Summersville Lake is quite interesting. It was built to control flooding of the Gauley River, and has a huge dam.

Normally, when I think of dams, I think of the giant cement structure that villains threaten to destroy in movies, to wreak destruction upon an unsuspecting populace.

Summersville dam is different.

Here a picture of the dam, looking up from the Gauley River. If you look closely, you can see cars driving across the dam.

Try this link to see the satellite view of the dam.

Summersville Lake is seasonal: in April it starts to fill, and in early autumn, the water is carefully released, allowing for some of the best white water rafting in the country.

So when we see the lake in October, the water levels are low, so you can see the underlying rock formations, exposed by the water.

Here’s the full moon over the lake.

And here’s the Gauley River. It was quite lovely, and I would have enjoyed spending more time hiking around there. Sadly for me, we casually strolled down, and I’d not bothered to put on my boots or carry my hiking stick. This is important because without those two items, walking on rocks quickly puts a major strain on my bad ankle.

But it was totally worth it.

This is the third year we’ve going to Bridge Day. For some reason I didn’t feel much like watching the base jumpers, but that’s not really the best part of Bridge Day–I love standing on the bridge looking out over the New River Gorge Canyon. It’s a stunning, amazing view.

Here’s a picture of the bridge from the Visitor Center platform. If you look at the bigger picture, you can see the rappelling lines.

In this one, you can see the rappelling lines and the zip line.

(I made notes in Flickr, to point out these lines if you can’t see them.)

Stairs from/to the visitor center to the viewing platform. Michael counted and there were 130.

A view from the bridge–you can see how foggy and overcast the morning was.

A nice gentleman took our picture for us:

While at Cass, we rode the trains two different days, in hopes the weather would be nice on one of those days. Although it was overcast and foggy, we also had some sun, so I really had no complaints at all.

I mentioned it was foggy, right? This was at the top of Bald Knob.

It cleared a tiny bit at the top of the mountain. See that white object? That’s the Green Bank telescope:

We stopped at Seneca Rocks on the way home:

Of course I was drawn to piles of rusting industrial parts and the burned out shell of the old lumber mill.

I went to the shell of the lumbermill without Michael, as he is lawful good, and these things make him nervous. (But in deference to Michael (and my clumsiness) I didn’t climb into the building and ruins. I just got really really close. And maybe stepped over some logs and stuff.)

Cass Scenic Railroad, located in Cass WV, allows you to ride on a coal powered steam train up into the mountains.

Cass was a lumber town, and had a mill that ran until the 1950s, but had it’s heyday in the early 1900s, when the mountains (and most of the state, to be honest) was logged.

The Cass rail line uses/used Shay Engines which were designed to allow the engines to climb steep inclines with sharp turns hauling heavy loads of timber.

Here’s a close-up of geared wheels:

Here is the crankshaft:

And here’s everything put together:

Here’s the view from the opposite side:

Here’s the view from the inside.

That square box is there so kids and stand on it and see better.

Here’s a look back at some of the track we’ve just passed over. I was serious about the track being curvy.

Here’s a look forward at the engine, from where I was sitting on the train.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the engine is “on backwards” actually pushing the train up the hill rather than pulling. The reason for this is because, as a coal engine, it throws lots of soot and cinders, and as we’re on a sight seeing tour, they want the cinders going behind the train rather than in front of it.

Of course, there are two switchbacks, so for part of the ride, we did get ash and cinder rained down on us, but luckily for us, our car had a top.

The guys leaning out at the ends of the cars are the break men (there was a break woman as well). Their job is to loosen or tighten the break on each car, and to do so in tandem with the other break men, so the cars don’t bump into one another. The break man on our car was a 70-year-old man who was also the narrator/guide for the trip. He was awesome, to be perfectly honest.

The break on the car in front of us:

And some more pictures of the train:

And, a completely random note, Cass supplied timber to the paper mill in Luke, Maryland–which is where my great-grandfather worked his entire life (except during WWII, when he was in the Navy). So the logging of the red spruce here help my great-grandfather employed.

Saturday we took a family trip to Ohiopyle PA. The leaves have started to change, the weather was beautiful, all in all it was a lovely day.

Weird. A picture of me.

Our initial goal was the Mountain Heritage Arts & Crafts Festival, which we did go to, but… It wasn’t bad, not at all, but I don’t think it was worth the $7 a person entrance fee.

So, we took the long route home, and stopped by Berkeley Springs on the way home.

We went to Green Bank Saturday, which is home of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

We amused ourselves at the Science Center.

Here’s Michael:

Some self-portraits:

Michael’s picture of me:

Saturday we drove down to Blackwater Falls. We were feeling pretty lazy, so we mostly went to see the various views of the various falls. We skipped the canyon, as there was a wedding going on in the clearing.

Elakala Falls

Blackwater Falls

More pictures if you click through to Flickr.

Saturday we drove down to Blackwater Falls, and of course stopped in Thomas for lunch, and stopped TWICE in Davis for ice cream.

We went to the Flying Pig for lunch, and I think we both liked what we got. They served breakfast all day, so Michael got french toast. Since I was saving room for ice cream, I just got the cheese quesadilla. Inexpensive and plenty of food.

Meant to go back to Thomas and get a picture of my favorite building after the light hit it, but my ankle was hurting, so we skipped it.

Much of Thomas is slowly being renovated and rehabilitated, but it’s a slow process.

Here’s the Cheat River along Route 50.

And this is why we preferred to be home before dark. Most of this section of Route 50/92 is like this.

Sunday, we went down to Weston for the Jackson’s Mill Jubilee. It’s part craft fair, part Civil War reenactments, and part trying to entice people to come back to Lewis County.

Aside from, once again, recognizing how happy I am to live in the future and not in the past, the best part was going through the mill.

It’s a working mill, and unlike other mill’s we’ve seen, you can wander through the entire building–there is just a rope to keep you from getting to close to the whirling gears, which could certainly do some damage.

Here is the pond, and the apparatus that allows them to control the flow of water into the mill. Yes, it’s simply a board that lifts up, controlled by a lever from inside the mill.

Looking out from the mill, towards the pond, you can see the water flowing down the chute into the mill. Along the left side of the chute, you can see the rope that controls the water flow.

Here are the gears in motion, when water was moving through the mill (and they were grinding corn above)

Here are the same gears at rest:

You can see that the wheel is spinning freely–the gears/mechanism it would be connected into is pulled away. In the picture below of the grinding stone, this is beneath the grind stone that has been flipped over to display it’s grinding surface. To turn the stone, the two wheels would be meshed together.

Here, water is flowing down–the light area in the back is where the water is going. In the foreground you can see the gear whirring.

And here it is at rest.

Here is a grind stone that is not in use–it’s upside down so you can see the grinding face.

Here you see that the mill could have had three stones grinding at once, but only one is in use.

And here’s the mill from the outside. I was standing beside the pond when I took the picture.

There are, of course, more pictures if you click through to Flickr.

Lots and lots of stuff there that fascinated me.

As we were driving to Swallow Falls, I saw this old barn, and was so fascinated by it, I made Michael stop on the way back.

I’m guessing this was Hurricane Sandy Damage, because it looked like it had been otherwise kept in good repair, and the property around it was in very good shape.

(more…)

This was move-in weekend, so as a Morgantown resident, I knew there was only one thing to do: get the hell out of town.

We chose to drive east, to the Maryland State Parks of Deep Creek Lake and Swallow Falls. Having grown up in WV, where all the State Parks are free, it always comes as a bit of a shock when we have to pay to get in. But considering the amount of damage at Swallow Falls State Park from Hurricane Sandy, I couldn’t really complain.

(more…)

Saturday, we went to Deep Creek MD and Swallow Falls State Parks, and hiked around. Last year, we tried to go to Swallow Falls but it was closed, due to Hurricane Sandy.

There is still evidence of the destruction wrought everywhere we looked, even ten months after the storm.

(more…)