The Next Step

For three years our family had our long-weekend reunions at the nudist colony (clothing mandatory), then the family decided it was time to go back to our roots in West Virginia. In 1976 Uncle Paul found the Pipestem State Park Resort. It was a very nice resort type facility with rental cabins, which we all shared. Amazingly, there were no mice included in the cabins. To keep the costs down, two or three families could share a cabin. Additionally, this was the first year that we decided to appoint dinner groups for each night. Several couples would be in charge of one night's dinner and could select the menu, buy the groceries and cook. That way, you only had to cook one night and could just show up for dinner the rest of the time. This is a great system that we have continued to use each time we have a week long reunion. Paul found tourist type attractions close by that we could enjoy. There was shopping, swimming, a Gearheart Rules baseball game (we'll tell you more about that later), lots of other games, and plenty of get together time. We made sure that during the week long reunions that everyone had things to do during the day, but we always had dinner together in the evenings.
In 1977 we backslid right into the nudist colony once again for a long weekend reunion. Thankfully, that was the last time that we went there for a reunion. By that time, most of us had gotten smart and learned to bring campers, RV's, and Vans to sleep in. But the camp did offer a large dining hall where we could all be together for meals and also offered a lot of outdoor activities like fishing, swimming, badminton, horseshoes and baseball.
We were sad to leave the nudist colony, but we knew that our family was growing and wanting to experience new places and to take a step up in our accommodations. We thought that this would be a great opportunity for our kids to travel the country and experience new things.