Galax and the New River Trail

 I decided to leave a day early because of the heavy rain forecast for Cleveland on Sunday. That turned out a good choice since Saturday was sunny & cool. Since I was planning to visit my friends Greg and Sandy Lewis in SC on Monday I had an extra day and that worked out well also. I did the same thing I did last year. Overnighted at a Lowes in Galax, VA, it was very quiet and had good Wi-Fi. A mile down the road there is a great Mexican restaurant and had the same Mexican stir fry as last year. 

Chestnut Creek Falls

The New River Trail starts in Galax and follows the beautiful little Chestnut Creek for 10 miles down to the New River and then  40 miles along the New.

Trail Tunnel

Last year they were replacing 3 bridges so you couldn’t take the trail downstream along the New River. You could only go upstream 5 miles to the town of Fries.

Both Directions Closed

There were no signs of hurricane of flood damage along Chestnut Creek so I was hoping to go downstream 2-1/2 mi to Byllesby Dam. 

It turned out both directions were blocked since the hurricane’s big flood took out parts of the upstream trail. The downstream trail totally washed out hundreds of tons of gravel destroying the trail that they had repaired last year. It may be finished next year a worker told me. 

Conflunce of New & Creek

I decided to drive a few hours to Forest City, NC so I would only have 2 more hours to drive in the morning. My GPS decided to give me a shortcut that I knew would be interesting when I saw a sign that said no semi-trucks. It was a five mile long narrow switchback road down the mountain to I-77. Luckily only a few cars were coming up hill. 

The when I was on I-40 my GPS said road to Forest City was closed and was trying to take me a much longer route to Asheville. This time I ignored it since I wanted to stay overnight in another Lowes parking lot. There were no closed roads but hundreds of fallen trees along the road from the hurricane.