West Virginia, Wild & Wonderful

We've successfully returned from our West Virginia adventures with bellies full of biscuits and cameras full of photos, a banjo gig playing in our memories.

We began our travels early Saturday with a trip to Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson's second home near Lynchburg, Virginia. It felt almost like a business trip, now that my business is so closely related to presidential home renovations, but that didn't detract too much from the architectural charm of the quirky octagonal design. That guy sure had him some ideas. This morning, I read that more of Jefferson's furniture was recently uncovered, something I feel deep pangs of jealousy about, though our little house museum at Montpelier is coming along at a faster clip nonetheless. Huzzah! This is a lesson I've learned from the UVa/Virginia Tech rivalry -- it's important to know if you're a Wahoo or a Hokie.

I get a little twitchy whenever we're in Lynchburg. Sure, there's Biscuitville, which makes me happy. But there's also that sticky aura of all the bad things about the South lingering in the air, too. Maybe it's Jerry Falwell's omnipresence? (Coincidentally, I read further twitchy things about Liberty University in My Year of Living Biblically the night afterward. Looks like I'm up for The Unlikely Disciple next...) It was nice to sail through Lynchburg Saturday afternoon toward the Almost Heaven state.

Our first interactions with West Virginia, at a working rest stop (can you imagine?!), were pleasant and involved a 4-H donation in exchange for some trail mix. Afterward, we continued toward our ultimate destination: White Sulphur Springs, which turned out to be the ultimate in rust-belt mining towns with no discernible high mineral or sulphur content, and lots of ritzy cars, golf bags, and hillbillies.

This is the highlight, the mainstay, of the town's economy, the Greenbrier Resort.

The Greenbrier is a special sort of place. I think I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Beneath the Greenbrier is an enormous bunker designed to hide members of Congress and their families during a nuclear attack on Washington. The government project was outed in a 1992 Washington Post article and the bunker was abandoned for those purposes within the week. For a stiff $60 fee, we could have toured the bunkers, but given the upstairs we both agreed it was unnecessary. Also, a little fact that slipped out, that diplomats from Axis countries, along with their families, were interned at Greenbrier throughout the war, made it seem even weirder to go underground. We walked by the famous pool, which was built over the main bunker areas to draw away unwanted attention, witnessed the conclusion of a patio wedding, and trekked through the mall area beneath the ball rooms.

Definitely one of the weirdest places we've ever visited.

Afterward, to get that cloying nuclear-holocaust-meets-inconsistent-decor-plus-southern- vacation-getaway-near-coal-mines feeling, we revived ourselves with Mason jar drinks at The Mason Jar, a trend after my own hippie Mason jar drinking heart. And before I hear any lip about it, Strizak, remember: there's always a Mason jar waiting for you at my house. You know you're just jealous! (Note: Ben claimed that his drink tasted very "yellow.")

In the dwindling light, we drove through the farm country west of Lewisburg, West Virginia, near cattle ranches and turkey compounds. That's where we encountered the fabled covered bridge of the last post, and where we spied idyllic county knolls and rolling hills at sunset before hitting the pavement back east after a short detour through Lewisburg (which has a New Hope, PA meets Confederate Cemetery sort of feel). There were no rooms at the inns of Lewisburg and only $495/night rooms at the Greenbrier, neither of which seemed nicer than our own apartment anyway, so we huffed it back as the light faded.

Of course, there's nothin' like a late night ice cream stop in Staunton on the way home. The lines at Kline's Dairy Bar were long and Ben holds some irrational beliefs about the quality of their product (though I maintain that he's wrong; we're leaving it to a scientific stop for further evidence later in the month), so we stuck to the original plan at Wright's Dairy Rite. I had a caramel sundae, which is my dessert obsession of the moment (aside from banana-ice cream combos) and Ben tried a malted shake. Both good for weary travelers, though we're continuing our quest toward ice cream perfection.

The next morning, safely back in our pad, Ben treated us to a true Southern feast to solidify memories of our back roads weekend jaunt: biscuit breakfast sandwiches with an icy Coke.

What more could a girl ask for?