The Road Less Traveled

I must tell you this.

Sunday, my brother whom I haven’t seen since last summer drove from Lincoln County to spend time with me. And how do two long-time apart brothers spend time? Watch a football game? Go to a summer blockbuster movie? No. None of those will do. Not my brother and me. We plopped two department store inner tubes into the Coal River at about 3:00 p.m., starting at Upper Falls in Tornado, and rode without paddles for almost six hours until we finally crawled onto shore at Lower Falls in St. Albans.

I’m going to try to post a map of the area we traveled. It really isn’t that far, a few miles. In fact, you can drive from Upper Falls to Lower Falls in about fifteen minutes. But since we were floating in a mostly still river without paddles, only our arm strength to push us along, it took a little less than six hours.

I knew it would be great. The Coal River is an underrated river because it is dirty and I know there was a serious problem for a while with a lot of harmful bacteria due to pollution. However, a group known as The Coal River Group has been working hard for years to clean up the river and has finally succeeded in turning the river into a water trail, calling it the Walhonde Trail. The entire trail is 88 miles, stretching across the Big Coal River, Little Coal River, and the Coal River, through three different counties. It’s probably impossible to travel the entire trail in one day, so the Coal River Group and the DNR have broken the trail into recommended “trips.” I happen to know that we took Trip C-2.

During our trip, they sky stayed a clear blue with a few clouds that made laying back on the inner tube so amazing. Since a lot of the river is shaded by trees, I didn’t get much of a sunburn. And if you’ve never been on a river as the sun goes down, I highly recommend it. This trip also gave plenty of time for my brother and I to talk, about his new relationship, about his future plans, and (of course) about our father.

Cheese Warning: While my arms regretted the trip, my heart, mind and soul did not. Seriously, it was nice to just float on the river, relax, and basically give myself up to nature. The only tension I remember was when I decided to roll over on the inner tube and had to keep from tipping over in deep water.

I can honestly say now that putting an inner tube on a river without paddles to travel about five miles is a wonderfully foolish decision. If you’re a nature lover, it is one of the best things you can do for yourself, to let the river take you and to enjoy the wildlife. We saw deer, herons, ducks, all kinds of fish.

Below are two maps. Let’s hope they work. The first is the official map for the Walhonde Trail. As I said, my brother and I took Trip C-2, so you can find it near the top of the map. This map is upside down for the flow of the rivers. The Big Coal and the Little Coal flow into the Coal, and the Coal flows into the Kanawha River at the top of the map.

The other map is the official Google Maps view of the area. You can zoom in (I think) and take a closer look at the river. We started just above Upper Falls Road. There are some interesting little islands close to Lower Falls that I think have some history with the logging industry.

View Larger Map

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

I hate onions.  I know this is odd because they’re in just about everything.  I remember my mother cooking foods that needed onion and my stepfather shouting, “Put a buncha onions in it.”  Mom would wink at me and only sprinkle in a few.

On the other hand, I love ramps.  For those of you who are not up on Appalachian culture, ramps are a special type of wild leek and they taste something like a cross between onions and garlic.  They grow just like wild onions with tall green stalks above ground and round white bulbs below ground.  When you cook with them, the whole house radiates from the stink.  I know a lot of people who will never even try ramps because of their strong aroma.

But oh my gosh, when my mother would fry potatoes and chop up little bits of ramp into the pan, I would savor that smell.  It would last long after dinner was over, but we didn’t care.  I would bite into those potatoes with surprising enthusiasm. 

 My grandfather loved to cook pinto beans with ramps.  Pinto beans were always a childhood favorite of mine, but I remember turning down a bowl while visiting a friend because I could see chunks of onion floating on top.  But, mmm, when I saw my grandfather chopping those familiar bits of green into a huge pot on pinto beans, my mouth would drip with hunger.

I remember spending some time with my father in Ohio and talking to other kids in the neighborhood about ramps.  “Like boat ramps?” one kid asked.  This, I found out later, was very common.

That evening, my father drove me to the northern panhandle and we hiked up a small hill just beside the road.  A few times I kept peering down the hill at the flashing hazard lights on my father’s truck.  But when he said, “There we go,” I turned my attention to a small cluster of dark green stalks and smiled.

The next morning, we ate an awesome breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits, and fried potatoes with… you guessed it… ramps.

Thus the mystery of my hatred for onions but my love of ramps.  Never have been able to figure it out.  Maybe this is a message to anyone who hates onions:  Try ramps.

Here’s a link to a wikipedia article about ramps.  It even says that they are “especially popular in the cuisine of the US state of West Virginia.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_leek

Until later– There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.

For anyone who reads my blog not from West Virginia, I found this awesome slide show of some of my favorite places.  This girl really knows how to capture some of our state’s best.  I’ll try to get my own slide show posted soon.  I need to update it, though.

I feel like I’ve been on vacation and am finally back to visit with an old friend.  A lot has happened since my last post.  My Internet is gone… my landline telephone is gone… long story.

I have a lot to share about my last few weeks of summer with my daughters.  I took them to a 1950s style diner across the river, to an old caboose museum, and to see some train tunnels and a train bridge.  Today, we went wading in the Coal River.  I have a lot of pictures to share of these adventures later.

Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to get online at the school next week anbd post some of those pics.  It’s good to be able to write again.

Until later… here are some pictures of the places we have been…

 The Coal River, just above Upper Falls.

The Red Line Diner… they have goooooood burgers.

A grainy picture of the St. Albans train tunnel…

The train bridge in St. Albans…  This steam engine no longer passes through… shame…

 Although this is not the EXACT same caboose, it looks exactly the same, same rail company, same color.  The one in Hurricane has been converted into a museum.  And the shock is that very few people know about it because it is in a bad location.  But it’s really neat.

That’s it for now.  I’ll share some more pics and some history of a few of the places where we visited.  The coolest part about this is that it became a learning experience for my daughters.  We went home and read some books on trains.

Take care…

Due to one of the hottest political issues in our state’s history, traveling through Kanawha County has now become a silent debate.  An afternoon drive results in passing signs that announce “Vote NO on August 11″ or “Vote YES for Kanawha County on August 11.”  It is an issue that has sparked heated debates and even a few serious disputes.  On August 11th, the public of Kanawha County will vote on whether or not our nearby gambling facility should be allowed to include table games.

I’m not going to take the time to discuss my feelings on this matter.  Politics usually make my head and heart hurt because of the amount of animosity that usually follows political issues and I may not be able to discuss it without going on for quite a few paragraphs.  I will say that my answer does not come from an economic issue or a moralistic one.

I just returned from a rally where one of the presenters asked a question you don’t usually expect at a political rally:  How would God vote on August 11th?  Good question.  His answer is my answer.  Enough said.