Born to Be Wild

"Road Trip" Just whisper those words and hubby has bags packed and the car out of the garage in seconds. Since his retirement he is so into filling his days with activity. I, on the other hand, even though I know I am going to die for sure some day, fill my days with sitting and reading and being perfectly happy. We are a good match as opposites. He gets me out of the house and I keep him from spending all our retirement money on gasoline.

We had been wanting for years to explore the Cranberry Glades of West Virginia. This is about a 6 hour drive from where we live. We reserved a reasonable room in Marlinton (there no longer are cheap rooms in this world) and packed our stuff and headed out on the highway (shades of Steppehwolf). Marlinton, West Virginia, does not appear to have a web page. When we reached a Visitors Center near Hot Springs in Virginia, no one there could tell us about the town or how to get there even though we had our heads close over Virginia road maps. These are people who live in the region! Finally we found it when we pulled out the WEST Virginia map. The town is just a wide spot on the road just below a major ski area. It appears to be barely surviving on the tourist industry. Our motel still uses metal keys for their doors. The 5 or so restaurants all have exactly the same menu. If you order spinach it will come from a can. If you order gravy it will be thick and white. Applesauce is served with everything. The waitresses, country girls, are friendly and actually can "talk your leg off." Chatty Kathy, from our motel restaurant, told us her life story over breakfast, which started 20 minutes late because she was late to work.

We took a walk down the main street after one evening's dinner at another restaurant and the exotic culture of this town was like a foreign country to me. There was a fire and brimstone tent meeting at one end of town with a heavy-set black preacher shoutin' and singin' for all to hear. He had quite a few devoted followers chiming in with 'Yes, Lord.' while they sat on metal folding chairs in the lawn under a large open tent. At the other end of town, only three blocks away, was a street fair with a reasonably good country band providing mountain music between the vendors selling cotton candy, hotdogs, popcorn and lemonade. A skinny and angular young man with a mouth full of buck teeth was standing in the middle of the street in front of the band and kept shouting "Yee Haw" to the music as he jerked along to the rhythm. For a minute I thought I was in a Dolly Parton movie. I am not making this up!

We were barely able to book our room in this area as the ski resort a few minutes away was holding lots of activities each weekend during the summer, most certainly to keep the economy moving. SnowShoe Mountain Ski Resort (their website gives a real flavor of the place) is a mass of diverse architecture covering the top of the Snowshoe Mountain. "Also known as Forever Wild, Snowshoe is a year-round adventure located in Pocahontas County." The only things 'wild' about this resort are the mountain bikers who keep the trails muddy and the jeep wranglers who up the ante even more with their off road contests. The architecture is described as 'Swiss village' and I describe it as interesting and little frightening for such a lovely mountain area. The footprint is huge. This particular coming weekend was a Jeep Jamboree and a major Chile Cookoff. We ate at the ski resort one night in search of healthier food and asked the host of the restaurant if he was planning on being busy the coming Saturday.

"We are going to get our butts kicked big time," he smiled. And then he went on to explain that this event was such a big deal even CNN was covering it. That explained the camera crew that was setting up just out side the restaurant when we entered. "Butts kicked big time"...I don't think I have ever heard a host say those words to me in a nice restaurant.

If you want my take on the beauty of this area which we saw on our daily hikes through the meadows, over the waterfalls, and between rocky caverns, along with a sad wildlife story...that, of course, gets posted on 'my other blog.'