West Virginia, and then Gettysburg

Leaving Kentucky, we headed east through West Virginia, moving up into the Appalachian chain of mountains as we went.  It was fall and the colors were quite lovely up there, a lot more foliage changes than we typically see in the northwest with all our evergreens.  The country grew steeper and more dramatic as we moved east.  Our first stop was in the area of Charleston, WV, where we stopped at a KOA campground in the nearby town of Milton. 

On the way, we stopped very briefly in the town of Morehead, WV, where there was a small museum called the Kentucky Folk Art Center.  Started by some local university professors, the museum houses works by local folk artists primarily.  We enjoyed the museum thoroughly - it had some very original, creative and highly skilled works, most of them not the sort of thing you find in traditional museums.  A little hidden treat, the sort of thing you love to discover when traveling. I also got a great book in their store, about the history of efforts to deal with poverty and environmental problems in Appalachia, written by a U of Kentucky professor who has studied the area extensively. 

Another enjoyable find was in the town of Milton, where the campground was located.  There was a longstanding glass factory there, which had a visitor center and offered tours of the factory in operation.  The Blenko Glass Company was founded in 1893 by an immigrant from Britain who had learned glass techniques over there.  The company has been making glass in the same location for many decades and the plant looked as if it had been there forever.  There were samples of the historical work that they had done, along with current work and, of course, samples for sale in the gift shop.

South Charleston was a charming little enclave, with a fairly large Asian population.  We found a good Asian grocery, which Ivy enjoyed thoroughly, and we had enough confidence in the neighborhood to risk a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch, which was quite good.  We haven't had much Asian food since we left the west coast, and it was great to find a resource in this unexpected place.   We toured the city of Charleston itself, but didn't have time to do much more than zip through.  They have a lovely arts center there with some outside sculptures and some nice architecture.  And I picked up some jigsaw puzzles in the local thrift shop. 


After a short stay, we were off to Morgantown, WV, for a whirlwind visit.  We got a great campground there, up on the top of a mountain right on the Mason-Dixon line.  It was beautiful country, with good stars at night and a park with lookouts over the valley and the town.  The West Virginia University is there, and there was a nice food co-op and some imposing buildings as well as cute murals on local shops.  But the weather was closing in, and we headed off to Pennsylvania for a stay at Gettysburg.   

We found a great campground in Gettysburg called Artillery Ridge, immediately adjacent to the battlefield park, which combined RV and tent camping with what is called a National Riding Stable that supports horseback rides through the Civil war battlefields, to allow people to experience the fields the way the cavalry riders did back in 1863. The campground also allows bicycle access to the park, which has miles of relatively flat and accessible roads suitable for biking.  Ivy and I took advantage of that, and I did a birding walk also through the forests there, which are largely similar to the 1860's, except peppered with monuments.

The park is really well developed, with an extensive museum, film center, and a huge number of monuments scattered around the field.  The staff make a huge effort to help you understand how the battle at Gettysburg went, who was involved, what happened, and how the outcome was influenced by so many chance factors, human errors, heroism, etc.  There is a huge diorama model of Gettysburg at the time, showing where the various armies fought, and something called a Cyclorama, a huge circular painting thirty feet high that protrays the essentials of the three day battle.  Ivy and I both came away with a much better understanding of how that particular part of the Civil War went, along with a feeling for the field itself and the historic power of the place. 

Next we were off by car to New Jersey to visit Ivy's sister and other relatives.  We left the RV in Gettysburg to avoid having to take that huge rig through the New Jersey traffic.