West Virginia - Day 6 - Southwest of the interstates

Camp Creek State Park
Saturday, 6 April 2019

today's route

The bottom line: I accidentally turned the wrong way and didn't get down as far as Chapmanville, but I had a morning's worth of small roads and am pleased to say it wasn't anything like I'd feared.  Plus I met some nice people.

Huntington
I didn't want to be only a few miles away and not make the trip into this town on the edge of 3 states, so we came on in.

We passed Marshall University, whose entire football team, coaches and boosters (75 people) were killed in a plane crash in 1970, making it unhappily the worst sports-related air tragedy in US history.  Still.  You may have heard of the movie "We Are Marshall" - this is what it was about.

I'd heard about this house that's covered with pumpkins at Halloween and decided to drop by since I was in the neighborhood.  It's the Queen Anne style I like so much, and has a sign in front about the history of the house.  And a picture of what I missed by not being here in October.

I spent some time online trying to figure out where the Port of Huntington is, because it claims the title of the largest inland shipping port in the US.  But as far as I could figure out, it's not an actual location with maybe a shipyard and cranes and things - or at least they're not in Huntington.  The "port" takes in this whole swath along the Ohio River, so it includes places in Ohio and Kentucky.  Maybe there are the sort of facilities I expected in those states, but I couldn't find them here.

The pumpkin house is actually on the Ohio River, except it's behind what I think is a high levee and lots of railroad tracks, so I didn't see the river from there, let alone boats and barges.  To get to this house I took exit 1 off the interstate, so I figured trying to go any farther west would just get me into Kentucky.

State Routes 10 and 3
I'd intended to take Route 10 down to Chapmanville, then take US Rt. 119 up to the part of Rt. 3 called Daniel Boone Parkway.  But in West Hamlin, Rt. 10 goes straight and I still can't figure out how I missed the sign.  I ended up going right on Rt. 3.  I finally pulled over in Hamlin in a little roadside park to check the map, which is when I found my mistake.  But by then I was far enough along that road that I didn't feel like turning around.

I was stopped at Hamlin's Heritage Park, and the dogs and I had a nice little walk down along Mud River, which did look a little muddy.  Nice little park, though.  I saw a few little grape hyacinths, one of my favorite flowers.  As you can see from the sign, Hamlin was the hometown of Chuck Yeager who, in 1947, became the first man to fly faster than sound.  That sounds incredible, even all these years of aviation history later.

At this little park I met two very nice women, Michelle and Tina, who were doing a little pop-up yard sale, and I offered to let them see inside my RV.  Michelle offered herself as exhibit A in why people should think twice before getting a diesel engine, because she'd nearly run out of diesel once and was running on fumes before she found a station that sold more than regular gas.  As a going-away present, Michelle gave me a dozen fresh, never-refrigerated eggs from her own chickens.  I'm so looking forward to enjoying them for dinner.

These roads are one lane each direction with zero shoulder.  There were a few hairpin curves and quite a few s-curves.  There were several climbing lanes - at one I actually passed a Cadillac SUV that was going so slowly it must have been driven by someone very elderly or someone from out of state.  In some places the speed limit is 55 mph, and I was lucky there wasn't much traffic on a Saturday morning.  It took me a while sometimes to find a place where I could pull over to let following cars go around.  But other drivers were very polite, and I only had 1 tailgater.

The redbuds were much farther along today than earlier this week and were blazing with color all along the road.  Very nice.  Japonica is also out, which surprised me.  Farther south, japonica comes out much earlier in the year and is usually ahead of almost everything else.  Apparently not here.

I passed a house that had a good-sized metal fence in front, with 2 good-sized dogs inside.  The dogs were staring at a half dozen cows nearby that were not fenced.  The cows were standing just a few feet from the roadway and were so still I wouldn't have noticed them if I hadn't wondered what the dogs were looking at.  I guess the people trust the cows to stay out of trouble more than they do the dogs.

Farther along Rt. 3 I came to the community of Woodville where there's some sort of water body that runs all alongside the road.  It looks like a creek, but I can't find anywhere that wants to tell me if it's got a name.  The odd thing about it is that there are quite a few houses on the other side of this creek, and the only access to them is from Rt. 3.  So all these people have built bridges across the creek to connect them to the roadway.  The bridges are all different - some quite simple and narrow, others fairly wide and elaborate.  I don't remember ever seeing anything like it before.  And there are a lot of them, stretching for several miles along the road.  Odd.

Apparently I've been pronouncing Appalachia incorrectly all my life.  It sounds like the people here are pronouncing it app-ah-LATCH-ee-ah.  I've always made that 3rd "a" a long-a sound.  Now I know.

Off in a field I saw a small flock of wild turkeys, one with his tail fanned out, in case I wasn't sure what they were.

The country song of the day: "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy."  I swear I heard it.  Catchy tune.

Although I'd been assured online that when Rt. 3 breaks off from US Rt. 119 it's called the Daniel Boone Parkway, I saw not one single sign that said so.  Apparently, West Virginia doesn't call it that.  But it took me back up to the interstate.  Part of me hated to do that - I'm not a fan of interstates, I'm really not a fan of toll roads, and I'd already been over this road before.  But by the time I got there, it was almost noon, and I'd been driving since 8:00, with only one break.  I was tired and decided to take the easy way out.

I don't know how representative of West Virginia's smaller routes these roads were, but I found them not at all intimidating and really not a big deal to drive on.  I still find that hard to believe because of all the altitude changes and the narrow roads, but that's what it seemed like to me.  There's still a lot more state to see, though, but driving this part turned out just fine.

This is what most of the WV license plates look like.  There are several scenic plate designs, but most folks seem to have this kind.

Gasoline prices in WV are substantially higher than they were in Virginia.  Maybe they've gone up there, too, but it's a difference of about 20¢ a gallon.  I'd have thought prices would be lower in the cities here than in the more rural areas, but it's just the opposite.  The smaller towns that aren't anywhere near the interstate have prices about 10¢ a gallon lower than the bigger towns.

Back on the interstate, I passed a sign noting it was the 38th Parallel, and honoring Korean War Veterans.  I thought that was nice of them.

So many of the bridges are named in memory of someone, as I mentioned a few days ago, and I crossed one dedicated to the "Tygrett Brothers, Seven Veterans."  I looked them up to see if there were really 7 brothers who'd served in the military, and there were.  The first 6 all served in WWII; the youngest in the Korean War.  Only the 2nd youngest was still alive at the time of the bridge naming - it was his sons who'd worked to establish the dedication.  All 7 brothers survived their military service, unlike the Sullivan brothers who were all stationed on the same ship in WWII when it was sunk in combat.