Coal Country

The kick stand was up the and I, astride "Mary Belle" stated our trip for West Virginia and what lay ahead. It is a crisp morning, with bright blue skies and good day for riding.

Heading up through Martinsville, Virginia, we dipped down into the the Catawba Valley at time running parallel to the Catawba River. It was breathtaking at times, the red bud trees are blooming everywhere and lush green grass fills the rolling farmland where horses and cattle graze in abundance. The Scotch-Irish settled here in the 1700's, my ancestors. Independent, strong-willed and quick to temper, yep I got all those genes.

This path is part of the Great Wagon Road that served as the settlers' highway. Starting in Pennsylvania turning south, following the Great Shenandoah Valley through Maryland and Virginia (West Virginia succeeded in the Civil War, separating from her mother) into the piedmont of North Carolina then southeastward to the Moravian settlements at Wahovia and their settlements of Winston and Salem, then the road ran southeast to South Carolina.

Climbing up the mountains of the Jefferson National Forest along Highway 42 are some great switchbacks for motorcycle skills testing, carving the turns and getting into the rhythm of taking the sharp curves "inside out, outside in" is the mantra. At times a steep climb, we cross over the "Great Eastern Continental Divide", this part is the Appalachian mountains and combined they separate the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico funneling the waters that run down into one or the other.

Drifting down the roads and seeing the land open up beyond was another uplifting experience, wildflowers along the sides and butterflies flitting across the road, along with a whole lot of squirrels and some flat ones that didn't make it.

I started coming into very small towns that whispered my grandmothers voice as she described them to me as a child, "White Sulphur Springs", "Jumping Branch" "Hinton". Places where she had lived and visited long passed relatives and friends. I have many of those old photographs posted on Ancestry.com. Others have found them and we write sharing and piecing together history and memories for our future generations.

I have arrived in Beckley and logged 260 miles today. Tired and exhilarated I check into the EconoLodge and posted on the glass door is the notice of a memorial service at the school tonight for the miners that died in the Upper Big Branch mine, at total of 29 now confirmed.

Looking for a place to eat I pick the Pizza Hut across the street. As I talk to the waitress, I mention the purpose of my journey, she speaks softly and says "That big group of people over there are with the wife of the miner that was going to retire in 5 weeks. How sad".

Here, in these town where coal mining is generational,  it is personal and all to familiar, all the towns are affected when events like these happen. Some of the streets are lined with yellow miner helmets in memory of those lost souls.