Council VA to Breaks Interstate Park

We woke from a peaceful sleep under the shelter in Council’s park to the sound of pouring rain. But by the time we had packed the sun was doing it’s best to show it’s face.

Although we had planned a shorter day today, the 28 miles were still strewn with there fare share of steep descents and ascents to test our remaining strength from the previous days beasting.

At our lunch stop in a small diner, there was a definite change to the accent, with the Kentucky drawl starting to take hold. My English accent is always a novelty in these little Hick Towns, they seem to think it’s “Real cute”.

The ride was the typical fare of green wooded river valleys small towns (villages) and the usual mixture of trailer parks, large luxury houses and pick up trucks. The final part of the day involved a big climb up to the Breaks Interstate Park on the border with Kentucky.

Breaks has a sort of Center Parcs feel about it, as in it’s an amazing location; the self proclaimed “Grand Canyon of the South” and has timber lodge accommodation, a motel and camp sites with varying degrees of services. But that’s where any similarity ends. Whereas Center Parcs requires all visitors to use bicycles as their main form of transport between activity locations, Brakes hires out golf buggies to tour the park all kitted out with a cup holder for your supersized fizzy pop. A key activity seems to be touring the camp grounds in your buggy, RV(recreational vehicle) spotting. They do also offer some extreme hiking trails ranging from 0.3 miles up to a massive 1.5 miles…!!!

We chose one of their “wild” camping sites, complete with picnic table and fire pit. On arrival Tony was greeted by a huge Monarch butterfly that decide to alight on his head and stay there for 30 minutes, must be attracted to hollow spaces ;-) (see pic above)
Bruce arrived later in the day and pitched next to us.

Due to our early arrival we had a relaxed evening chatting, route planning and concocting a pasta, tuna and condensed mushroom soup dinner that tasted better than anything Gordon Ramsey could muster up! Our breakfast options were limited after Racoons ripped into our tree hoisted food bag and nicked the bread!

I must admit I may be pregnant because my food tastes have gone somewhat bizarre. I have an incessant desire for chocolate milk shake, root beer and Fig Newtons. Is this normal?

We awoke in the night to heavy rain and the morning was misty up on our mountain top camp site as we tried to raise our spirits to face the infamous dogs and coal trucks of Kentucky………