Salthouse Branch Park on Philpott Lake

Our first outing with other teardroppers, old friends from our boys' school days. Salthouse Branch Park is located in south central Virginia, near Martinsville. Beautiful, clean, quiet lake. We had three great lakeside campsites. Each couple provided a breakfast and dinner to share, simple but good eats!! Weather was almost perfect, aside from a little rain. We took a 9 mile hike to the dam, did a lot of paddling, and floating in the lake, corn hole, ladder ball, cards,a marathon game of Settler's of Catan, and most importantly, catching up on each other's lives!! Can't wait to go again!!


Jim made this light bar for our bike rack. I'm glad he did, because when we had our bikes covered up, due to the rain, there is no way you could have seen our trailer lights.


Our McNugit is hiding under our Northern Breeze!


Our friend's found this 4 ft wide Little Guy on Craigslist. This was their fourth outing also.


Our other friends built their own, and are the most experienced teardroppers of our group.


One of our boat launch areas- watch our for poison ivy! Both guys have built beautiful tandem kayaks, put our little plastic job to shame!!


Another view of our campsite. We had all four awnings of the Northern Breeze spread out, worked very well for us.


This is Ballast, our friend's dog- aptly named because she provides a counter weight in their canoe!! Very nice pup!


Philpott Lake is beautiful, and during the week, we practically had it to ourselves. We did a lot of paddling.


We also did a lot of floating, the water temp was perfect!


All packed up and ready to leave. We hope to return, someday soon!

 

That looks very fun - especially the swim in the WARM water part. I love board games, especially Settlers, so glad to hear that I'm not the only teardropper that does.

 

One of our sons introduced us to Settler's. They all hate playing with me because my strategy is to wear them down, by taking so long on my turn, that they end up helping me!!

 

Sounds like my dad's strategy. If you want to surprise your sons, check out the game 'Stone Age'. I am an avid board gamer (i have over 60 games in my closet), and this is one of the best ones I have ever played. It has everything I like about Settlers in it, and none of the things I don't (for examples, how everybody can team up on one person with the robber, and pretty much kill your chances of winning if they want to...)

 

Wait, that's one of the good parts of Settlers.... if any one person is too skillful, the other players can deal with it. It makes it a social game as well as you then can't annoy the other players too much.

Of course, if you're the dad and your kids are just out to get you, well....

 

Yes Lyle, that's why I enjoy Settler's, because of the social aspect, but my guys are all so competitive, they just want to play at a rapid pace. And it doesn't help, that they play on the computer too. So much for their socializing!! But don't get the wrong idea, as cut throat as they can be, it also makes for a lot of laughs and ribbing. It's just our family dynamic!

 

Everybody is always out to get me every time because they figure I have the best chance of winning. This can be unfortunate in Settlers because they can pretty much shut you down.