Advertisement
Published: June 28th 2018
Edit Blog Post
Up early around 7.30am. It was cloudy but the rain appeared to have cleared. Kerry and I had breakfast downstairs. I had scrambled eggs on an english muffin with some OJ, whilst Kerry had some fresh fruit including some huge strawberries and fresh pineapple (I had a bit of fruit as well). The room we had was a bit noisy as it was close to I79.
We were on our way about 8.30am, and we decided to stop about 30 minutes into the trip at a Cracker Barrell Restaurant in Fairmont West Virginia. Elise had been looking forward to this experience. Kerry & I just had a coffee but Elise had the French Toast. I bought Kerry the latest Keith Urban CD only to find out our car is no new it does not have a CD player ! We all had a go with the Cracker Barrell peg game and the best we got was two pieces left.
We drove through several rain showers some which were heavy but it was on and off. We saw this place called Flatwoods Factory Stores so we jumped off I79 for a break, and the girls spent a while looking in
this big dress shop, but ended up with nothing. There was a Walmart next door so we went and had a look, and found a few things such as an iPad cover for Kerry’s iPade for only $10- and some Cheese Ritz Crackers and a T-Shirt fort Elise for $4.92 and a Snickers Bar for only $0.76.
West Virginia is very hilly country but very scenic and I could not help thinking about how amazing it would be around September / October when the leaves change colour and start to fall. Eventually we reached a town called Sommersville, and decided to stop for lunch at Diner Restaurant called Shoneys which we had not seen before but it had a big sign so must be good right ?. Our waitress was Phyllis who started working here at Shoneys 4 months after it opened 28 years ago. This was such an old fashioned diner and she told us everything about her life (probably too much).
Then we drove to the New River Gorge Bridge and did the walk down 178 steps to get the magic photo. This is an amazing structure and when it was built in 1974-77 it was
the longest single span arch bridge in the world being 924 metres long and 267 metres above the New River.
A quick look at Fayetteville which claims to be the best small town in USA where I picked up a souvenir licence plate for the Bali Hut which was my first licence plate for this trip, then we headed to Berkley and Route 64 to Lewisburg. A quick stop at Grandview lookout to get another magic photo opportunity of the New River National Park and then we drove through some horrific rain conditions until we reached Lewisburg where the rain kindly stopped so we can check in to our historic hotel.
The General Lewis Inn is steeped in history as it first opened in 1834. We stayed in room 101 and this unique two-room family suite featured colonial hand-turned bed frames - one queen bed in the first room and two full beds in the second bedroom. Beds featured oversized pillows and luxury cotton linens. It is accented by original hardwood flooring, armchairs, original 1834 brick wall and period antiques. They are having a wedding rehearsal here in the main restaurant so we drove to have dinner at
Ruby Tuesdays and we all had the baby backed ribs which were awesome. Kerry had her first glass of Wine Zinfandel and I had a glass of Merlot. Very relaxing.
One thing we noticed in West Virginia is how passionate they are about their College team of WV. Everyone is wearing t-shirts, caps with the team logo and colours and they all have beautiful deep accents as well. Watched a bit of ESPN World Series of College Baseball with Arkansas beating Florida in the semi final. Today we did not leave West Virginia at all so there was room to play a couple of special songs being West Virginia Line by The Hillbilly Gypsies and West Virginia Sunrise by The Band Wagon. Just a one night stop here and then we are on our way again further south.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.257s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0904s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb