Asphyxiation, asphyxiation
Is keepin’ me up
Is makin’ me crazy
-to the tune of Carly Simon’s Anticipation, lyrics somewhat modified
I never sleep well the first night or two on the road. Then, out of sheer exhaustion, sleep begins to happen. Last night was no exception. Only this time we had the added dynamic of a generator droning away right underneath the bed and the roar of the air conditioner overhead. Reminds me of another trip with this same group of friends to Voyagers National Park a few years ago. The days were hot, the nights were torrid, and the generator for the houseboat was right under our bed. We didn’t sleep much then either. At least this time we are not dealing with a gazillion mosquitoes.
I had just managed to fall asleep around 1:30am when a piercing beep split the night, followed by an electronic voice saying Warning, carbon monoxide. What a way to wake up! I silenced the alarm, sniffed the air and laid back down to go back to sleep. A minute later, it happened again.
Here is where the difference between Deb and I really shows up. I looked at the situation logically and analyzed all the sources of CO. The stove is off, the fridge is running on electric because the generator is running, the water heater is off, the furnace is off, the engine is off, so there were no sources of CO inside the rig. The generator is running which is a source of CO, but it is outside the rig so therefore it must be a sensor failure, a false alarm. Besides, we were not feeling any of the effects of CO poisoning.
So I pulled the alarm off the ceiling, took the batteries out, and rolled over to go back to sleep. We still have one active smoke detector (which doesn’t detect CO) so we’re all good.
Deb, on the other hand, thinks much more emotionally and worst-case. Convinced that the generator was spewing lots of noxious fumes inside the rig, she was preparing to not sleep at all but to slowly pass into oblivion, finally lulled to sleep by the lack of oxygen. For her, sensor failure was a much more remote possibility. If the alarm was beeping, there must be CO coming in from somewhere.
It took a bit to convince her that we were not in any imminent danger, and I’m not sure she was fully convinced. I did get up around 4am to lower the thermostat because we were still hot so I proved that we were able to at least survive until then.
And when I got up this morning at 6am, I shut the generator and air conditioner off and continued to run the fan on battery power to allow Deb to sleep a little bit longer. When she got up, I checked all the gauges and discovered we had used about two-thirds of our propane supply and half of the charge on the battery to keep cool last night. Probably a good $35 worth of propane just to keep cool. Those forty-dollar campsites are not looking so expensive any more when the nights are hot.
We drove to the edge of the parking lot along the tree line to park in the diminishing shade and streamed our church service. By the time it was done, the temperature was back in the low 80’s and beginning to feel like another hot day.
The Exhibition Coal Mine in Beckley was just 20 minutes south of our final destination and looked interesting so we drove there to check it out. We managed to sign up for the 1:30 underground tour and showed up with long-sleeved shirts in hand as the temperature underground is a constant 58 degrees. A welcome change over the heat of the last few days.
The guides on these tours are mining veterans, some of whom worked in this mine when it was still operating. Our guide came from a mining family, all of whom suffered from Black Lung Disease.
We learned how the mining was done in the early days, with a pick and on hands and knees as the ceiling was so low and how better tools and larger mine shafts later on allowed increased production but also increased the amount of dust created.
We spent a half hour inside that mountain, stopping at various points along the tracks, and as we clanked into the sunlight on the way out, our guide sang a miner’s song, probably echoing his own life experience:
Come all you young fellers
so young and so fine
And seek not your fortune
in the dark dreary mine
It'll form as a habit
and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood
is as black as the coal
Where it's dark as a dungeon
and damp as the dew
where the dangers are double
and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls
and the sun never shines
Lord it's a dark as a dungeon
way down in the mines
Fascinating tour and well worth the side trip to get there.
Several restored buildings from the early mining days were restored and relocated to this location and we strolled through those as well. The school, the blacksmith shop, the moonshine shed, the miner’s shanty; all spoke of a life that is very different from what we are accustomed to. Many of these buildings had volunteers stationed that were willing and eager to talk about their building, and we ended up spending quite a bit of time here. We talked to the blacksmith for a good half hour. He had his own blacksmith shop, in addition to the shop set up here, and the only reason he hadn’t fired up his forge was that he forgot his protective clothing at home. He loved the heat and the noise of the trade, but didn’t want to ruin another set of clothing from the inevitable sparks that flew from his work.
“Every other trade always comes back to the blacksmith,” he told us. The blacksmith was the guy who made the tools for every other trade, and so was an essential part of any community.
“And who makes the blacksmith’s tools?” he asked. “The blacksmith, of course.” It was obvious that he loved his trade and was proud of it.
Leaving here, we drove to Grandview Overlook, a section of the New River Gorge National Park. Here is an area that overlooks a horseshoe bend in the New River from the top of the bluff. We had dinner here and hiked the rim trail for a bit, enjoying the view from several spots.
And now we’re here, at the Bear Mountain Campground, having met our camping friends here and spending some time around a campfire. The next few days we will be hanging out with this group.
133 miles covered today. We’re slipping back into our normal travel mode where it takes us all day to go relatively few miles.
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