2018beachtrip

[2018beachtrip]

Beautiful lake where we camped in Kentucky. Western part of the state was more affluent than the Eastern mountains. They even had stores! We camped in a dry county. You had to drive five miles for beer. Then on to Ohio where we will go to the Air Force museum. Also there is a restored frank Lloyd house here.

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Heading west in the morning for more adventures.

[2018beachtrip]

West Virginia quilt trail.

[2018beachtrip]

Some views of the Greenbank observatory. This is the big dish, and they have displays of the discoveries in radio astronomy through the years. The original hyperbolic dish was made in Grote Reber in his back yard with no funding in the late 30’s. He used parts from the local hardware store. Lots of big minds cycle through here, with over 100 full time smarty pants here year round. This is the National Radio Free Zone since 1958. No cell phones, no spark plug engines onsite, no microwaves in the area. They have wall phones and internet. But very rural life here with spectacular views. Day and night they look for ET, pulsars, black holes and so on. They work with Chinese and Russian scientists as well. We are not far from the Greenbriar underground bunker where the government bigwigs were heading to in case of nuclear attack. Just several hundred miles by air from DC.

[2018beachtrip]

So we are a few miles from Greenbank observatory. They have been searching for extraterrestrial life and have made many discoveries we went on a tour of the grounds, and learned a lot about radio waves. The bottom pics are a spicebush swallowtail, as well as a pic of the numerous wildflowers everywhere. Where there are wildflowers, there are butterflies, lot of them in lots of varieties.

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The Cass lunch counter, and our beautiful creek side campsite. One more train ride view

[2018beachtrip]

So we took a tour of the train shop. They keep these 100+ year old engines in working order. It was a little surreal. Some people had sandals on, there was stuff all over, chains hanging down, and we came trooping through. It was fascinating.

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Other views of the trains. Breathtaking views.

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Remnants of the saw mill where the steam engines were. Originally built in 1902, rebuilt after a fire in 1922. Capacity was 125,000 board feet per 11 hour shift. They worked a day and night shift. In 1960 one day they told everyone not to return after lunch and closed down. It was of course devastating to the area. There are a surprising number of jobs around here. The railroad still employs 85 people, half full timers. The others work in the winter at a nearby ski hill. There are still lumberyards, a fence company and the observatory plus supporting businesses.

[2018beachtrip]

So the reason David wanted to stop here was to see the steam engines. We took a lovely ride up a mountain on old logging rails. This area had logging, wood mills and needed a way to get the logs down. They used Shay engines as they had all wheel drive so they would lay temporary rails and the engines were able to stay on them. There were 6,000 loggers in the hills and 3,000 at the mill. And they were doing very strenuous and dangerous jobs. The last pic is one of the switchbacks, they would go straight to clear the y crossing, switch the crossing and put the train on the new spur. It was very inventive and saved long curves to get up and down

[2018beachtrip]

So our grandkids and son are spending time with their Mom’s family this week and we have moved on to West Virginia. What an absolutely gorgeous state. Still very rural, and you have to be pretty rugged to survive here. Of course there are cities and populated areas, but we haven’t seen them yet.

[2018beachtrip]

So a lot has happened since our last post. We returned to FL for a week, then we took the grandkids (we let our son tag along) to Hershey for an RV trip, then to an RV resort close to their house. There was a big water park and guess who was the biggest kid. Poppy was in his glory in the pools there. They are very good swimmers. The bottom picture is the four year old doing a handstand. Cracked us up. They are like fish, very comfortable in the water. I am so glad their parents have made it a priority that they are good swimmers.

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Ponies at Assateague. The state park at Assateague had ponies wandering the campsites, including a foal a few months old. They control the size of the herd with birth control darts. At nearby Chincoteague they have the annual pony swim and sale run by the fire department like in the kids book Misty. Chincoteague is very commercial, but we saw ponies there too. I took the horseshoe crab pic for the grandkids to show them I’m not a chicken. They camped with us further up the coast at Henlopen state park and loved the ocean. They are three little fish. The eight year old just did a fund raising swim that we each pledged a dollar a lap for. He swam 60 lengths of the pool in an hour.! We were so proud.

[2018beachtrip]

We went to a quilt store in Crewe Virginia, and the owner told David about a train buff at the local ace hardware store. He had quite the collection on display. This area had many interesting civil war sites, including sailors creek, and was not far from Appomattox courthouse where Lee surrendered. We had visited there in the last few years so did not return this year.

[2018beachtrip]

I think some of my photos are out of sequence but this is high bridge. Now a walking trail it was a railroad bridge and had a lower level for pedestrians and carriages to cross. It was almost a half mile long. How did they ever build this is the mid 1860’s. It became important in the civil war as described in the plaque. The lake is where we camped, twin lakes. Very beautiful area of Virginia.

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A few more kite surfers. They wore harnesses and said it did not require a lot of strength, but they were super physically fit. You can see how stormy it was.

[2018beachtrip]

Virginia Beach. What a lovely state park. Our campsite backed up to the beach and the waves were very big due to an offshore storm. The kite surfers said it was the best conditions. There were a group of them soaring through the sky and skimming across the water. The lighthouses are on the JEB base, the white one was off limits. We climbed the historic one. Did not like the commercial area but had some lovely beach walks. Across the street was a well developed hiking park built by the CCC. It was closed for ten years, from the mid fifties to the mid sixties as they refused to integrate the beach and preferred to close it as opposed to letting African Americans in.