Ehmann Family: February vacation to the Virginias

For the first half of February break we visited VA and WV. WV's country roads were made famous by New Mexico-born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr, and we drove many of them on this trip, minus the misty taste of moonshine, with teardrops in our eyes (from the Tabasco).

We started in bluer pastures of regular Virginia, flying into Richmond to follow in footsteps of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in spring 1865.

With supply lines cut and no hope of uniting with the North Carolina army, General Lee surrendered in the town of Appomattox Court House

The tiny town center was frozen in time, including the general store. We've been reading the Little House series at home, and we love their description of sweet, sweet mo-lasses

This ranger met President Obama when he visited Kenai Fjords in Alaska

Scoundrel Jeff Davis set up the last capital of the Confederacy in Danville, VA before being rounded up and sent off to join R. E. Lee at Fort Monroe

The Booker T. Washington site made a great segue from Appomattox. Booker was born a slave on a small Virginia tobacco farm where life was a miserable grind. He was 12 when the war ended and he joined his family as they walked to WV to work in the mines for their own wages. Working in the mines makes one appreciate the value of education and Booker hightailed it to Hampton, VA for his own schooling, which eventually led him to establish the Tuskegee Institute. Tuskegee recruited George Washington Carver of goober fame. A craze for fluffernutters has recently infected our household and although I hold little hope of fluff's invention 5 miles from here receiving recognition from the Department of the Interior, it's fun to think that peanut butter's rise to ubiquity in America started with a 12-year old boy walking away from a life of fanning away flies on a dingy Virginia farm.

Tobacco farming is dirty, awful work for a dirty, awful product

Our destination in WV was The Greenbrier, a famous grand hotel that contains the bunker to which Congress was supposed to shelter during Nuclear War.

The hotel loved its floral theme

and had many grand areas. The clientele were mostly old white people with strange groups of wealthy-looking 20-something white people mixed in. Not many white middle-aged folks with kids like us. Why young people would come to this place is beyond me and my personal theory is that they were either Republican lobbyists from DC or family members of white Senators and Congressmen who had some deal with the hotel.

We ditched the Greenbrier's pricey activities for snow tubing at a place that blew their own snow.

I think my policy on new phones will be to buy every 5th generation iPhone. I went from the 5S to an 11 and the camera quality is amazing. This is the wide-angle setting.

Portrait mode

Back at the hotel (note the cushions) we couldn't get a table for Caroline's birthday dinner. Instead we ordered room service pizza.

Erin tried the Tabasco sauce and was sorry (video is below)

All recovered, we bowled at the in-house lanes

Tessie nearly tossed her cookies on the winding roads up to the New River Gorge

That's the New River Gorge Bridge that you may have seen on the WV state quarter. Heather and the younger crew stayed at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center, which covered a three-fer of NPS sites for the New River Gorge, Gauley River, and the Bluestone River.

Dave and Caroline went ziplining for Caroline's birthday

Right off the highway from Beckley, WV is Tamarack, an outlet for all WV-made crafts

We diversified the colors of our Fiestaware

Tessie acquired Moonlight

and then it was back to Boston from Charleston. Getting to the Charleston airport is an experience. You drive up a winding mountain road and encounter the airport parking lot just below the top of the mountain. Going up the stairs from the garage, you reach ground level of the terminal and tarmac and realize that the airport is built on top of a mountain. Apparently it took 2 million pounds of explosives to build the site, but taking off and landing from a mountaintop makes sense given the topography. Too bad Henry John Deutschendorf Jr didn't take aircraft safety so seriously.