Crossing from Virginia into West Virginia it felt as we were going through a smaller version of the Rockies. Driving west on I-64 the highway twists and turns through the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Parts of the highway were literally blasted out of the sides of mountains, which made driving pretty difficult, as all you wanted to do was to look out the window at these huge rocky mountains around you. Soon enough though we made it to our first stop in the state, White Sulphur Springs.
While the town of White Sulphur Springs isn’t much to look at there is one very famous resort located in the town, The Greenbrier Resort. The Greenbrier was built in 1913 by The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company as waters in this area of West Virginia were supposedly full of healing qualities. The resort was built so people could rest and relax in the mountains in a luxury resort far superior than anything around it. As a railroad company built the hotel they also included it as one of their stops on their rail line. This stop still exists today as part of Amtrak’s Cardinal route, which goes from New York City to Chicago. I had remembered coming to the Greenbrier as a child with my parents in the early 1990’s and as this is an area of the country that Julie and I are rarely in we thought we should stop and see how the resort was doing.
To say the resort was doing well was an understatement. The 2018 version of this resort includes over 750 rooms, 20 restaurants and lounges and 36 shops on 11,000+ acres. There is also a golf course and they also own an actual neighborhood in which you can purchase a house. The main hotel itself is immaculate. It is still done up in the late 1910’s to 1920’s style from which it was built. We walked around the hotel going floor to floor checking out the shops and visiting the pool area, gym, casino and every room that we could get into. On the walls there were pictures of presidents that had stayed there (26 in all) as well as Grace Kelly and other celebrities of that era. Julie was a bit annoyed by me as she had no idea that this place existed and we were not staying the night. I promised her that sometime in the future we would stay there which made her happy though. From White Sulphur Springs and the Greenbrier we headed further into the state stopping for the next few nights outside of the states capitol in Charleston.
The next morning we woke up ready to go. As we were in a capitol city our first stop for the day was the capitol building. As far as state capitol cities go Charleston was on the smaller end with a population of just under 50,000. As this was the case getting around was pretty easy. We made it to the capitol grounds and walked in. While the capitol grounds were immaculate and gorgeous unfortunately for us the dome of the capitol building itself was in the middle of a multi year renovation and was completely covered and inaccessible for us. We walked around seeing what we could of the building before purchasing a post card and taking off.
From the capitol building we headed downtown, parked and started to walk around. Unless your from West Virginia or have family or friends there I feel it’s a pretty safe bet that the city of Charleston is not on your radar for any sort of vacation. It certainly was not for us but we ended up loving it. It was compact and for the most part beautiful to walk around. Located on the Kanawha River it had beautiful homes lining the river, a great walking trail and a few great restaurants and shops. We stopped in a few before going to Taylor Books, which also had a coffee shop. We browsed some books while having a coffee while we waited out a rainstorm. Once the rainstorm ended we headed back outside and noticed that there were miniature golf holes set up. We popped into a shop and asked what it was for and was told that it was called the downtown open and it was free. Different businesses sponsored different holes and you could borrow a club and ball from any of the participating businesses. It was a neat idea and a ton of fun.
After getting our fill of golf in we headed over to their downtown market, The Capitol Market. This turned out to be one of the better markets that we had visited so far, Detroit and Seattle still hold our top spots for local city markets. Charleston’s was great in that it had both a ton of local produce and meats as well as an area for local restaurants, spice shops, wine/beer shops and souvenir stands. We spent a lot of time browsing the market opting to buy some local fruits and lunch meats. From the market it looked like the weather was about to turn again so we jumped back into Bubbles and headed back to our campground cooking dinner inside and relaxing for the rest of the night.
The next morning we woke up and headed north to our last stop in West Virginia, the city of Morgantown. Morgantown it seemed was on the small side and dominated by the states largest university, West Virginia University. We found parking downtown and headed towards the University. As we were in West Virginia it was quite hilly but nonetheless a beautiful campus. The night before I had done some research about the town finding out that it had a one of a kind transportation system called Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit. This is a monorail system located mainly on University property. Instead of a train these are pod like cars each holding a maximum of 20 people. During the day the cars operate like any other subway system in the world with a scheduled timetable for arrival. At night however when you go to a station you push a button to request a pod then tell it where you are going. This system dates back to 1975 and was actually an experiment by the US government in personal transportation systems. While no other system was ever built this one is still in use at the university today.
To my dismay however the system was not working the day that we were in Morgantown. After spotting the track Julie and I found a bench and waited to see a pod come through. According to the systems website a pod should pass by every minute or so. We waited on the bench for about 10 minutes before I looked up what was going on and found out. I was bummed but happy I now knew about this unique transportation system. From our bench we walked around the university wandering into their bookstore and main cafeteria and accidentally joining freshman orientation for a while. Not many people were on campus as it was the middle of the summer but once we entered the cafeteria it was filled to capacity with kids, parents and everyone wearing a name tag. It brought back memories of our own freshman orientations at our respective universities.
As it was starting to get to mid afternoon and we were hungry we walked off the university property to downtown and found a great Thai restaurant called Chaang Thai Restaurant. We then walked down by the Monongahela River along a great walking/biking path. We stopped in to Mountain State Brewing and having a flight of their beers before hitting the walking path once again. After taking one more walking loop around downtown we hopped into Bubbles and headed to our campground for the night.
Next up…We continue north heading to Pittsburgh and Western New York.
