Rough Run - The Drive Up

Rough Run is as much an attitude as it is anything but in reality it is the name of a road and a creek.  USFS 87 is the official designation, but the locals took to calling it Rough Run because it ran adjacent to the creek and the road was little better the creek.  Both can make you pay if you are not careful.

At the bottom, right after you turn off of Sweedlin Valley Road, the going is actually pretty gentle.  There's a nice pleasant-looking cow pasture on the right, and a well-tended fishing pond to the left.  There's a few houses and hunting cabins on the bottom between the road and creek where everybody knows everybody and keep watch on the entrance to the forest.  Keep on driving up the lane and you pass Scooters house & garage clubhouse followed by an ancient ghost sawmill further up on the left.   There's some off-the-grid living going on behind these far houses but we'll keep quiet about that.  Jerry Sr. has the last piece of civilization with his well tended place.  The house sits guard at the very entrance before you enter the George Washington National Forest and start to head up the hill.

You aren't more than a few hundred yards beyond Jerry's when you are already dodging tree limbs and driving on terrain that requires four wheels.  You pass Panther Rock (supposedly a guy back in the pioneer days was driving his wagon by when a panther jumped off the rock and killed him) and then the first of many crossings of Rough Run.  The creek is fairly deep here and can sometimes move at a good clip, so it's gonna take a real vehicle to get past.  After that, you had better be paying attention.

There's not much room on this road so there are few places to pass other vehicles.  As you climb, the vehicles are being punished more and more as the divots grow deeper and the banks of the creeks steepen.  Your truck bounces hard as it moves through this part.  The next wide creek has a very steep bank on the far end so you need to gun the truck a bit.  But be careful you don't bottom-out on on the boulders in the middle.  It's a tricky line to take.

There are some old logging roads that crop out here and there that provide some nice places to pull out of the way or turn around.  A couple of these form what are called 'switchbacks', an old railroad term used for these back-and-forth logging trails and the unique way they turn sharply back and forth in order to get heavy loads up and down steep hills faster.  Once you turn the corner after the big switchback and make that angle turn to the left, you are way up.  If you dare, you can look out the passenger window over the cliff down at the road you've just come up.  In the dark, you won't see much but the headlights of some other trucks following you in the distance.  In the daylight, you see a horrific drop.  As Jerry says, if you go off the road here, "Hang on for a ride".

Another turn to the left and the road starts to ease up on you as you make your way towards the top of the mountain.  Rough Run ends at the Virginia line and the series of roads that criss-cross the top of the mountain.  You breathe a sigh of relief and relax a bit before you realize that at some point, you're going to have to turn the truck around and make the journey back down.  Lord, I hope I checked my brakes.