Mountains

I have to be honest, until you see something, sometimes you don’t even realise you miss it.

Like mountains.

We’ve been wedged in between work and snow days for the past few weeks, and with the knowledge that we’re half way through our USA journey this week gnawing away in our heads and our hearts, we rolled out the Bucket List.

West Virginia.
Not a state we’ve been to before – check.
Civil War History – check.
Old stuff – check.
New scenery – check.
Let’s go!

Mountains of WV

And as we headed west out of Maryland and crossed the state line into West Virginia, it really did begin to feel like we had entered another state. It just felt different, and that difference was predominantly made up of mountains. Appalachian ones at that.

I didn’t realise that I missed mountains (or large hills), rolling and undulating ahead of you, but I guess I do. I am very used to the flatness of Maryland, particularly Columbia. The only thing intruding on the skyline here is office blocks, apartment blocks, or malls. But these mountains were a welcome and interesting intrusion to this skyline.

West Virgnia

West Virginia is, I read, located in the Appalachian region of the Southern United States and is bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the north, and Maryland to the northeast. It is the 41st largest by area and the 38th most populous of the 50 United States.

Beautiful, but bloody freezing

West Virginia became a state following the Wheeling Conventions, in which 50 northwestern counties of Virginia whose landowners owned few to no slaves decided to break away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The new state was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key Civil War border state. West Virginia was the only state to form by seceding from a Confederate state and was one of two states formed during the American Civil War (the other being Nevada, which separated from Utah Territory).

Such history!

Harpers Ferry

‘I don’t fancy going on a ferry,’ I said to my other half when he said about popping into the town of Harpers Ferry.
‘Um, there isn’t a ferry,’ he chuckled back at me.

No, there wasn’t, thankfully. FYI, it’s far too cold to go on a ferry, is what I was thinking 😉 .

We couldn’t quite work out if Harpers Ferry was a town made to look like it had belonged in the Civil War, of if it was a town that had been built in the Civil War and was still standing, or even if we were in a town that had been used in film sets from Civil War movies to Deliverance. (I checked; it wasn’t!)

Harpers Ferry

Anyway, it looked pretty authentic, whichever decade it was built in, and oodles of historical stuff to be found.

Harpers Ferry is situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers where the U.S. states of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia meet. Historically, Harpers Ferry is best known for John Brown’s raid on the Armory in 1859 and its role in the American Civil War.

An authentic (?) tavern

Civil War history

I can conclude one very important thing from our trip: I NEED TO GO SOMEWHERE HOT!

Next January and February I’ll be signing up for a Caribbean cruise work visa 😉

Anyhow, the Bucket List is what must take priority now and I’m ready to tick (check mark) them off!