Windy

 11/13- Chippokes State Park, Surry VA

   The last few days have been very windy. Even at night the van gets rocked by the bigger gusts. Driving along the park roads there were at least 7 or 8 big trees across the road. The Park service must of had a pretty busy couple of mornings dealing with that. I have to say after walking in these woods a bit there are a lot of dead and dying trees. It was a little eerie the the other day listening to the trees moan and groan in the wind. 

   The road out of Lynchburg was nice with not much traffic. It was however like a roller coaster going up and down repeatedly. It was like driving over drapes. The road was pretty straight except for the up and down direction. 

   We rolled on down out of the mountains and onto the piedmont. I would never have realized that Virginia had this much just open land. Even once we got close to Richmond there was still a lot of farm land and forests. 

   We pulled into our campsite in Chippokes SP which we were lucky to get as they fill up on the weekends. This park is right on the James river and even has a long stretch of sandy beach. There are shells of all kinds lining the beach and we were told it s good place to find sharks teeth. We walked a ways but didn’t find any but then we didn’t look that close. It was amazing the volume of shells here and flotsam lining the beach. We walked up to a big house they were calling a mansion. We’ve seen way bigger along the ICW. This one though had a rather beautiful ground with it. Big old cedar and hemlock trees lined the road and the shrubbery around the house was tended very nicely. 

We are off across the river tomorrow to see what history we can dig up. Stay tuned 

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