A Journey to West Viginia

 This was not a spur of the moment trip by any means.  We had this in the planning with our son Daniel and his wife Amanda for at least several months.  Because of  corona virus we all agreed to self quarantine for 10 days before getting together and sharing a cabin.  Meeting up with your loved ones is possible with everyone agreeing to self-quarantine ahead of time- something to think about with the holidays coming up.  And we may have gotten the number of days wrong, it should be 14 instead of 10.  The road trip did seem strange, what with always having to remember to wear our mask anytime we stepped out of the car.  Our stops were brief, no lingering in store or touching merchandise.  The trip seemed strange in another sense- in just the weird feeling of being miles away from the small circumscribed world we had surrounded ourselves with the past seven months- something akin to bursting out of prison!  

We saw very little of fall colors, except for the blazing yellow of maple leaves, while driving through the mid-western states.   That dramatically changed once we drove into the higher elevations of West Virginia.  Seneca Rocks, pictured above, is in the north central area of the state.  The 900-foot quartzite formation is in the North Fork Valley of the Monongahela National Forest.  I took that picture standing in front of our cabin.  Seneca Rocks got its name from the Seneca Indians who made the area their home.  They were probably the first of many who have scaled the walls of the mountain over the years.  In 1943-44 The U.S. military used Seneca Rocks to train troops for mountaineering.

No, that was not our cabin, we had a standard A-frame vacation home rented from the Yokum's Vactionland Resort.  The Yokum family has a connection to the above house.  Shirley Yokum (who passed this year at the age of 100) was the granddaughter of the family who owned it.  It was constructed in 1839 by Jacob Siles.  A son, William, added a second story.  He fought in the Confederacy of the Civil War.  Several descendants lived in the home until 1947 when the Forest Service purchased the home.  It is called a "Melting Pot" house as it is a Appalachian building with German features as well as Tudor fireplaces and French influences seen in the southern style front porch and summer kitchen. 

We drove up to Spruce Knob (also located in the Monongahela Forest, as well as did some hiking in the area.  It is the highest peak at 4,860 feet, in West Virginia.  The picture above is just one of the many sights we viewed overlooking hardwood forests of maple, beech, cherry- all dressed in the finest fall colors which we have not seen in a long time.  Spruce trees are also plentiful, with limbs on only one side because of a strong breeze which blows and prevents growth on the other.  Hence the nickname of

"The land of the Whispering One Sided Spruce".  I have more to share with you on this fantastic mountainous region in my next posting.