The kind of poles that tangle-up pretty much on contact, especially when a 10 year old is involved in handling them.

I have a tackle box, sadly not much in it. We didn't have any bait either. My bad. I should have evaluated before we left. [Note to self for future check lists.]

Hmm... maybe hot dogs?? Worth a try.

I gave W a pole with a bit of hot dog and a bobber. Explained to him to cast, sit and watch the bobber, etc. I gave Q a pole with a bit of hot dog and no bobber. Explained to him how to cast and slowly reel the line back-in. W impatiently, "The bobber isn't doing anything!" Q insistent, "Why do I have to keep reeling and keep casting? I don't want to keep casting." Okay boys,... time to switch poles.

So it would seem, Q is a bobber fisherman and W is a line reeler. Nope.

More likely both are yet to be entranced by the facets of fishing;

very likely the fish in this mountain lake are vegetarian.

After 20 minutes of attempted fishing (and no luck), we headed back to the site.

Lesson: Give the boys a fish, they will eat for a day.

Teach the boys to fish and they may starve.

Time to get dinner going. Hint, it won't be fish.

Executive decision to deviate from the menu (once again); as J was concerned about the shelf-life of our avocados. So tonight will be Taco Friday; and Taco Tuesday next week will be something other than Taco Tuesday.

I have my cast iron pan set up over the fire to get hot.

Check the temp of the griddle with the infrared thermometer.

Looking for about 400 degrees.

Chicken, red and green peppers, corn, black beans and scallions. Smells good.

Fixings include flour tortillas, sour cream, quac (fresh from the aging avocados), shredded cheddar, lettuce and tomato.

So so good. I had two.

Dessert, Chocolate biscuits.

A total homerun. I wanted two.

Ended our night with a fright.

We were reading scary stories around the camp fire

(at this extremely remote, isolated, backwoods, off the map mountain site).

Arguably, in hindsight, not a great idea.

We heard some rustling in the bushes.

Ollie started to growl; a low deep long unnerving growl.

Q-man bravely got up, walked over to the bushes where we heard the rustling.

He shinned his flashlight into the bushes.

Two big bright eyes lit up and were staring right back at him.

His shriek echoed off the trees startling us all as he high-tailed it into the trailer.

All our hearts were racing, we calmed ourselves with the logical conclusion

that it must have been a raccoon.

Man, I have never seen Q, or any boy, move so fast.

That put an end to the night pretty quickly.

Day 4

Lazy day today.

We had packed the boys scooters, this seemed a great day to pull these out.

Boys were tearing it up around the grounds, giving the scooters a good work out.

After breakfast, we set out towards the lake.

Tried our luck again with the poles for an hour or so, nothing.

There were a few more people around today. We kept our distance.

But we were (albeit secretly) glad to see others.

Q and I gave the fishing thing another go in the afternoon.

That's when I saw Huckleberry Fin.

Hey,... a few nibbles.

That's how it starts,... that's how one gets hooked (even though a fish may or may not).

And,... we did see a snake; so the day wasn't a total loss.

Day 5

We knew that there were supposed to be some great trails at Gambrill. We were going to walk them on Day 4. However, we got so involved with our lazy day that we put off the trails until today. We were figuring we could bust them out before heading to WVA.

Man,... and we thought Cunningham was tough.

There were two lookouts to which we could walk.

One was to have a view of Frederick and the other of Middletown.

We decided to head to the Middletown Lookout, as the other was further away.

Plus, there was an old building attraction at Middletown Lookout called the Tea Room which we thought might be a nice to see.

We found the entrance to the trail at the back of the camp ground.

The first minute or so was ok but then the trail took a drastic turn up...up...up.

This trail is not for the faint of heart. One might ask what the heck we were thinking. We actually asked that of ourselves pretty much the whole climb.

We hiked up for an hour or so, at times thinking we should probably just turn around.

We ran into another hiker who was descending. We asked if he was coming from the Tea Room and how much further he thought we had to go. He said we were close, probably about another 10 minutes away. Ok, well, we have a good amount of sweat equity in this deal. Group decision made; we will push onward. Ollie kept eye-balling us like we were crazy... If he could talk he would have probably been saying,"Dudes, enough, this is nuts! I now question your leadership and intelligence. We have wandered too far from my food and my comfy bed, which are in the other direction."