I really wanted to like West Virginia...

I mean, this is one of my very favorite songs of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUmnTfsY3hI

Perhaps I should have gotten an inkling when I tried to figure out what route to take to see the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River that inspired the song. Turns out the song was actually inspired by a drive down Clopper Road near Gaithersberg, Maryland (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Me_Home,_Country_Roads) not too far from where I'm staying here in Rockville. I plan to take a drive down the roads in that area while I'm here. I'm concerned that it will all be D.C. suburbs now, but it's worth checking out.

Back to West Virginia... alas, I did not care for it. I sort-of noticed while I was there, but I really noticed when I crossed the border leaving West Virginia for Maryland. My experience in West Virginia included lots of road construction, really short vistas because of how numerous and tall the hills were, surprisingly intense traffic for the conditions, and a feeling that I just wanted to get where I was going. My one venture onto a side road wasn't especially pleasant, so I just got back on the highway so that I could get where I was going.

Just about the time I reached the Maryland border, the terrain changed from intensely bumpy to rolling hills and longer views and mountain crests of about 2,800 feet. That allowed the road to straighten a bit, but not in a boring way -- I started enjoying the scenery more. A few miles into the state I stopped at the Maryland Welcome Center and took this photo:

 
I just kept on liking the Maryland vibe, even when I found downtown Cumberland a bit difficult to find my way around. I was able to stop and take a couple of photos there:




There are still a few loose ends about West Virginia that I'd like to tie up, specifically the Hardwood Alliance Zone. I saw a sign on the freeway announcing that I was entering that, which piqued my curiosity. It turns out that West Virginia is a big deal in the hardwood growing industry: http://www.westvirginiahaz.com/en/home/ I certainly don't find that hard to believe -- I can't think of a single view I had in the state that didn't at least include dense deciduous forest. More commonly that's all I could see besides road and sky everywhere I looked. Sounds really pretty, right? Maybe I just had too much of a good thing? 😉

I do feel eager to get back to Eastern Kentucky. In fact I have another blog post in the works about my visit to the Kentucky Folk Art Center, so I'll be revisiting Eastern Kentucky here before I do it in person again. I took a lot of photos at the Folk Art Center and I am still working on organizing them.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apalachicola and Tupelo honey

Image
The fog thickened and the air cooled after I left Mexico Beach headed for Apalachicola, but soon after I arrived at this charming little town, the sky cleared and the sun came out to make a crisp, cool afternoon for taking a walk. The town Christmas tree was still on display down by the waterfront: I had started to think about Tupelo honey when I was considering staying overnight in Tupelo, Mississippi, back when I started planning this trip. Everything I knew about Tupelo honey is that there's an old song that talks about it. When I hunted up the youtube video for Tupelo Honey, the only part of it that sounded at all familiar was the hook.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klSQUdPTU0A  My guess is that it's one of those songs I only know about because of the ads for collections of hits that used to play frequently on TV when I was a teenager. They would play the hook of each song then move to the next one. It left me with the impression that I knew the songs when I'd
Read more

It's crop dusting season! (And apparently blue fruit loop season too)

Image
In Arkansas I saw two crop-dusters on the same day, both flying back and forth over the highway I was on. One passed no more than 20 feet in front of me, and maybe 10 feet over me. With those distances, it sure looks like the plane is headed straight for me... The second also was headed my direction but the timing was a little further off, or possibly just as close but behind me instead of passing right in front of me. The first one was an ultralight, and looked a lot like this (only bright yellow):  http://www.zenithair.com/stolch701/pic09/crop-spray.jpg and the second looked more like a regular small plane. When googling for crop dusting images, I was surprised how many of them were related to articles about crashes. Glad I didn't see that before I saw the planes headed toward me! I think that the people who stayed in my hotel room prior to me in Jonesboro, Arkansas were professional hotel housekeeping testers. The housekeeping staff at the hotel failed the test, but I passed!
Read more

Pipeline under construction: Seismic crew ahead

Image
Driving across Western Texas, I was reminded of how I used to think that someday I wanted to cross an ocean on a ship to get a sense of how big it actually is. Now I'm not so sure about that. Without landmarks to gauge speed by, how would I really get a sense of the ocean? I'd know how long it took, but would I really be able to perceive speed and distance? I have enough experience with flying to get a sense of how big an area is by how long it takes to fly over it in a commercial airplane, and I definitely get a sense of it by driving, but I'm not sure I could really grasp speed and distance if all I can see in every direction for days on end is ocean. Western Texas feels kind of like the ocean for a little while. I only drove about 3 hours to get from Pecos to San Angelo, but while I was in the desert with no towns in sight, it felt huge. I have a map of Texas that lives in my mind and I know how little of the state I actually saw compared to that whole map. What I did
Read more