Summersville Lake / Carnifex Ferry Battlefield
Driving from West Virginia to Michigan | Kayaking on Summersville Lake | Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park | Lake Vesuvius | August 2023
After an enjoyable time spent in the Appalachians, we were ready to start making our way to Michigan to visit Curtis’ family. We decided to break the rest of our drive into 3 shorter driving days, even though it could have been done in one. To start our last morning in West Virginia, we drove across the road to a boat launch so we could enjoy Summersville Lake by kayak. While driving to our campsite the night before, we had enjoyed the views of the bluffs along the lake and hoped to see some up close.
While Curtis was setting up our kayak, Charlotte led me on a long walk around the parking lot. Eventually we made it over to the boat, then hopped in for our paddle. It turns out that the bluffs were a lot further away from this launch than we expected, and we had to make our way around the lake campground packed with large RVs. We did eventually get to see some of the bluffs, but will have to put in more effort someday if we want to see more!
Once the kayak was folded up and put away, we drove West down the road to Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park. From what we could gather, it was a minor battle early in the war (September 1861) that resulted in a Union victory and ultimately lead to the expulsion of Confederate forces from Western Virginia – and therefore the eventual formation of the state of West Virginia. There wasn’t much as far as historic signs or information about this spot at the park, it was more of a playground and picnic area, with overlooks of the Gauley River. But we still enjoyed seeing the river and letting Charlotte lead us around on a little walk.
With that, it was time to start driving West toward Ohio. We made our way to US-60 and took that to I-64. As we were heading West towards the Ohio state border, we noticed an interstate alerter that said there was a tornado watch in the area. I looked up the forecast and learned that we were about to drive into a large storm system. The storm was making its way Northeast, so there wasn’t really a logical way for us to avoid it, so we kept driving and I kept an eye on the National Weather Service reports online. There was one point on the interstate when it started hailing, but thankfully our vehicle and solar panels came out unscathed. I was concerned about heading directly to our intended camping area in the woods knowing that there would be high winds, so we waited out the storm a bit before heading in that direction. The tornados turned out to stay within Kentucky, and we were thankful to have avoided the worst of the storm.
That night, we ended up camping in Lake Vesuvius Recreation Area in Ohio. We didn’t love the idea of paying $20 to camp in a smaller and more crowded campground, but still preferred having a safe spot for Charlotte to be able to hang out outside rather than parking for free in a Walmart parking lot or something like that. We ended up meeting another man who also lives on the road and had an enjoyable time chatting with him before the rain sent us all inside.
The next morning, we got up early and stopped to walk around a bit and see the historic furnace (similar to ones at Hopewell Furnace NHP which we visited in Pennsylvania last spring) before getting back on the road.
Today’s plan was to drive across Southern Ohio and into Indiana. We crossed into Kentucky briefly to grab a county, then crossed back into Ohio and got a few more new ones while following the Ohio River downstream. While driving, we happened across the birthplace of President Grant. We stopped here for lunch and to walk around.
We made our way around Cincinnati, then crossed into Indiana. Our plan was to camp around Brookville Lake in Mounds State Recreation Area. However, when we arrived we learned that in order to camp here, we had to pay both an entry fee and a campground fee, equalling $30 — and the fact that this was the same amount that we paid to camp in Shenandoah National Park just didn’t sit right with us. We decided that since it was still only mid-afternoon, we were only 5 hours from Curtis’ parent’s home, and we didn’t have anything else planned for the drive, we would just make this a longer driving day and push on to Michigan. We made it there by 8PM that evening, treating ourselves to Culvers in Fort Wayne on the way.
At the end of the day, we were glad we pushed through and were happily reunited with Curtis’ parents. This trip didn’t go the way we had originally planned — which is ironic, because I felt like we really put more effort than usual into our original itinerary to the Outer Banks/Eastern Virginia — but I think our plan B turned out to be even better.
