We came upon this place after we blew a tire on our RV, as we discuss in The Saga of the Tire. We planned to stay at Beckley’s Parks and Recreation RV park, however, once we realized the entrance of the park had a sharp turn followed by a steep incline, we reconsidered our accommodations. While we waited for the RV park office to open, we searched for other RV parks.
We came across Summer Wind RV Park and to our delight found that they had space. After we got the tire fixed, we bounded over and thankfully the location was an easy turn off and the spots were manageable pull-throughs. Our gregarious host welcomed us, registration and payment were a cinch (we used our RV Escapees membership to get a discount).
The park is just off Interstate 64, you can see the park from the highway when heading east (like we were, we had to backtrack a bit). You do get some highway noise at the park, but our first day was great weather. All other sides of the park are surrounded by farmland, so you don’t get any light pollution, which was great for Mike and me to go star-gazing our first evening there.
We only stayed for a few days but the location was handy. Getting to New River Gorge Bridge for Bridge Day took about an hour going by the highways. We took the scenic route back and that route was definitely not RV friendly – insanely twisty, steep, and narrow; at first we were on a four lane highway, then a two lane state road, then a two lane country road, then one lane windy steep road thru the back of the holler. The RV park host had informed me that a visitor to the park with a fifth wheel had taken that route instead of the highway to get to Summer Wind. After driving it in a sedan, I’m amazed the guy survived to tell him about it.
Since West Virginia is pretty mountainous, the 7% to 9% grade of the highways were hard on our RV, which is about 15 degree incline – that may not sound like much, but driving a 22,000 pound RV up that takes a lot out of you. Summer Wind Overnight RV Park is great as a stopping off point, it’s not a place you want or need to stay long, but it was a big help for us.
As I mentioned in the About Us page, Mike and I are Simpsons fans, so a park being named Summer Wind kept bringing this scene to my mind: