Tuesday: Elkins to Grundy VA thru the Appalachians

Here's Tuesday's route:

Fewer miles, more sights!


We started out by driving gown the Tygart river valley - very pretty with the fog receding

First stop was Cass, WV. Bee and & I spent a great father/daughter weekend here about 14 years ago with my friend Eric Venters & his daughter Paris when Bee & P were both 5. Bee instantly remembered the former employees' houses, one of which we rented for that weekend.

Next was the Greenbrier in White Sulpuhr Springs WV.

We went on the Bunker tour which was really cool. No tour pics because cameras and phones aren't allowed!

After the tour we had lunch in the hotel. The decor is over the top

Next was the New River Bridge. We took the old road across the old bridge way down in the valley so as to get a good look at the 876 foot high bridge.

Then to Beckley WV for a coal mine tour.

It was not very long, but still very interesting

 


Then to Coalwood, WV, which is the setting for the book "The Rocket Boys" (and the movie adaptation "October Sky") and the fantastic memoir "The Coalwood Way"
Coalwood is very impoverished, but it was still really cool to visit the actual place and see the buildings.
 


We ended the day in Grundy VA.
Grundy is interesting: After spending the entire day driving thru worn-out WV coal mining towns, I expected Grundy to be the same. But you turn the bend and are presented with a 3-story Wal-mart, a bright new shopping mall, and wide, new roads.
It seems that Grundy was indeed a worn-out coal town, population 1000 and falling yearly. Its location in a narrow valley caused it to suffer catastrophic floods every decade or so; the last flood, in 1977, basically destroyed the town. So, in the 2000s, the state and federal govts helped rebuild: They blasted out the side of a mountain, created 13 acres of raised land, and built new highways and floodwalls to protect the rest of the town.
A huge economic shot in the arm for a destitute area. It'll be interesting to see if it's the catalyst for change, or another futile attempt to bring WV into the 21st century.

Here's a before-and-after picture of Grundy:

The right picture is not quite "after" as they also razed everything inside the yellow outline and replaced it with a 4-lane expressway and floodwall.
The red circle is the courthouse, which is the only original building they saved.
Talking to some locals, I found that about an hour downstream, in Pikeville WV, is an even larger project from 25 years ago, the Pikeville cut-through.

We had dinner at a kooky Mexican restaurant, which was fun but the food was just OK.

Tomorrow we leave the Appalachians and had west.