We intended to go out and fool around today but instead we drove into Lexington and shopped at Costco, a liquor store attached to the side of Costco and a Trader Joe’s. They have Kirkland Irish Cream in the liquor store next to Costco and their liquor prices were downright wonderful compared with the states east of us. It took a while to spend as much money as we did so we drove right home to Boonesboro State Park after the shopping. The back roads here might be even skinnier than those in WV but the paving is much better.

Today was a travel day. We left Beech Fork State Park and crept up the skinny rural West Virginia roads necessary to get us back on I-64 west. Once on the interstate, we again started the up-and-down and back-and-forth that is West Virginia roads. In only about 15 freeway miles we crossed into Kentucky and not too much further down the road the freeway became downright easy to drive with an enormous vehicle, like ours. The speed limit even went up to 70.
West Virginia is a state with magnificent scenery. There are extensive forests, beautiful stream and river valleys, abundant wildlife, flowers along the roads, some very nice folks and verdant state parks. Unfortunately, the state is riddled with Dogpatch hamlets where atrocious housing is being currently utilized by what appear to be miserable folks. Dentistry seems to be a lost art here. There is scant work available or the population is unsuitable for simple work because it looks like everybody is unemployed. The schools look like fenced juvenile prisons. Only church buildings look inhabitable and they are closed and locked six and a half days a week. There are old cars and lumps of metal that used to be old cars widely distributed in yards, fields and along the roads. More than half the buildings in the bigger towns are shuttered and either decaying or already collapsed. Unsanitary and possibly toxic formerly operating industrial sites are intermingled with residential neighborhoods. The roads are dreadful. The pharmacies are built like blockhouses. There is way too much Oxycontin, hydrocodone, Fentanyl and death. In just the towns of Kermit, Mt.Gay and Williamson, 20 million doses of opiates were prescribed for less than 3000 people in 5 years. More than 6000 doses of opiates per person in 60 months or 1200 doses per year, per person, seems a bit high. Overdose is a leading cause of death since there isn’t much else to do when you are destitute, filthy, ignorant, mastication-challenged and proud of it. It is hard to ignore the crushing poverty, the desperate longing for coal mining to return, the trapped people unable to finance escape from this pretty hell.
It is a strange place for me. It seems that properly directed investment in this gorgeous place could yield benefits for some of the people but evidence of poorly engineered and, in hindsight, hysterically inappropriate improvements are rampant statewide. Is it corruption or do the citizens merely not give a damn? Why can’t these hayseeds pull their heads out of the fire and progress? No wonder they vote for Trump; they are desperate for somebody to come and save their dumb asses, like a big, orange, fat messiah. It is depressing. I have never been anywhere like WV before and it is unlikely I will return. I think living in rural Mexico is preferable to living in West Virginia.
Fortunately, today we escaped WV and crossed into Kentucky, finally pulling off the interstate near Lexington where we vectored southwest to Boonesboro State Park. It is quite nice. They even have wifi – in a state park. We anticipate going over to the fort and larnin’ all ’tis tuh know about Dan’l Boone, mebee tomorrow. That’s if we don’t go grocery shopping which will work here because they have Trader Joe’s and Costco and other supermarkets in Kentucky, unlike West Virginia.

The birds were all hanging out near our trailer in Beech Fork State Park this morning. We spotted eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, flocks of barn swallows, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, starlings and ducks and chubby Canadian geese swimming by in the lake adjacent to our spot. We were bad and put a feeder out in a state park and the birds flock to it.
We headed into nearby Barbourville to eat breakfast at a Waffle House where we were served the thinnest sirloin steaks we have ever seen. We wondered how they got them so slim without having holes. Their eggs and hash browns were okay, though. From this upscale eatery, we drove over to the Ohio River and crossed north into Ohio. It looks about the same as it does in WV except the timber has been harvested and houses look much better. We noted some have foundations.
We crossed back into West Virginia at Huntington, a few miles west. Huntington is another WV city with a horrible slum section and some houses out of the inner city that appear to be slums for white, dentition-challenged rednecks. We have enjoyed the natural world and gorgeous state parks here in West Virginia but anyplace these hayseeds have set down their roots it looks like shit. We will be happy to depart tomorrow.
See today’s pix if you are tempted. Click the asterisk *

Today we elected to go investigate a place called Griffithsville. Since our name is Griffith, we figured it might be wonderful, just like some of my relatives. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Some of the relatives are okee-dokee but Griffithsville is a terrible butthole.
This part of West Virginia has beautiful, rugged geography, nice creeks and streams, fabulous vegetation and foliage and diverse wildlife but, everywhere the people have decided to build houses or anything else, it looks like hell. There are a few really nice places but the preponderance of structures are either abandoned or look like they should be. People are living, along with all their valuable stuff, in terrible little hovels that would not be considered as viable occupancies in any other state. None of the houses looked plumb, level or square. About a third of the windows and doors are pieces of plywood nailed over openings in the walls. Many dead cars are strewn about their yards and pastures. Some of the cars have been overwhelmed by kudzu so they now look like green lumps with a bit of contrasting paint visible amidst the vegetation. No wonder these folks voted for Trump and his promises to bring back the coal industry despite nobody using coal for fuel anymore. These folks look desperate.
There is an abundant population staying in these structures or former structures that perch on their front porch all day, most of them smoking cigarettes. We saw very few with a full complement of teeth. They look very sullen and surly. All the former businesses, except gas stations and small stores, are shuttered. The economy and life has been hard on these people and they appear a little worse for wear. The roads are terrible; today it took us 6 hours to drive less than 80 miles and we kept moving about as fast as was safe.
However, the state has some really pretty parks. This evening we had some cedar waxwings fooling around near our fifth wheel. They are very handsome birds.
We even got a picture of one. Click the asterisk *

Today was a travel day. We managed to get our trailer out of the mudhole we were camped in at the Rifrafters RV Park in Fayetteville. The owners were very nice folks and told me not to worry about tearing up the ground as we pulled through the thick, glutinous slop remaining from the last two days of thunderstorms.
We turned south on WV-19, a relatively good road compared with smaller West Virginia highways but not up to par with other states that have smooth, planar paving. I tried my best to avoid the really cavernous potholes but was unable to miss all of them. A couple times I thought our trailer was going to change lanes without bothering to take the truck along with it. We continued along this lumpy road until we hit I-64 where we turned northwest toward Charleston, the state capital. I-64 is a toll road in this location but it is plainly evident that the state does not use the funds it collects on road maintenance. Where there are not long, single-lane sections allegedly installed for construction in progress, the road surfaces are lousy and the highway is very serpentine. Driving straight ahead is almost unnecessary in this state.
We eventually emerged from a long, steep decline and arrived in Charleston. They have a gorgeous capital building visible from the freeway but we were preoccupied with a terrible wreck on the southbound side of I-64. Traffic going the other way was stopped in a long queue with many grumpy motorists. We also noted there is a big, steamy power plant and a nuclear reactor right close so everyone can enjoy their benefits as long as they don’t breathe or go outside.
About 30 miles further on I-64 we made it to Barbourville where we turned off into Beech Fork State Park. It has full hookups, sketchy wifi and is quite beautiful. There are lots of colorful birds here although we noted the female cardinals seem to be molting and currently look like they got the red and gray ugly disease. The facility has pull-through sites and good roads. West Virginia has gorgeous state parks although the preponderance of buildings we have seen in this state appear to be condemnible. From our furthest eastern extent of our trip this year, in Delaware a few weeks ago, we have now made it back west as far as the Ohio River which separates us from Ohio just a couple miles north of our camp spot.
See the pictures. Click the asterisk *

We started out the day doing our mundane and suffocatingly boring laundry but, due to large washing machines in the Oak Hill laundromat nearby, we finished in a jiffy and had some spare time to fart around. We headed fro the New River Gorge National River Park just north of Fayetteville.
The New River Gorge is a tremendous tear in the earth. Not surprisingly, the New River runs through the bottom of it. Spanning the canyon from edge to edge is the New River Bridge, the longest single-arch bridge in the western hemisphere. We pulled in at the visitor center and overlook complex but found the view from the overlook is partially obscured by jungle-like vegetation happily growing along the edge. Peggy and I formulated a plan to get to better views so we went searching for some roads that would take us down to the bottom of the gorge and we could look up to see the bridge.
The first efforts were for naught with several failures of navigation, of which I was in charge. Nevertheless, through plain stupid pigheadedness and blunt stubbornness, we finally found a little skinny road to the bottom. We had to back up a few times to negotiate some of the switchback turns but we continued, descending through the temperate jungle until we got to the river. It is a spectacular gorge with massive cliffs of sedimentary rock, gentle waterfalls and vegetation on a mission to cover the earth with green. At the bottom, we found a bridge not visible from the canyon rim hundreds of feet above and ascended back up the other side of the gorge. Peggy isn’t real skookum on abrupt, sure-death dropoffs into a river so she drove at a very leisurely speed and I got to scope out everything. It was wonderful. It was also raining.
Eventually we drove up to the edge of the canyon were we noticed quite a few signs that stated “PCB’s Kills Communities” although I believe they should have run apostrophe check. We continued on into Fayetteville which is a nice little city with some very handsome architecture. It has a nice courtroom building in the middle of the square with an adjacent jail that looks positively medieval. I’m glad I am old and the police ignore me.
We got some photos. To see ’em, click the asterisk *

Exploration was our plan for today. We jumped into the truck and initially headed northeast to Lake Summerville, a big gorgeous body of water with dramatic cliffs jutting up from the waterline. Once at the lake, we turned east on WV-39 and plunged into the MonongahelaNational Forest. The road is quite serpentine and climbs over numerous ridges, some over 3,000 feet. It also offers spectacular scenery as it passes through forests, canyons, hollows and a few tiny communities. There are lots of roadside flowers in bloom. The little communities have some funny names like Droop and Smoot. Again, it looks like these places were nice when coal was king but now they are sparsely populated and sort of rotting away. Those folks lucky enough to have large pastures at the bottoms of some of the canyons have beautiful places with square miles of bright green pastures and substantial livestock herds. Those living in the tiny ravines above them are mostly living in substandard housing but they do get to pee into the streams.
Near the town of Mill Point, we turned south on WV-219. We soon came across the childhood home of Pearl S. Buck out in the middle of a fine pasture. After some snooping around there, we continued south on WV-219 headed for White Sulphur Springs, home of the Greenbrier Resort. The Greenbrier is a venerable old hotel that is gigantic in stature. It offers resort vacations to folks who never want to leave the resort other than to golf on their nearby course. It is allegedly quite elegant but we didn’t walk around inside because mere tourist parking is almost in the next state. Back in the Eisenhower administration, they made a tremendous bomb shelter beneath the hotel with the intent of putting all the plainly important government officials safely underground while us ordinary peons could remain outdoors to enjoy the benefits of their failed policies and subsequent nuclear annihilation. It was only when they realized the travel time from D.C. to the Greenbrier exceeded the flight time of the incoming Russian ICBMs and all would be cooked except those actually at the hotel when the sirens started.
In White Sulphur Springs we were just across the border from Virginia but we needed to go west so we got on old US-60 which is another very scenic road but it is very turn happy and there are almost no sections where one would actually go straight ahead. Maximum speed for first timers like us was about 35 miles per hour and there were long, serpentine, difficult sections with much lower speeds. We ultimately made it home late in the day having traveled only about 140 miles but being stoked on the fantastic scenery for about 7 hours.
We got a few pictures. Click the asterisk to see them *

We left the beautiful Stonewall Jackson State Park today and got back onto WV roads heading southwest. It was quite mountainous and the road bucked and dove, twisted and turned but still we continued. There does not seem to be any level or straight sections of road in this part of West Virginia. After leaving the interstate, the roads got even screwier.
A couple hours, dozens of ascents and descents and about a million turns later, we pulled off the road right after crossing the New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville. Once a year, they close the bridge and turn it over to BASE jumpers for some hopefully proper landings after some suicidal jumps off this lofty structure.
We pulled into an RV park called Rifrafters which has very few spaces, lots of mud and difficult trailer access but, after considerable jockeying around, we got our giant trailer into one of their substandardly sized RV spots. There were a couple thunderstorms that blasted through here today and stepping off the gravel of the RV space onto the adjacent saturated soil can be quite treacherous. I hope when the time comes in a few days that we can get out of here without doing a bog run.

Since we are only scheduled to stay here near Roanoke, WV, for 48 hours, we decided to go into the nearby town of Weston. Due to the local terrain, Weston is built in a skinny hollow in the hills. The boom-and-bust economies of timber, then coal and now pipelines over the last two centuries has been tough on the people here. There are some beautiful buildings in and near town but they are getting run down. It is plainly evident that whatever happened here happened in the past and almost everybody has left.
However, Weston does have a couple of neat features. For many years it was the home of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum that, despite its horror-inducing name, is an architectural masterpiece. There must have been a lot of lunatics in West Virginia because the place is massive and there are bars on almost every window. The main building was the largest cut stone building in the world when it was built and for many years after. Another of Weston’s features is it is the home of the Museum of American Glass. This museum holds extensive collections of all things glass, from mere fruit jars to magnificent glass sculpture and blown glass art. We met a docent named Gunther who explained where stuff was and then cut us loose for a bit of ogling. All of the glass in the museum was made by American manufacturers and artists and the collection is stunning. There is a magnificent all-glass doll house with all glass interior furnishings. All the doors are operable. The tiny interior furnishings are very snazzy and I would be delighted to have furniture that looks like it in my house, only bigger and not made of glass.
Before leaving town, we stopped at a fantastic restaurant named the Hickory House where I had maybe the best serving of baby back ribs I have ever been lucky enough to find. I ordered half a rack but when it came, the waitress noticed it was actually a full rack but, since the cook was in error, she only charged us for half a rack. Quite a bit of the ribs went home with us for future consumption and delight. Half a rack with three sides was $18. Peggy got a pulled pork sandwich with two sides that had a pile of meat on the bun that precluded eating with only two hands and minimal spillage. It was $12. The waitress also brought us some free pickles made on site that were great and that is coming from a guy who doesn’t normally eat pickles. I think the last time I ate one intentionally, prior to today, was in 1960.
Check the pictures. Click the asterisk *

Today we were back on the road, continuing our westward trek. We started this morning in Grantsville at what is probably the weirdest RV park we have ever stayed in. There were probably 100 trailers there but only two people besides us were seen. We jumped onto westbound I-68 and immediately encountered the up and down required to cross the multiple mountain ridges of western Maryland and eastern West Virginia. One minute we would be at 800 foot elevation, quickly climb to 2000+/- foot elevation only to dive down to 800 feet just a few miles down the road. This lumpy program continued until we made it to Morgantown, West Virginia. In Morgantown, we turned southwest on I-79 and started traveling parallel to the ridges and the road configuration turned from up-and-down to back-and-forth. West Virginia is quite mountainous.
Normally we prefer to use old federal and state highways to get from place to place, shunning interstate highways to the greatest extent possible. However, here in West Virginia, using rural highways is not really practical for us due to their circuitous nature and lousy mapping that does not distinguish between paved and dirt roads. We may have a load of time to travel but we don’t have enough to travel on rural roads in this part of America. We have been gazing at maps to find good back road access to the places we want to go and the only thing we really found out is that West Virginia has a very strange shape. To see the shape, close your right hand into a fist with the fingers toward you. Now extend your middle finger. Now extend your thumb. That looks just like the shape of WV.
Somewhere below the life line, we pulled off near Roanoke. There is a Roanoke in Virginia next door but it definitely is not the same place. We drove into the Stonewall Jackson State Park which is actually more like a resort. There is a very nice hotel, a large and gorgeous lake, a big store, a campground with full hookups and gorgeous surrounding scenery. It is by far the most expensive state park in which we have stayed but we don’t anticipate being here more than a couple days so we’ll make it without going bankrupt.