All Aboard

The West Virginia Cass Railroad State Park met my expectations. We climbed to the summit of Bald Knob on an old logging train, open cars, cool breezes. The steam engine was the star attraction of the trip. It was a Shay, built especially for logging, capable of steep grades and curving rails. The designers created gears so that every wheel of the engine provided power and traction.

The details of the steam powered train became more interesting as we climbed. We saw the train yard, with its mound of coal, shovels idle, although clearly they were used to feel the coal elevator manually. We stopped for water twice, water stored from mountain streams. In the old days, the train would pump water out of any stream along the way. Our engine was the largest ever made, weighing in at 169 tons, and it produced more power than was needed to push our four tourist cars up the mountain. So the boiler constantly let off steam, puffing huge white plumes. The whistle let off puffs of steam as well.

I mentioned we got pushed up the mountain. That spared us from breathing smoke all day. The black plume of coal smoke was astounding. Lump coal does not burn completely, and the excess goes into the air. Coal powered electric plants grind the coal to fine powder in order to burn it more completely.

Seasonal employees man the train, and I thought at first the brakeman on each car had nothing to do. Then we started downhill. My view was of the woman brakeman in the car ahead. It took power to constantly turn the wheel to set the brakes just right, not so much they stopped the wheels, but enough they slowed the car from going too fast and hitting the car ahead. The brakemen worked as a chorus, checking the brakes visually by leaning out over the car, then waving okay to the car ahead and behind.

My woman was all business. In idle times, she talked about all the features of the train. She talked to her coworkers about hoping she could get on in the shop over the winter. Almost everyone in the state park system gets laid off at the end of the season and goes on unemployment unless they have a winter gig. It touched me to think about her living on the edge that way.

At the top of the mountain we stopped for a million dollar view from an observation tower. A kind gentlemen snapped this photo of us and emailed it to me when my batteries died at an unfortunate moment. A random act of kindness, and I received rather than gave.

Hello from West Virginia, almost heaven!

Country Roads Take Me Home

 

We repeated the Parkways this summer as a scenic way to get to West Virginia, a state that is uncolored on my US map on the window of the RV. I’d heard it is beautiful. And yes, in fact, it is.

West Virginia has a wonderful network of state parks, all admission free. They have taken the natural treasures and developed them for the common man. So far two tram rides, one jet boat, and soon, a railroad state park.

With the state park network having a foothold on camping, providing everything but cable and internet for a reasonable price, private RV parks are almost non-existent. I haven’t had Wifi for days, but I have stayed in some very scenic places: Pipestream, Hawks Nest, Watoga on the Greenbriar River, and Forest camps as well.

I am also in a radio free zone, created so that researchers with America’s largest moving telescope at the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory can search for evidence of other solar systems like ours. 12,000 acres with no cell towers or radio waves. Big bang, anyone?

Can’t get that John Denver song out of my head. “Country roads, take me home, to the place that I belong, West Virginia, Mountain Mama, take me home, country roads.”The roads wind as we traverse the Appalachians, rising to maybe 4,000 feet. That’s tall for very old eroded mountains. Once we put a destination into our Garmain and instead of the main roads, we went on a windy twisty adventure. Underneath the canopy of the forest, mountain laurels were popping with pale pink blooms, much like the dogwood of East Texas in the spring. Still very few rhodies. Whenever I sighted one I felt like a bird watcher logging a rare bird. Two weeks from now the woods will be bursting with pink. Appalachian spring is wonderful.

I love that the barns are unpainted here, filled with square hay bales, bringing back memories of stacking them in the barn of my childhood, creating grand staircases and rooms and castles smelling of fresh hay. I love that the rhododendron planted 60 years ago right by the front door of a house is now larger than the house, and the homeowners have abandoned using the front door rather than cut it back. I love the peonies, planted close to the road so that passersby can admire their pink and white and purple blooms. I love the flame azaleas, bursts of fiery orange in the landscape.

I can see most things here from John Denver’s song, Almost heaven, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.There’s just one line where I think the writer gave up on a rhyme that makes sense: Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.  ????What????