Tag: #westvirginia

Charleston West Virginia

10 May 2018

Today I really wasn’t into doing much but had to find a fridge magnet for West Virginia (WV). My stop at the capital of WV, Charleston, had a gift shop in the West Virginia State Museum where I succeeded in finding my magnet.

This museum has one of the best displays of history. I was very moved in many parts, especially at the end of the tour with the song“Take me home country road, to the place, I belong. West Virginia.Mountain Mamma. Take me home“. This museum covered railroads and coal mining, marching bands and immigration, a pumpkin festival and Italian festival and of course the Civil War and much more.

The quirky post today is this display in the museum. The Dressed Fleas Emmiline and Alexander.

The Capitol Building in Charleston WV.

Charleston University

Some of the houses on the Ohio River who have a direct view of the Capitol Building.

My highlight for today was cooking for my airbnb hosts in Pennsylvania, Keith and Shanda. I have been missing my home cooking and cooked potato and carrot soup, pasta sauce “a la Edi” and tomorrow I will cook my brocolli soup and tortellini carbonara.

Augusta Ohio/Huntington West Virginia

The road from Cincinatti Ohio to West Virginia runs through beautiful green lush country side. The treescape makes for a pleasant drive as was the scenery through Kentucky, Virginia, North and South Carolina. The roadkill through those states has been significant compared to what I see on my roadtrips driving from New South Wales to Queensland.

The roadkill I have seen is around 50 animals per hour, often small, which I expect would be squirrels and birds, and larger raccoons, possums, small pigs or hogs and a few larger furry animals I could not discern. I prefer not to drive at night as I expect I would encounter more live animals on the road at that time than I do through the day. I am thankful the animals I have almost hit were on roads where I was travelling slow enough to miss them without putting myself in danger. A few orange birds which I think are the Northern Cardinal (the state bird of Kentucky) have played chicken with my car several times, I had to stop several times for squirrels, twice for beaver and once for a turkey. I have no intention or wish to hit any animal, for theirs and my safety. This country has lots of wild animals. I have yet to see a bear and would enjoy that so long as he or she isn’t hungry and is not coming in my direction.

I didn’t do much sightseeing today but I stopped off at Augusta Kentucky (there are several States where you continually cross their borders as the road winds in and out of the State).

I saw a documentary with George Clooney about this town of 1,100. He went to Augusta University and his aunt, the actress, singer, Rosemary Clooney lived in Augusta.

Augusta’s history dates back to 1787

and has a ferry which takes cars across the Ohio River for $5US.

Some of their historical buildings

On arriving in Huntington WV fatigue has set in and I will have a rest for the remainder of today.

I will take this opportunity to provide some information which might be of use for others who are planning a roadtrip.

Travelmath.com is a trip calculator for distances in kilometres and miles, travel time between 2 cities and naming cities or towns to stop in between.

Something very frustrating in the USA is mobile phone reception for data and/or calls. For a country which sends people to the moon and into space it has not mastered phone and data service in all parts of their country. I have been without reception in Mississippi and now in Huntington West Virginia (WV), the second largest city in WV, I have no reception. Whistleout is an excellent site which shows you the coverage for providers and not one covers all the USA.