We were delighted to finally get the chance to take a short walk on the wharf near our Morgantown hotel. The previous night's rain had left the temperature slightly cooler, and we had breakfast in the sister cafe to the one where we ate the previous day, so we already felt like Morgantown insiders. We were especially pleased because we had a day of driving and exploring ahead.
Rather than head straight to Charleston, our base for the next three days, we took a detour into the Monongahela National Forest and the Canaan Valley. an area we all fell for immediately and could definitely see returning to for a longer stay. Charming towns named Thomas, Davis, and Parsons offer shopping, dining and entertainment throughout this region tucked into the mountains, through one tree lined country road after another. It's all just blissfully beautiful. As we first entered Tucker County, Maddie spotted an appropriately tiny sign off the side of the road for the "smallest church in 48 states." Though we had passed it, we had to find the first safe spot to turn around and go back to visit Our Lady of the Pines, as these are the bonus moments road trips provide.
Since we were only there a day, we had to limit ourselves to one short hike - the Lindy Point Overlook - and a walk to an overview of the Blackwater Falls, but there are many gorgeous hikes in these mountains. The Lindy Park trail provided the textbook opportunity for the kids to observe the compresssion (on the trail enclosed by trees) and then EXPANSION (once we arrived at the edge of the cliff to that outrageous view) that Wright had promised would never fail to deliver. I would happily come back to just this area for a fall visit for several longer hikes through these gorgeous woods.
Compression
EXPANSION! :)
In Davis, we shopped in some more cool (and clearly progressive!) shops, had a wonderful linner in Milo's, the restaurant in Bright Morning Inn, a historic inn first built in 1896! One quick foray into a riverside park, and we were off to Charleston, where we would finally check in at 9:00 PM.
We were thrilled to notice windmills all around us and to learn that the Mountaineer Wind Energy Center in Thomas was one of the first in the state. To see an area that had originally been born due to immigrants coming from all over to gain their livelihood, if not fortunes, through coal mining, it was beyond gratifying to see the state moving toward green energy in this way.
Other than finding unexpected treasures such as the tiny church, one of my favorite parts of road trips is this sight (and sound!) in the back seat.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Gallup vacation if we didn't have at least one hotel switch up. The hotel Dana had booked in advance did not have the location we had hoped for, so we made a quick change to one less than a mile away but with a perfect location on the river and near downtown. Today, we explore Charleston, from our now perfectly situated hotel.
We started our Thursday with breakfast in another UWVA favorite spot called Terra Cafe. This one reminded Dana and me a bit of Gainesville's beloved Chaucer's. In each place we've eaten, the service staff, predominantly made up of the local college kids, couldn't be any nicer. That's been the main takeaway from Morgantown, as we were to spend the entire day exploring historic houses outside of the city limits.
After learning earlier in the week that we were close to the Pope-Leighey House, a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home near Alexandria, we got to talking Wright with Scott, whose own home's redesign was inspired, in part, by Wright's thoughts on the importance of a structure working in harmony with its outdoor surroundings. When he mentioned that Fallingwater, considered by many to be Wright's crown jewel, was not all that far away in Western Pennsylvania, I'm not sure whether it was Maddie or Dana who got more excited. Regardless, by the time we had arrived to our hotel in Shepherdstown that night, they had cooked up a potential plan to make the pilgrimage. They just needed to know from me on what day we could make it work. Thursday it was!
As I'd mentioned yesterday, we were initially going to visit Arthurdale on the way into Morgantown, and that was the only "must" in my book for this area. Once we modified to be able to explore more of the George Washington Heritage Trail, it meant that our Thursday would be all about houses and history. Which wound up making for a rather fabulous day.
I had stumbled upon information about Arthurdale during one of my several research sessions for this trip, though I couldn't remember exactly how or where. After following yet another curving, hilly country road for about 20 minutes, the modest sign indicated we had arrived. As we stood reading the sign outside the main community house, a dear woman, perhaps in her late 60's, came running out, shocked and thrilled to see visitors there. She had recruited Roger, her recently retired husband to be a tour guide for the day (though I'm sure she's reassured him that nobody would come), and they were both incredulous/ecstatic that we had somehow discovered them. They reminded us a bit of Luigi and friends in Cars, so thrilled that a visitor had taken an exit off the big highway to come see them. Daniel played James Taylor's "Our Town" as we left just to insure I shed a tear or two.
What followed was the most charming tour we may have ever had, filled with details of Roger's own life as a country mouse in another part of West Virginia and how he and his wife settled on Arthurdale, living down the hill in a house once built as part of the original community, as a location that was big enough for her city girl self but still quiet enough for him. She seemingly runs the Arthurdale operation, one of only two of the 99 communities such as this one that were created during FDR's tenure. Their sister property is somewhere in Arkansas.
This one was the first and Eleanor's baby. She would come out from DC often to check on the construction, offer suggestions and mandates (each kitchen must have an electric refrigerator, she insisted), and rewarded the diplomas at every single high school graduation. She strongly believed - and clearly made a convincing case to her husband - that providing people who had lost everything during the Depression with a lovely home with all the modern amenities, a community gathering place where they could come to know and rely on their neighbors, and the means to provide for themselves by giving them the land and livestock to start productive farms, would help lift the nation. The government supported this endeavor, which seemingly was a smashing success for the families who lived here, until 1947, when they allowed the area to become privatized by selling off their holdings.
When some former residents returned to begin planning a reunion in the early 1980's, they were appalled to find the area had largely fallen into disrepair. They formed Arthurdale Heritage, Inc. and have been slowly acquiring, refurbishing and restoring the history ever since. Roger raved about Molly, their Americorps employee for the past three years who just completed her Masters in Public History. She's about to head off to Charleston for a big, important job, but she sure did revolutionize the place and update their many historic displays while she's been there. She also seemed quite lovely.
When Eleanor visited, she lived in the bottom floor of the house across the street from the Esso Station.
Roger talks FDR
The map of the original houses
Reminded me a bit of our kitchen
At one point, the land was used as a factory to make target kites, something ingenious I'd never heard of before. The boat would fly them to provide gunners practice with targeting enemy planes from afar.
While we might have lingered for another couple of hours just to talk to sweet Roger, it was time to hit the road to Pennsylvania and our Wright afternoon. Dana had booked us tours at Polymath Park, which may one day be the premier location to see Wright's houses, as two have been dismantled from other locations where they were about to be demolished and relocated here in this beautiful, privately owned "park."
Our tour guide Logan was several decades younger and a good bit less charming than Roger - but he was still quite informative, and the homes didn't disappoint. Since the tours of the interior of Fallingwater were booked a month in advance, we settled on the self-guided exterior tour, which wound up being more than sufficient, but we were happy to be reminded on this tour of all the features of the interior of Wright's vision - most memorably "compression, then EXPANSION," which we will likely be saying for the rest of the trip. ;)
compression
EXPANSION :)
Chilling in the master bedroom
Next stop was Fallingwater, and it did not disappoint. Though we couldn't tour the interior, we were able to go everywhere else, and the property is gorgeous, the exterior balconies ample, and the windows transparent ;) We even caught parts of a couple of private tours to fill in some information we otherwise wouldn't have known. For instance, the family originally assumed the home would be built on the land we now stand to get that iconic view, but Wright was far more interested in integrating the home with their beloved waterfall then simply giving them a great view of it.
As we arrived to Polymath, all of our phones began blaring with a tornado warning. Unsure what to do, we pressed on. The tour guides were also concerned but opted to press on. We had little weather disturbance at all during our entire time at Polymath, the short drive back to Fallingwater, or our entire few hours roaming around that architectural gem. That said, falling water took on a whole new meaning, as Maddie took the wheel to drive us back to Morgantown. What a torrential storm! Maddie drove like a champ, and we managed to duck into our little riverside restaurant on the Wharf before the next huge wave, complete with hailstones this time, came through.
We're hoping the rain is out of WVA's system, as we head today to Monongahela National Forest and then Charleston. I'm sure we'll be envisioning all of the ways Wright might perfectly integrate a home into the spectacular forest vistas we will explore today.
West Virginia is one of three remaining states we have to explore in our "Amber Waves" tour of the past dozen years or so. Years ago, when we were making our way from one state to another, we briefly drove through West Virginia on the highway, and I suggested to Dana that we get off an find an interesting spot to explore and take a respite. At the time, he was more interested in getting to our destination than checking off a state in the then early stages of our quest, so we pressed on. For the next many years, each time I would propose we begin planning our West Virginia adventure, he would grumble some version of "If I'd only gotten off that exit and stopped at a Dunkin Donuts, we'd be heading to Europe instead!"
This became a bit, as much as it did capture some of his - and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, all of our - uncertainty about just how wonderful a vacation centered on West Virginia might be. When we arrived to our charming Bavarian Inn a few nights ago, and I found the very first of the FAQs to be one I had heard earlier that day from both Scott and Anne, I had to laugh: "Why West Virginia?"
Until a few days ago, our family's most emotional connection to this state came from Mark Strong's moving performance in the otherwise better to forget sequel to Kingsman. As he prepares to end his life - and take out a bunch of the bad guys along with him - Merlin sings "Take Me Home" - and West Virginia suddenly held more allure. If you haven't watched the scene in a while, or ever, here it is...
Needless to say, that song was the first one added to our vacation's playlist. As one might imagine, there've been a whole lotta "Mountain Momma" references over the past several days. I was delighted to see that West Virginia used the song in a tourism campaign video, perhaps hoping to provide a few definitive answers to that dismissive "Why West Virginia?" question.
As we said our goodbyes to the eastern panhandle yesterday morning, bidding adieu to the Potomac and our beloved Bavarian Inn, having breakfast at Betty's, a local institution, with a tree planted outside - and ribbons always added - to honor the loss of a loved one in the community. we opted to take the slightly longer route on another leg of the George Washington Heritage Trail that maps out the route our first President took through these parts so many years ago.
While this route did offer even more lovely country roads, it must be said, yet again, that the highways in these parts (West Virginia, Maryland, where much of our driving officially took place) are nearly as spectacular. Lush, curving, hilly, relatively traffic free, they don't even seem like distant cousins to the highways we drive at home. Still, the best part about taking the "Trail" is that it takes you right through charming towns such as Martinsburg and Berkeley Springs.
There was neither the time nor the inclination to stop at every point of interest along the way, but we did see "George Washington's bathtub," where he enjoyed the famed, healing waters of Berkeley Springs, each took a turn at the water fountain (and then bought a bottle of the stuff to take with us!) and enjoy lunch at Tari's , where it was easy to see why it was a local favorite. We also drove up the Cacapon Mountain in the heart of town for a beautiful, if slightly hazy, panoramic view of the landscape below.
Originally on yesterday's agenda was a visit to Arthurdale, known as Eleanor Roosevelt's village, but that activity was postponed until this morning, so I will wrap up this blog in just a moment to get the show on the road. Arriving in Morgantown around 7:00 PM yesterday evening, we weren't initially all that impressed. The appeal of West Virginia, thus far, are those quiet country roads, the charming cafes where the locals all know your name, the hikes and forests and mountains. While our time here has been limited to our forays out for dinner at Ogawa, a wonderful little college favorite Japanese restaurant, followed by dessert at Apple Annie's, another Morgantown institution, each of those delightful spots was dropped in its own landscape of asphalt and concrete, lessening their overall appeal just a smidge.
Still, as I look out over the peaceful Monongahela River and look forward to this evening's exploration of Morgantown's wharf district, I can already offer a hearty defense of why we chose West Virginia as this year's vacation spot, and that's before our whitewater adventure or our spa treatments at the Greenbrier!
