My journal entries from the first days of my West Virginia trip. The tenses are all off. This is what happens when you write late at night when you're on vacation. I'm too lazy to fix it. Besides it's a good exampe of why you should never try to write seriously while on vacation. Vacation is about having fun and relaxing and not writing. Unless of course, it's a working vacation, then well, that's different. Some of it may seem repetitive.

More Day 1 - July 1
We rented a mini suv instead of a compact car. Thought that a chevy tracker would somehow look better on country roads than a Hyundai. For $3 more a day, it seemed a good bargain. I was bummed that we had virginia license plates instead of west virginia ones. Didn't want the locals to think we were tourists.

The people at the rental car place call Charleston "Charley-West", we think to distinguish it from the other Charleston in the Carolinas.

Day 2
My friend and I take a walk to see horses on someone's farm. It's along the country roads. This is my first real view of West Virginia. The road is windy and the hills are rolling. We feed the horses grass. How bucolic!

My friend's aunt was flying into the Greenbriar Airport and we go to meet her. It's raining on the way there. One of those emergency alert services message comes on. Only it's not a test; it was real. My friend and I had never heard a real emergency alert service message before. The message said there was a thunderstorm approaching with heavy rain and hail and to not be afraid to pullover. The message said to be alert until 2:30. We don't know if it's for 2:30 pm or 2:30 am. The car clock said 2 pm. We both looked at each other both saying we'd never heard a real emergency alert service message before. My friend tells me that we needed to count the seconds between the thunder noises because the number of seconds will tell us how many miles away the storm was. We stop and count and it's 10 seconds, but we still aren't sure if the storm is heading our way and if we were driving into it. We see other cars driving in the direction of the airport, so we decide to move on. The emergency alert services message comes on every 5 minutes.

We get to the airport and the plane we are waiting for is delayed. Finally the plane lands and my friend's aunt is okay. She didn't know why her plane was circling. Guess they don't tell the passengers what's really going on.

Later than night, we go to a brass concert at Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg. The concert is supposed to be outdoors but because of the rain, it's moved indoors. It's the event of the evening in town and many townspeople show up. Afterwards, we head over to a small bar call the Hobnob. They tell us it's the hippest bar in town, in Lewisburg West Virginia that is. Four old white guys play jazz in the front. They tell us the literati of the town hang out there. The bar is full of locals and young kids. There is even a table full of women wearing hats like in The Divine YaYa Sisterhood book. There are about 30 people in the bar and they tell us it's a swinging night there.

Day 3
Another walk this time on my friend's sister's property. She lives in a holler. From the air, it looks like a wedge shaped strip of land in the forest. We see deer, possums and the beaver pond that the pesky beavers made when they tried to flood the farm out. There's a barn on the property full of hay and another one where the cows come to escape the heat. My friend's sister rents her land out to a farmer for his cows to graze. My friend thinks she sees a snake. She calls me over to look but I told her I didn't need to see a snake. We pick green apples to take to the horses. The horses love the small green apples.

Next, we drive to my friend's mother and stepdad's property which is beside Droop Mountain. They live up on the next mountain over. The farm is a 150 acre parcel of land. It's beautiful up there and they live in a two bedroom house that they built themselves. We walk around and talk and eat dinner. My friend and her family talk about old times. I think about the joy of my not so close dysfunctional family.

Day 4
It's the Fourth of July and we're invited to my friend's sister's boyfriend's cousins' house in another small town called Renick for a holiday lunch. He says he's obtained bikes for us so we can bike along the Greenbriar trail and then go swimming in the river. The Greenbriar trail is 76 miles. We bike about three miles and then swim in a muddy murky river. We see lightning on the ridge in front of us and we worry about the lightning hitting the water, so we head back.

At the picnic, we have home made bread and butter pickles which are divine and authentic west virginia barbecue pork. We also have two different kinds of potato salad and a baked bean dish. The meals is a very authentic West Virginia type of meal. Since I don't normally eat this kind of food, I eat way too much and ended up sitting in a chair on the lawn outside bloated from my gorging. Everyone else seems to have done the same, so I'm not embarrassed.

We hear the Shrub is in West Virginia that day giving a speech in some town called Ripley. We speculate that maybe he came here in case the terrorists bomb DC. There's a former bunker nearby. Maybe he wanted to be close to the bunker. The whole point of our trip was to be somewhere safe where the terrorists wouldn't dream of bombing and the Shrubmeister comes here. So much for planning.

To see fireworks we drive to the Greenbriar Resort. The local people park their cars along the road and invade the golf course. The Greenbriar resort security patrol is there so the riffraff like us don't get too close to the hotel. My friend and I settle on a spot, which turns out is directly in front of the fireworks launcher. We're also close enough to the hotel to hear the music they're playing and the sound of people clapping. The fireworks show, surprisingly, lasts half an hour. The Greenbriar must have lots of money. Some of the fireworks are like strobe lights and we're definitely too close because we have to shield our eyes. We're so close that we can see the dud fireworks that don't go off and crash to the ground instead. The local townspeople are there with their coolers and lawnchairs. Children run around the perfectly manicured golf course while the security patrol looks on.

Day 5
Rest day. Our hostess made us a typical West Virginia breakfast. I had cheesey corn grits for the first time. It tastes like cream of wheat only grainier. We also had the totally fatty bacon that people in San Francisco would never dare admit they eat and crave and homemade fresh out of the oven biscuits. Our hostess is known for her baked products. We sit around and laze in the West Virginia sunshine, since the storm has since disappeared.

Later, we go to a party in Lewisburg that our hostess is invited to. The party is at a country type mansion and it's obvious that the people there have alot of money, since there's a brand spanking new grand piano in one of the living rooms. The people pretty much look like they could live in California and are at some hot summer party out in the suburbs, that is until they open their mouth and speak to you. California we are definitely not in.

Since we have a 45 minute windy road drive back home, I decide not to drink. The drive normally makes me a little nauseous with all its twists and turns and I could see myself having to hurl my cookies if I drank too much. Besides the weather is very muggy now and it's just too hot to drink.