A Llittle Road Trip

68°f/20°C, clear, less humid than the past few days.

Garden news: I was out early this morning,  watering because we've had no rain, and very high temperatures,  for over a week. So far the gardens are doing fine, but the potted flowers need to be watered daily now. 

daily now. Larry picked our first squash and cucumbers today, and we are getting a few tomatoes, along with radishes and the last of the cabbages (he missed a couple when he harvested all the other cabbages). I also found some ruby lettuce that had not yet turned bitter, a nice surprise. Green beans should be ready to start picking soon, and the corn is tassling. 

Today was road trip day. I saw this sweet dinette set online for a very good price, and decided that even though it was over 2 hours away, we were going to go after it. It's just too hot to do much outside, so why not take a drive?

Central West Virginia is pretty much just rural, with a couple towns of over 10,000 and many tiny unincorporated communities with names like Pickle Street, Leatherbark, Gassaway, Crawford, Stumptown, and even Ireland and Cairo. Some names are explained easily: 

• Leatherbark was named after the American Chestnut tree, whose bark was used to tan leather before the trees sadly became extinct. There are several efforts being made to revive this beautiful species,with some success.
• Stumptown was named after a family with the last name of Stump.
• Gassaway was named after one of the early coal and timber barons in the state
• Pickle Street, well, there are several explanations you can read about in this post
• Crawford, you guessed it, a family name
• Ireland is also self-explanatory, and there was actually quite a large number of Irish stonemasons who came here to build the Transallegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston. Indeed, there is a small Catholic church not far from Iteland that flies the Irish flag, and has a strange ghost story connected to it 
• Cairo was named by early settlers after Cairo, Egypt,  supposedly because of its fertile soil and river valley, but honestly, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to its namesake,  which makes me think those settlers had never actually seen Egypt.

Our destination today was Crawford. We have never actually ever been there before, although we have been to nearby Stonewall Resort, the Bulltown Civil War site, and lovely Falls Mills. (My storytelling days took me to many off the beaten track places,  and I kinda miss that.) But oddly, I had actually looked at this old country store that was for sale, along with the house beside it, back in 2018 or 2019. We were thinking of moving back then to somewhere more convenient,  and this old place appealed to me on several levels. After looking closely at online photos and street views, we did not follow up on this place because the neighbors were just too close. 

The old store:

Across the street, this Hudson, a car model  is don't think i have ever seen. I don't know what year, do you?

Downtown Crawford: 

We met Debby and Rick at their out-of-the-way home a couple miles out of Crawford, bought their dinette set and headed home. 

We stopped in Weston at a new coffee shop and enjoyed iced coffee (for me), strawberry lemonade for Larry, a brownie for him and a huge cookie for me. 

It was a comfortable, eclectic shop furnished with antiques and oddities. Just my kind of place! Funnily enough, the young man working there remembered me from when I used to tell stories at the Weston Library every summer! Amazing, as it has been 6 years since I was there.

Now we are home, enjoying the air conditioning as the dogs drowse beside us. There is much to be said for going, and a lot to be said for coming home. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.