West Virginia - Day 14 - Cranberry Glades

East Fork Campground, Durbin

Sunday, 14 April 2019

today's route

Yes, I know this photo is so fuzzy you can't tell much of anything, but it's a good illustration of what's happening with my sweet little camera.  Only about 1 out of every 3 photos comes out clear.  And it's making a funny noise when I turn it on and the lens comes out of hiding.  I need to get it checked out, but I'm not really in the middle of city life here so will have to hope it holds itself together for another week or so.

Today is Palm Sunday and I really would have expected to see more people in the campground this morning.  Instead it's only about a third full.

We first drove down County Route 4 that wends its way through the local towns, and all along the road and up the hillsides were Redbuds in full gorgeous bloom.  I stopped for gasoline and groceries in Gassaway (the middle name of the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 1904 - hey, I can't make this stuff up), and then got on the interstate.  And even for miles along that there were these blooming Redbuds.  The day was overcast and grey, so the blooms lit up like neon signs.  It was wonderful.

And again, more Ontario plates.  And I know these folks weren't heading home, partly because they were going south faster than I was, and partly because there were 3 of them all together, all convertibles and all sports-type cars - one was a Mustang - that sort.  I'm sure a convertible would be fine in Ontario in the summer.  But this is definitely not the summer up there.  What are they doing in West Virginia?

There's a road that has its own exit off the interstate called Polemic Run Road.  I can't find anything online that tells me where that name came from and I wish I knew.  A "polemic" is a sort of diatribe, and a "run" in this part of the country is a stream, so why would someone name a stream after a rant?  Is it a noisy stream?  Or did the people who once lived along it argue with each other?

I turned off the interstate onto Rt. 19 again, which crosses the Gauley River - the one that joins the New River to form the Kanawha River that runs through Charleston on its way to the Ohio River.  I couldn't help noticing that the Gauley was very low - yards of exposed rock showed where the usual flow level is.  I remember hearing earlier in the month - when I last picked up a TV station - that the weather person was saying they needed the rain he was forecasting.  Maybe the Gauley is just showing how badly they need the rain.

I don't think I mentioned that the man I talked to for so long while I was waiting for the mine tour the other day told me that they'd had a really mild winter.  He said they only had accumulated snow once - about 10" of it.  Otherwise, he said he didn't even have a chance to get his snow shovel out before the snow melted.  He said he'd become a believer in climate change.  This is a former coal miner who'd lived 70 years in Beckley, WV, I was talking to.

I passed the town of Canvas (the origin of that name has passed into oblivion) where someone has a mini-horse farm.  I didn't see any of them out in the field, though.

Japonica seems to thrive in this area - they're huge and gorgeous all over here.

I passed through Richwood, where a sign says it's the home of Mike Barrett, 1968 Olympic gold medalist.  I'm sure Richwood is a pleasant town, but it's tiny and I started wondering how someone from there was able to learn the skills needed to take a gold medal at an Olympics.  So I looked him up and found an inspiring story.   www.espn.com/olympics

There was another sign nearby saying Richwood would soon host the Feast of the Ramson, with a ramp dinner, crafts and music.  Sounds like fun but I wasn't sure what a ramp dinner is, and "feast of the ramson" sounded religious.  When I looked it up, I learned a lot more than I expected.  "Ramps" are wild leeks that taste like a cross between an onion and garlic, I learned, and they are celebrated in West Virginia.  Literally celebrated.   https://wvexplorer.com

I passed a sign telling me I was on the Highland Scenic Highway.  And it is scenic.  Also, in places, some of the roughest road I've yet encountered in West Virginia.  There's a lot to see along it.  adventure.howstuffworks.com

Here, I was in the Mongahela National Forest.  That's a name I've loved since I first heard it as a child.  And the forest deserves national protection - it's beautiful, but I don't think it's ancient - I think most of it was logged long ago.  But it sure has regrown: thick stands of tall green trees everywhere.

There's also marshes and I saw a Red-winged Blackbird sitting on a bulrush singing away.

I passed a sign saying I was on Kennison Mountain, elevation 3,988'.  And immediately after that I met a sign warning of a 9% grade - the steepest I've met yet in WV.  At least the road didn't go straight down but was instead a series of s-curves, clinging to the side of the mountain.  At one point we passed through a very thick low-lying cloud and I could barely see the road; fortunately we went through it in about 5 or 10 minutes.

We came to the turnoff for Cranberry Glades, which kept going downhill to a small parking area.  By now it was pouring down rain, but the dogs really wanted out for a bit and I have an umbrella so I thought we could go down the boardwalk there.

Those white dots are rain, not snow.  I was afraid the photo would come out just as fuzzy as it did, so I wrote it all down:

"The natural history of this 750 acre area is of special interest.  The most outstanding feature of the 'glades' is the open bogs nestled in a natural bowl at an elevation of 3400'.  The 'glades' resemble an arctic tundra misplaced in these southern mountains.  Found here are many of the same rare plants, birds, mammals and even reindeer moss which are commonly found in bogs of the far north.  Here where the north meets the south exists a rich variety of plant life."

I hadn't looked at any of the online information about the place before I came so didn't know that the boardwalk is only a half mile long.  None of the signs there told me and I wasn't sure I wanted to start out in the pouring rain on a narrow boardwalk of an unknown length with 2 dogs who did NOT want to stick to the boardwalk, as all the signs begged us to do.  After they stepped off the path for about the 5th time, I gave up and walked them around the parking area instead.  And by then it was raining so hard they didn't even mind too much when I brought them back inside.

I'm sorry I didn't know that only a short distance back down the county highway is the Cranberry Mountain Nature Center, because I wanted more information about the Glades than I got from the signs.  I saw the center as we were driving by and absolutely did not want to stop and back up to the driveway on that twisty road with limited visibility.  I guess it'll have to wait for my next visit.

Turns out I'd moved from Kennison Mountain to Cranberry Mountain, and I was still coming down a curvy 9% grade, and here I found a hairpin turn that even shows up on the AAA map.  At least the road surface was okay.  Oh well.  I knew I'd be driving on mountain roads and I took it slowly, so it wasn't too bad.

I passed a place with a sign that said they raise West Virginia Plotts.  Someone once told me they thought Dexter has some Plott hound in him, which is the only reason I knew what that sign meant.  http://www.pocahontasplotts.com/  They're bred to be hunting dogs - specifically bear hunting dogs.

I've passed several places in various parts of eastern West Virginia where they're mining gravel or sand or limestone or selling aggregate.  I knew WV had salt mines because I learned in Virginia that Booker T. Washington came here to work in one after being freed as a child.  Apparently there are efforts to revive the industry, and this article has some interesting information about that and, oddly, about a connection to the Chinese salt industry.  www.theatlantic.com

I passed the town of Marlinton, settled 1749, with a historical marker saying we were near the old Seneca Indian Trail that runs from New York to Georgia.  That's a distance almost as long as the Appalachian Trail - only the Seneca didn't have the advantages of compass and GPS.  Imagine walking that trail back then.

I think this must have been a good year for calves, because I've been seeing lots of them in every herd of cows I've passed.  And WV raises a lot of cows.  I saw one field that may have been about half calves - cute little guys playing with each other or still nursing.  Did you know cows have the same gestation period people do?  I'd have thought it was longer, because they're such large mammals.  I'd have thought wrong.

I passed the turnoff for Snowshoe Mountain ski area and for the Cass Scenic Railroad.  Built
for logging, the railroad still runs a 4½ hour trip for tourists, something I'd have loved to do - just not today.  It has the world's largest fleet of geared Shay locomotives, including the world's second oldest Shay and one of the world's oldest engines in continuous service on its original line.

You can see it may not be environmentally-friendly, but it sure is picturesque.

By this time I was really tired of driving these roads.  It's not that they're bad roads, it just takes a lot of work for me to drive this RV around on them.  And I was hampered today by not getting much sleep last night, so I spent much of the day battling sleepiness.  Oddly, I don't find these roads nearly as hair-raising as those in southern Pennsylvania, so I didn't even have fear to help keep me awake.

Eventually I got to the campground, where we were the only customers for the night.  Fine by me.