Recently, Ward and I took a trip to West Virginia to visit family and friends. I am sharing parts of that trip here.
We stayed with my cousins in Williamstown, WV. Williamstown is a small town on the Ohio River directly across from Marietta, Ohio. We went frequently between the two towns. Ward and I walked to the bridge between them one morning since it was only a mile away. The river was the backdrop to much of what we did in the area.
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The bridge from Williamstown to Marietta.
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Williamstown side looking across to Marietta.
If you squint, you can see a big boat on the Ohio bank. |
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| On the Marietta side, we saw the American Melody, a riverboat that started in New Orleans and was headed to Pittsburgh. They spent the night in Marietta and toured the area the next day. Marietta was the first settlement of the Northwest Territory and has a lot of interesting history associated with it. |
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| One day, we took a river cruise on the sternwheeler Valley Gem. |
While Williamstown and the land close to the river are flat, that is unusual for West Virginia. WV is a state made up of steep hills and hollers (narrow valleys), with the hills turning into mountain ranges in the east. Ward and I went to visit Spencer, my hometown, one day over the hills and down the curvy roads. BTW, it's not a fun thing to grow up on curvy roads when you were prone to car sickness. But this time I got to sit in the front seat and fared much better than in my earlier years.
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Buffalo Church was built in 1878.
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About 45 minutes into our drive, I spotted a sign for the Historic Buffalo Log Church. I never met a historical road sign that I didn't want to investigate, so off we went. We went quite a ways down a gravel road before we spotted the church. I was disappointed that the logs had been covered with white clapboard. And it was fenced, so we couldn't look in the windows. But we continued on and traveled a while longer before we met back up with the main road.  |
| We traveled along a ridge for several miles until we reached the main road, Rt. 14. |
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| One of the few signs of life we saw on our detour. The notice on the tree reads, "No trespassing. I have a gun and a backhoe." |
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| After another 25 miles or so, we were in downtown Spencer. The flowers were done by local blacksmith artist Jeff Fetty. His work has been shown not only locally, but around the world. But I knew him back before he was famous. He used to be our paper boy. 😊 |
I think this is enough for today. Next time, I'll show you more of our visit to Spencer.
Until next time...
