Summersville KOA

When we were kids we would go to Summersville Lake every weekend. At first it was tent camping but later we had a boat and a camper. We would swim in the ice cold lake at every opportunity even though we were the only kids wearing those embarrassing orange life vests. They were great family camping trips where we did all the usual stuff that families do on camping trips.

There were 2 camp grounds, the main one and the KOA campground. The KOA quickly became our favorite even though it was on top of the mountain instead of lakeside. This was because it appealed to our daredevil natures.

There was a road that wound down the entire side of the mountain from the top to the marina on the lake. We would take our bikes and take off from the top and build up to supersonic speeds in a matter of seconds. It is indeed fortunate that we never hit a car on the way up the mountain because I guarantee you we could not have stopped for one! It was everything we could do to stop at the end of the parking lot after we had careened down the mountain at break neck speed! We couldn't even pedal we were going so fast. We just held our feet out to the side so the pedals wouldn't break our ankles. It was a good thing we were used to never using our breaks. I wondered why they even put them on bikes. We would always just jump off the bike at top speed and let it fall to the ground when we got to wherever we were going.

One time we found a bassett hound at the campground. We tried to find the owner but he never did show and the dog spent the entire weekend with us. We took him home. The next weekend we left the dog at the house and when we got back from camping he was gone and another dog and a cat were in his place. Somebody had actually traded them out when we weren't home.