Monday night, Boo spent the night so that we could get an early start without her mom having to bring her over before she went to work at 7am. Tuesday, we loaded up the car and hit the road a little later than I wanted to, but not too late. After I stopped at Rite Aid to pick up my prescription, we were on the road by 10. I punched in "Hico, WV" into my Google Maps app on my phone and we were on our way. We stopped for lunch at McDonalds and made a couple of potty stops. The new roof-rack and cargo box worked out great on the road. We didn't hear any additional wind noise and it didn't seem to cause any real drag from a driver point of view.

Google maps took us to the Hico, WV area with only one little hiccup along the way and that was partly my fault. I went east on I70 near Columbus instead of staying on 270 until I got to 33. I realized the mistake and adjusted by taking Rt 158 through Baltimore and Lancaster and picking up 33 south of there. My plan from Hico, WV was to look up the actual address online when we made a stop for food and to continue on to Ace Adventure Resort once I had the real address. Plus, I knew that they had a text description of the last few miles on the web site. I don't think I'll rely on technology to that degree again. As mentioned in my comment on the previous post, we had very little cell phone coverage and no Internet to speak of when we were in the mountains of West Virginia. On the main roads, but still kind-of in the mountains, we had some coverage. However, it was nearly impossible to punch anything into my phone because ever 10 seconds or so, I was getting an alert telling me that my phone was trying to register with a data connection on a voice-only network. We were stopped at a gas station and eventually, we were able to get hold of Boo's sister and had her read the text description of the directions from the web site. While the girls went inside to use the restroom, I made one more attempt at punching in the newly obtained "street address" for Ace. Somehow, I managed to get the address punched in, and I hit "search". The Google maps app paused and then came to life with directions that indicated we were still an hour away. *sigh* Not what I wanted to see. When the girls came out, we pulled out of the gas station and headed south on Rt 19. The voice-only alerts resumed almost immediately, so I handed the phone to Bubbles and explained that she could look at the map, or she could hit the "list" menu to see the text. She chose the text version. After we'd been on the road for a few minutes, I asked her to read to me the next thing that I had to watch for. She wasn't sure where we were, so she started at the beginning of the list where it told us to turn out of the parking lot etc. Something wasn't sounding right about the directions and I wasn't real confident in Google maps at this point, so I took another look at the directions. By this point, we had gotten onto I77 South. I have no idea what Google was thinking. If it's not capable of finding what you're searching for, it should just tell you so. Instead, it came up with directions to somewhere completely unrelated. It was sending us into Lewisburg. I KNEW that wasn't right. I punched in the address again just to be sure. Once again, it came up with the same directions. I compared the directions Google was giving me with the directions we had written down as a result of our phone call and realized we were headed in the wrong direction! Unfortunately, the next exit on I77 ended up taking us 48 miles out of the way and cost us $4 in tolls. To make matters worse, when we got back in the area and started following the directions we'd written down, we realized we were just 3 miles from our destination when we made the phone call! Point B on this map is where we stopped to call. Point A is where we needed to go.

Eventually, we made it there. The trip ended up taking 8.5 hours instead of just over 6. The lodging check-in office was still open when we rolled in and once we were checked in and provided with the property map, we made our way to our camp-site. The campground is on the top of a hill/mountain just north of the lake. It is your typical campground with a few exceptions. The lots are pretty big compared to a few places I've stayed in the past. Though, they compare well to the place in PA where I used to stay with Talix. And, they had resort-owned tents set up on several of the sites. They were empty and open and it took us a while to figure out that nobody was going to be using them. Initially, I thought that they were left behind by people where were doing overnight trips on either the New or the Gauley rivers. Perhaps they loaded all their gear back into the car because they didn't trust it being left out? Any way, that wasn't the case. If you want to camp in WV, but you don't own a tent, Ace Adventure Resorts has you covered.

The girls helped me set up camp before we set out to find some dinner.

No camping trip would be complete without some forgotten items. On this trip, those items included a hammer, a hand-axe, and a lighter/matches. All of those items had been packed, but left behind when I realized that I didn't need to take much of our kitchen items as there wouldn't be much cooking at the camp site. I knew they had a general-store in the main complex of buildings so we made a note to stop and buy a lighter, at least. We had already used a rock to pound the tent stakes into the ground, so that was a non-issue.

All set up, we made our way down the hill to find food. There was only one remaining option on the property for grub. The Lost Paddle Bar/Grill was it. It took way too long to get served and the food was mediocre at best, but we were hungry and tired and we just wanted to get something in our bellies and go back to the campsite. When we got back, I borrowed an axe from a family camping across the road and I made a fire. We debated making smores but decided not to make them the first night. Nobody was hungry at that point. We had some giggles and then turned in for the night knowing that Wednesday was going to be a very long day.

There was a boy scout troop 3 sites down from us but they were our closest neighbor. I think there were about a dozen boys and half as many adults in their group. They had been singing camp songs for a while before we went to hit the sack for the night, but we really began to pay attention to them once our heads hit our pillows. Fortunately, the girls knew a lot of their songs and they started to sing along. They even added some verses to a couple of the songs for our enjoyment (because they weren't loud enough for the boy scouts to hear.) After each song, we would calp and cheer the scouts on. They were really quite good, actually. At 11pm, the singing stopped. It was perfect timing. We were wiped-out and falling asleep didn't take long at all.

At one point in the middle of the night, I rolled over and discovered that I had company in my bed. Bubbles seems to have a thing for sleep walking, lately. She told me just the other day that she woke up in her closet not long ago. Then, she joined me on my inflatable matteress on Tuesday night. Though, she was laying with her head by my feet for some reason. I asked her why she was in my bed and she had no answer. I didn't mind, so I let her stay there until about 6am when she stretched out and put her foot on my chest. Then, I asked her to move to her own bed with Boo. She fell back to sleep. I didn't.

Wednesday morning, we made our way to the breakfast buffet. There was nobody at the register/hostess station when we went in, so we just grabbed some plates and began loading up - knowing that we had 2 breakfasts and a dinner included in the cost of our trip. As we piled grub onto our plates, a lady came out and informed us that if we didn't have "reservations" we were considered "walk-ins" and that we'd have to pay for our food and that we would have to inform the hostess that we hadn't paid when she returned from her break. "Whatever," I said, "I'm hungry. If I have to pay for it, so be it. I'll complain later." The food was ok. It was about what you'd expect from a buffet. When we were done, I went up to the hostess station and told her, "Apparently, because we didn't make a reservation, we were told that we have to pay for our breakfasts despite the fact that it was supposed to be included in our trip cost." She flipped through a set of stapled papers and asked my name. I informed her and pointed to my name on the list when I saw it on one of the sheets. She told me that everything was covered and that a "reservation" was made for us when we booked our trip. I am going to have to complain about that use of the word "reservation" and let them know that they should at least inform guests that "reservations" have been made on their behalf - for whatever meals are included - either when they check in, or when they book their trip.

After breakfast, we found the tent where we had to check in for our rafting trip. We were a bit early, though, so we went to do some shopping. Bubbles found a sweatshirt/tee-shirt combo that she wanted, but this was not the time to buy stuff. Back outside, Bubbles spotted a sign that said, "NARR Check-in" which we hadn't seen before. Since we didn't have anything to do for a few minutes, we decided to check it out since NARR was our outfitter. Up the stairs, we found the door that said NARR store/office and gave it a tug. Locked. Just as I took my hand off the handle, a lady called out, "I'm coming! Hang on one sec!" She unlocked and opened the door inviting us in. We let her know that we were supposed to be on the 9:30 Upper New River trip with NARR as she made her way around to the employee-side of the counter. She picked up some papers and asked our name. As she shuffled through the papers looking for our info, she asked why we were doing the upper New trip, and not the lower. I told her that we were under the impression that the minimum age on the lower-New trip was 16, so we opted for duckies on the upper-New. She looked confused and said she didn't think that the age requirement was that high and that 12/13 year old girls would be just fine on the lower-New trip. "Really? Awesome! Can we switch?" I asked. She said, "Hang on right here... let me go see." and she ran out the same door we had come in - leaving us alone in the store. A few minutes later, she came back and said that we could switch and that we needed to go down and check in with Kip, the trip leader who was set up down in the bigtop tent. We grabbed our already-filled-out waivers and went down to meet Kip. Timing couldn't have been better. He was accepting the waivers from his other rafters and going over them to make sure everything was filled out. We handed ours to him and sat at the picnic table awaiting further instructions. Kip went over a few basics and told us how to get to the departure spot, just up the hill. That was that... we were on our way to a much more exciting rafting experience than I had originally planned!

We followed Kip's directions and parked the car across from a huge pole-barn where they keep the PFDs, RPDs and helmets. An RPD is a Raft Propulsion Device. Without it, you are useless. Without you, it is useless. Loaded with our gear we piled onto the bus for the trip to the starting point. On the bus, Kip went over some things that we would need to know. Things like: