The United States' Best Kept Secret

Over Labor Day weekend my family always goes to West Virginia to visit friends, enjoy their great little cabin on Indian Creek, and do a little sightseeing. Every time I go to West Virginia I think, "Why do more people not live here?" It's the best kept secret in the United States. It should be declared a state sized National Park. They have wonderful weather with beautiful summers, just enough snow in the winter, and these mountains. Oh my, these mountains. There are some beautiful, well kept old farms. There are beautiful, well kept new farms. As a general rule, all of the homes in West Virginia are well kept - you see very few of the dumpy places we have polluting our countryside. There are deer and turkey in almost every field. As a matter of fact, you have to be a cautious driver cause the deer use the roads, too.

This is a beautiful pond at the restaurant/buffalo farm we ate lunch at one day.

On the way back from lunch, we hiked about a mile to this firetower. The views from the top were amazing! The left side of this ridge is West Virginia and the right side is Virginia.

The scenery behind my dad in this picture reminds me of the book, Follow the River by James Alexander Thom. If you've not read it, you need to. It's a very good book that takes place in the early settling of our country. A lady, Mary Draper, gets captured by indians, is forced to live with them for several years, and I won't tell you the rest cuz you need to read it... Oh, and it takes place on the New River in West Virginia, which by the way I found out that Indian Creek flows into the New River, which flows into the Kanawha River, which flows into the Ohio, then to the Mississippi, then to the Gulf of Mexico. (That bit of information was free.)

Anyway, if you've never been to West Virginia, it's well worth the trip. And possibly the move.