Finding West Virginia Adventures

I'm settling in nicely in my new hometown of Charleston, West Virginia. It's a great place to live, I think. There are things I am missing about Richmond--mostly fancy grocery stores and the huge number of awesome restaurants. There's not so much of that here, but the cool thing is that there is room for growth.  And I pretty much really love my job.

We've been camping twice since we moved in six weeks ago. We've also had some great day adventures. West Virginia is seriously full of adventures, but you have to seek them out a little. Every single weekend, there's some kind of great festival or event happening in Charleston or in a nearby town. And if you're not interested in that, there's plenty of outdoorsy and cultural stuff to do. This weekend, the West Virginia Book Festival is going on, and next Saturday will be Bridge Day in Fayetteville about an hour away. There are always little small-town things going on nearby, Apple and Pumpkin harvest festivals this time of year, with parades and music and BBQ for sale. I love that these things are rarely so crowded that they become miserable. Another great thing about West Virginia.

___________________________________________________________________________

We camped in Audra State Park back in September. The park is situated on a small river, the East Fork River? Fork river something, can't remember. The campground is pretty nice (but not nice enough for the $20 price for a tent site, I don't think). There was a funny smell at our particular site, but I could never figure out what it might be. Some sites were very private but not on the river. We sacrificed privacy for our river spot. Here was our site and our view of the river.

It rained almost all weekend while we camped in Audra State Park. So we did a lot of indoor stuff. It turned out pretty great though. We went to a big antique mall. Had a nice meal in Weston at the Thyme Bistro. We toured the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, WV. It was $10/person for a guided tour of one floor. And it was pretty cool. Definitely worth that 10 bucks.

The weather was finally beautiful during the last day of this trip. On the way home (sort of), we went to the West Virginia State Wildlife Center. It's like a zoo, I guess, and I do usually hate zoos. This one was pretty neat, though. Animals that are native to or that are now found in the state live here at the Wildlife Center, and you get to read about each animal at their exhibit. I saw some animals I had never seen, like coyotes and fishers. There were also deer, bears, snakes, owls, bison, elk, foxes, wolves, raccoons, hawks, and lots more. This place used to be a "game farm" where biologists would raise animals and release them back into the wild to help increase their populations, but then it became clear that animals raised in captivity would not survive well in the wild. The Wildlife Center's goals have now shifted toward education. It costs $3 per person to walk around the Wildlife Center--absolutely worth it!

___________________________________________________________________________

A couple weeks ago, we met my parents at Bluestone State Park for a short camping trip.  I really like this park and wish we had spent more time there. The early October weather was great, but the campground was practically empty. Bluestone Lake is beautiful. You can rent a boat to enjoy for a few hours or for the day, but we didn't have the time to during this trip. It looked like there were also some nice hiking trails in the park. So I want to go back next season. We followed the New River on the way back to Charleston, making a stop at Sandstone Falls.

And on the way home, we stopped in Beckley for a meal at King Tut Drive In. OH MY GOODNESS, SO MUCH HAPPINESS HERE! It's just so much fun to go here. It makes eating in your car feel fancy or something! The food is mostly fried, but a lot of it is "homemade." I had fried oysters! Not bad. Matt had a BBQ sandwich which he really enjoyed too. We will definitely be eating here again when we're going through Beckley. They have a website with a menu, by the way.

___________________________________________________________________________

Tomorrow I'll be working at the WV Book Festival for most of the day. I'm starting to get busy, which is nice. It definitely took some time for me to settle in, and Matt is requiring a little more time than I did because he's figuring out the employment scene up here. I shouldn't really speak for him, but I do think we love living in West Virginia so far.

Field Day of the Past, with a Cat Update

Well, the cat tree still isn't done. It is almost done though.  All that's left to do is to carpet the base. Butter Bean is still mostly uninterested in the tree, I think because she's so small. When she's feeling especially feisty, she'll scramble up one of the legs and then scramble back down. A couple times, I've come in the apartment to find her sleeping on top of the tube platform, but she doesnt play on it in front of me.

She is looking and feeling a lot better. She's back to being an active and happy kitten, following the dog around and batting at his tail relentlessly. There is still plenty of ringworm on her, but it is healing.

See the bald spots on her toes? They were really bald, but there's fur growing back now. And the dark spots on her nose and head are also ringworm rashes, but they look much better than they did.

So what did we do this weekend if we didn't finish the cat tree? We filled our weekend with classic Virginia redneck events, including a Kiwanis fundraiser BBQ/car show in Ashland (so lame I am not going to elaborate) and a visit to Field Day of the Past in Goochland. I hadn't been to Field Day of the Past since I was a teenager, but Boyfriend got free tickets from a work acquaintance. It was fun! It was like the state fair, but with a more local, less creepy feeling to it. There were funnel cakes and roasted corn, and lots of interesting historical exhibits. I had a good time. We watched tractor pulls and saw lots of old-time machines and thingamajigs like these:

 

But more importantly, there were chickens, mules, donkeys (and miniature donkeys), horses (and miniature horses), cows (and miniature cows), ducks, pigs, and alpacas: