Attendees:
- Matt – Toyota Tacoma
- Brett and Stella – Jeep Grand Cherokee
- Robert – Toyota 4Runner
- Jendra – Jeep Gladiator
- *Ben – Toyota 4Runner (special guest appearance for Big Levels!)
The goal of this trip was to build on the first big “overlanding” style trip that I led with CORE in 2023. We revisited several places and drove a few of the same roads, but there was also a lot of new stuff! As usual, not everything went according to plan but we made the most of it and had a great time!
The trip started on Friday, July 3rd when we met up at one of the group campsites at Devils Backbone Basecamp. This is probably one of the cleanest and best maintained campgrounds around, and they have an on-site brewery and restaurant so it’s a good place to kick off a trip. Friday was the hottest day of this trip by far, real-feel temps peaked at over 110 degrees fahrenheit. I was curious so I checked the weather for Death Valley, their real feel was only 99 degrees! If you eat at the restaurant here, make sure to order the nachos!
We got a fairly early start the next morning (Saturday July 4th – Happy 250 America!), meeting up with Ben at the start of Big Levels. This trail is also known as Bald Mountain Jeep Trail. Most of the trail is not difficult, there are some optional obstacles that you can play on but we mostly avoided those. Big Levels is known for having pretty deep mud puddles at the bottom, but we found that they were shallow and proved no challenge.
After completing Big Levels, we continued along and drove south down the Blue Ridge Parkway for a short while before dropping back down into the George Washington National Forest. We visited a cool overlook, stopped for lunch and eventually drove another easy trail called “Shoe Creek” before heading back to the campground.
As we got back to the campsite, the weather took a turn for the worse. I was originally going to cook a patriotic smashburger dinner, but we decided to visit their restaurant again because the wind was picking up and it looked like it was going to be nasty.
And nasty it was! The winds got worse, it started pouring rain which eventually turned into ping pong ball sized hail. It sounded absolutely terrible hitting the roof of my car, I thought my solar panel was going to get destroyed but luckily there was no obvious damage to anyone’s vehicles. The one good thing about the storm is that it ended the heat wave we were experiencing. The rest of the trip was still summer temps, but not hotter than death valley!
This was the maiden voyage for Jendra’s Gladiator and camping setup, and he discovered some issues. He ended up calling it quits after dinner and drove home. After spending some time getting his setup dialed he is looking for a rematch!
We got another early start on Sunday, July 5th. We started by driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway again, before dropping in Lexington for a gas stop and an early lunch at a Sheetz. We made our way over towards another trail called Pad’s Creek, stopping at a scenic overlook on the way.
Pad’s Creek is a fun trail. It is a county road that crosses through a rocky creek a few times, before a larger crossing of the Cowpasture River. The water was very shallow, so the most difficult part of this trail was a tight offcamber section. It never looks bad in photos, but with the higher center of gravity from my camper, I had to steer into the bushes to keep the vehicle somewhat level (it still hit 30 degrees off camber according to my dash gauge!).
After Pad’s Creek, we continued north towards Hidden Valley in George Washington National Forest. We cooled down in the Jackson River before camping out at Hidden Valley Campground. It cost $15 for a site, but had clean pit toilets, potable water spigots and a dumpster. I cooked smashburgers for dinner, and the weather cooled down enough that we actually wanted a campfire! For dessert I made apple pie cobbler in a dutch oven served with vanilla ice cream!
The next morning (Monday July 6th) we started with a scenic drive along the Sam Snead Highway towards Covington, VA. We stopped at a Walmart to resupply, and then visited the Humpback Covered Bridge for a lunch stop.
This was a pretty uneventful day with very little off pavement driving. We did work in a bonus water crossing though!
I planned for the group to cross Craig Creek one more time on our way to our camp for the night. There’s no pictures to share, but this crossing is very easy if you follow along a rock ledge on the downstream side. At first, it looked like I could take this easy line but once I was in the middle of it I realized that the ledge went further left than I thought it did and was partially blocked by a downed tree. I had to abandon the “safe” line and drove through deeper water than I wanted to (which wasn’t much, I’m still a chicken even with a well-sealed snorkel and raised diff breathers). In the deepest part, I could actually feel the truck being pushed downstream. Brett and Robert were disappointed, but I had them take the dry way to camp.
We stayed that night at Wilderness Adventure at Eagle’s Landing, a rustic campground that the club had used before. I booked the site online several months before, and it looked like the place was fully booked… but it turned out they actually had a youth summer camp that week and turned off booking for most of the campsites so they could focus on that. They forgot to turn off reservations for the one that I ended up booking, but they were accommodating when we showed up. The restaurant was closed, so Robert fried up some hot dogs for us. We didn’t miss the opportunity to cool off in the creek near camp or take nice warm showers.
Tuesday July 7th was arguably the best day of the trip. We started by driving another trail called Bald Mountain, which is much easier than Big Levels. We continued along forest service roads, Brett was excited to go first through some deep mud!
Eventually we came upon the most memorable location of the trip: Butt Mountain. No seriously, that’s the name of the mountain. Like on a map, it’s B-U-T-T Mountain. Don’t believe me?
A few minutes’ walk to the Butt Mountain overlook just past an abandoned fire tower made for a good time to stretch the legs.
We wanted to camp near the Falls of Dismal area; in the 2023 trip we were able to find good dispersed camping around there. The weather showed an approaching storm, so we were very careful where we decided to camp. Many of the campsites we found had upturned trees and even more dead standing ones that could kill us in our sleep, so we ended up staying at the empty White Cedar Horse Camp instead.
Robert whipped up some sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast on Wednesday July 8th. We started with a nice drive out on well maintained gravel roads, and then the fun started! I had planned to use what looked like a county road to access a forest service road, but the county road ended up being a pretty off-camber drive up a hill! With some careful spotting, we got to a point where we were able to pull over and turn around. Brett and his nimble Grand Cherokee scouted ahead and found that the road was permanently closed with a big berm blocking passage. Just as we got turned around, it started to rain. It was sketchy enough coming up this hill, now it was going to be a fun off-camber muddy slide down!
Brett got through it easily and spotted Robert down like a pro, but my big heavy camper required extra attention and tag-team spotting. We did a little trail building with a set of maxtrax and stacking some rocks, which made a big difference.
After that excitement, we decided to take it easy! We gassed up and had lunch at an Arby’s, and continued on. We drove through Burke’s Garden, a beautiful bowl shaped valley that houses an Amish community. We stopped at their general store, hoping for Amish donuts but received the devastating news that they didn’t have any! We persevered and continued to our camp for the night. I originally intended for us to stay at a dispersed site up on Big Walker Mountain, but right when we were about to turn off the pavement I noticed a broken down Ford Expedition blocking the road we needed to drive down. It was jacked up with floor jacks on both sides, with 3 missing tires and numerous blown tires haphazardly thrown on the roof and hood. Not wanting to get involved with whatever was going on there, we decided to stay on the pavement a little longer and camp at the Forest Service Campground at Stony Fork. It was a pleasant front country campground with showers!
The next morning (Thursday July 9th) we decided to hit up a Waffle House for breakfast. We knew it was a legit one because there was vomit in the parking lot… After breakfast we took the scenic route to The Scales, my favorite campsite in VA.
The drive up isn’t anything worse than what we had already been through. I’ve seen low clearance vehicles up at the top, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There are numerous places to bust an oil pan or get stuck if you aren’t very careful in anything other than a high clearance 4×4. We set up camp at the top, and had a nice night. Some of us went for a ~3 mile hike, and then I made cheesesteaks for dinner. We watched a big storm blow through the valley below us, but it just blew right past us up on the mountain.
Friday July 10th started excellently, Brett and Stella cooked up some blueberry pancakes and bacon. And when I say with bacon, I mean they fried up a bunch of bacon and then basically deep fried each pancake in the bacon grease. Ignoring the coronary and digestive effects, it was excellent!
We then drove back down the mountain and once again took the scenic way over towards White Top Mountain. We drove through a pretty bad storm, it rained heavily and we watched some branches fall around us. We stopped for lunch at a little gas-station/general-store. The owners were very friendly and had actually relocated from Maryland! I got a warm soup and grilled cheese sandwich combo, maybe it was the pouring rain and nostalgia, but it tasted like a home cooked meal my mother would make on cold rainy days! Address was 20433 Azen Rd, Damascus, VA 24236. The prices were reasonable, too.
We then continued onto White Top Mountain, where we hoped to camp. As we crossed 5,000ft, we climbed into a dense fog and the temperature dropped. We had started this trip at over 100 degrees fahrenheit, and now we were standing in 60 degrees (at like 2pm too, it probably would have dipped into the 50s overnight). We initially planned to camp one last night up at White Top, but there was some bad weather coming our way so we decided to head home a little early.
Overall, a great trip with great people. We really didn’t do any dispersed camping like I initially planned, but we definitely still had a good time staying at simple campgrounds. I saw 4 bears (no pics) on this trip, more than I have on all my previous trips to VA combined!