West Virginia has always conjured up images in my mind of the locals from Deliverance, hillbillies from the backwoods of Appalachia (even though it was set in Georgia). An unfair stereotype to be sure, but it occurred to me there wasn't a single city or landmark in the state that I could name.
Staying away from the obvious place is my second rule, but what if nothing is obvious? Google told me that with only 46,000 (and declining) people, Charleston is their capital and largest city. So if Charleston was "obvious", what were my other options?
The New River Gorge National Park caught my eye. There was something I could do. I looked for places near the park I could stay that had large enough populations to offer interesting activities. I came up with Beckley.
The first part of the drive was pretty uneventful except for the storm that had chased me out of the Indy 500 early. After a few hours in the rain, I stopped for the night in Columbus, Ohio to let the weather pass.
That night I had a conversation with a bartender. I asked her what she thought of Columbus and asked for recommendations for when I came back through. She hated Columbus, she told me, and she couldn’t recommend anywhere in Ohio. "So, why are you still here?" I asked. She told me that she was super close to her mom who lived nearby and she couldn’t imagine being apart from her.
For a simple conversation, this one stuck with me for a while, and I’m not entirely sure why. I’m lucky to have a wonderful family. Sure, they have their eccentricities. Sure, they push my buttons sometimes. But there are no assholes. There is no one you dread seeing at holiday gatherings.
Outside of being a primary caregiver, I couldn’t imagine living somewhere I hated in order to be physically close to any of them. Nor could I imagine one of them expecting me to. I don’t think I would be off base to say that a bit of distance is actually healthy for us. Maybe the bartender was overly clingy. Maybe my family is overly independent. I don’t know, but like I said, that conversation has stuck with me.
The next day the sun was out again and I found West Virginia to be a collection of hills and mountains covered with trees - very little else. Cell reception kept going in and out.
I stopped for dinner in Charleston. It was nice and had a cute little downtown along the Kanawha River, but it was practically deserted. Charleston is, for all intents and purposes, a college town in addition to being the capital. And schools were out of session. I was feeling like a light dinner so I ordered a salad at Adelphia Sports Bar & Grill. What I got was the largest salad I have ever seen in my life. I kept the leftovers and it provided me with two meals more.
(pint glass for scale)
I also discovered a restaurant with one of my new favorite names:
BECKLEY
My Airbnb in Beckley was built on the side of a hill, and the whole house had a slant. Not a severe funhouse slant, but one that was pronounced enough to make everything feel slightly off all of the time. And each room's slant seemed to go in a different direction, so I would get a slight momentary feeling of being off balance when walking from the bedroom to the kitchen.
The host had messaged me the day before saying that the AC was broken, but he’d put in a big fan and he would be sending someone by. Later in that week, he sent an HVAC tech out to repair it. He unlocked the door and walked straight in while I was on a Teams meeting - no knock or anything. He evaluated the unit and told me, after my meeting was over, that it needed new parts but there was a national shortage of parts, so it would be 2-3 months before it could be fixed.
When I had booked the place I had been feeling a little tapped out from the previous few weeks, so I opted for something on the cheaper side. You get what you pay for, I guess.
(not the actual guy)
The following day, I walked to Beckley which was a 20-minute walk to the top of my steep hill and down to the bottom of another. Downtown was depressing. Two thirds of the store spaces were vacant. I only saw a handful of people walking the streets, many of them seemed to be in the throes of meth addiction.
Small banners for Memorial Day adorned all the street lights, picturing men and women from the area who had died while serving in one of the many wars the US has fought over the last century. Walking through a ghost town while its ghosts looked down at me left me chilly despite the sunny weather.
Beckley’s population on this year’s census was 16,362, which is down 4.9% from the last one in 2020, and down 20% from its peak in 1980. Its poverty rate is 22.43%, more than twice the national average. Beckley is a dying town.
The major driver of this downward trend was the mechanization of coal mining, which powered the local economy from 1890 to the 1980’s. As mining became more automated in the 80’s, thousands of people in the area lost their jobs.
Downtown Beckley was so bleak, I didn’t return to it once.
I did however, take several walks around the neighborhood I was staying in, which was very pleasant. The vantage point at the top of my street provided views of rolling green hills and cute houses.
Also at the top of the hill, I discovered the Black Circle Bistro, which was much cooler than I would have expected for Beckley. It was started by a couple of young women from South Carolina. It had a fantastic menu, but was primarily known for its burgers.
There were several pinball games against the wall, and fun stickers decorated many of the surfaces. The decor and menu theme was music from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and vinyl records - hence, black circle.
One afternoon, while eating lunch at the Black Circle Bistro, the sun peeked out from the clouds and a gorgeous full arc rainbow broke across the sky. I rushed up to the rooftop patio to admire it and take some pictures. Its colors were vivid and clearly defined.
Later in the week, I was running an errand in the car when I caught a whiff of…no, it couldn’t be. I got out of the car, went around the back and opened the liftgate. I put my face down in the carpeting and WOW, it was ripe. The Butter was back or, to be more precise, it had never left.
I was determined this time to deal with The Butter once and for all. After Googling a few remedies for removing smells from industrial carpets, I decided on all of them. I drove to the local Walgreens and bought their largest bottle of Dawn dish soap, every box of baking soda they had on the shelf, two gallons of vinegar, and a stiff brush.
Back at the house, I removed the carpeted sections from the back of Pierogi and spent the next two hours on the front lawn scrubbing them with a paste made from Dawn and baking soda. I then poured vinegar on them, making them foam like a volcano from science class - it was very satisfying. Finally, I rinsed them off using the hose. I looked at the four sections when I was done, out of breath, skin missing from several knuckles, the wounds stinging from the vinegar. This time, I had been victorious. I was quite certain.
I left the sections in the yard overnight to air dry and reassembled the car in the morning. It was then I noticed that my cleaning method had killed most of the grass, leaving it shriveled and brown.
The host ended up being cool about it, just as I had been understanding about the AC. I really wish I’d had the presence of mind to take pictures of the whole thing, but it had been messy work.
NEW RIVER GORGE BRIDGE WALK
I spoke on the phone with my mom and learned that she and her partner Jeff had been to the area to visit the New River Gorge National Park just six months before. Jeff had a mission to visit every one of the 63 national parks. New River Gorge is the youngest of all the parks and had been the last one on his list.
When I asked what was the number one activity I should do, he said hands down it was the Bridge Walk. He then sent over his full 6-page itinerary for the trip. Jeff was a meticulous planner and a great stepdad-to-be. I had plans to be in Ithaca a few weeks later to marry them.
The New River Gorge Bridge is a marvel of engineering. It is the longest single-arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere, the third highest bridge in the US, and the fifth highest vehicle carrying bridge in the world. The arch is 1,700 feet wide at its base and the bridge is 3,300 feet long - nearly two thirds of a mile.
It took three years to construct, from 1974 to 1977, and cost $37 Million in 1970s dollars. Before its construction, people had to drive 40 minutes on a winding mountain road to cross the gorge, now they do it in less than a minute.
The Bridge Walk was opened to the public in 2009. Guides take people onto the structure underneath the road on walking tours that runs the length of the bridge on a two-foot wide path that was built for maintenance and inspections. For safety, they retrofitted the walkway with a safety cable that runs its entire length. Tourists clip themselves in with “wheelie things” (the tour guide assured everyone that this is the technical term), that artfully keep them attached to the cable continuously, even through 69 anchor points.
My tour group was ten people. Our guide TJ was a local West Virginian, born and raised. He gave us a plethora of facts & figures, history, and colorful local lore during our two and a half hour walk.
I’m not afraid of heights, but walking on the narrow path 876 feet above the water…let’s just say I held on very tightly to the handrails for a while. By the halfway point I had acclimated enough and was able to let go of the railings and move more freely. When we stopped to sit and dangle our feet off the edge, I participated.
Far below, white water rafters that were barely specks navigated rapids. A train that must have been a mile long carried coal along tracks that bordered the river.
A peregrine falcon circled far below us. TJ told us that charities had partnered with the National Park Service to use this bridge as a site to host falcon chicks and introduce them into the wild as part of their preservation efforts that finally got the birds off of the endangered species list in 1999. He told us that a couple of times he’d seen up close a falcon swoop in suddenly and grab a wayward pigeon just under the bridge.
TJ was born in 1976, so he had no firsthand memories of the bridge construction. Growing up in the region though, the older boys told stories about the times when they would sneak onto the partially completed bridge and jump off it into the safety nets that had been hung to save workers if they fell. He said the thing they talked about most is how much it had hurt. True or not, it was one hell of a story.
This tour was one of the most memorable things I have done so far on this trip. It was exhilarating being that high above the ground without a piece of glass in front of me. Now whenever I hear how tall something is, I compare it in my head to that experience. 300 feet tall? Pfft. That’s like a third of the New River Gorge Bridge.
FAYETTEVILLE
After the bridge tour, Jeff had recommended that I go to the tiny nearby town of Fayetteville and have dinner at a restaurant called Wanderlust Creativefoods, so I did. Wanderlust’s menu was a fusion of many cuisines - Indian, Italian, Moroccan, and more. It had some familiar dishes and other cross-cultural flavor combinations I’ve never tasted anywhere else. The proprietor/chef walked around to each table, checking in and chatting with each table for a couple of minutes.
Afterward, I wandered around as day drifted into dusk. I stopped into Water Stone Outdoors to poke around and grab a couple of stickers for my laptop. I ate dessert at the Secret Sandwich Society, which was the place locals had recommended the most.
Fayetteville, I learned, was the gateway to the park, the place where most visitors stay while exploring New River Gorge. In retrospect, I probably should have stayed there instead of Buckley.
But, my week was up. I’d completed my time in the nations’ second most boring state (according to the World Population Review). Overall, were it not for the New River Gorge, I would be inclined to agree with that assessment. It appeared to be a state that has fallen on hard times, but I had a decent week. It was far from thrilling, but I found my share of beauty and entertainment. In any case, I replaced the unflattering redneck stereotypes I had associated with the state in favor of personal memories.
On my way out of town, I stopped at a marketplace right off the highway called Tamarack. The place was massive, featuring 2800 artisans representing all 55 counties of West Virginia. I wandered around looking for a wedding gift for my mom and Jeff, finally settling on vivid blue agate bookends.
Then I was off to a state that has a reputation for being excruciatingly milquetoast - a state ranked the fifteenth worst by US News and World Report.
Yup, I was on my way back to Ohio.
Yes, and…
Matt
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