On the road early this morning, out across the New River the Gauley, past Morgantown and into Pennsylvania only to cross the Ohio River and a little later the Allegheny. Spring looked like it was already over and summer was here. The only sign that it isn't really here yet is that the fields are still fallow. No corn or other crops coming up yet, but many of the fields have been plowed all ready and are just waiting for the last sign of frost.

   Nice sunny morning that boasted the temperature up into the 80's until mid afternoon when the clouds rolled in and the rain started. Didn't really cool anything off for most of the afternoon either, mostly it just made it a lot more humid out there in the real world. Tonight may actually be kind of cold based on the feel of the weather out there right now. Probably won't get down to freezing, but it may be nice to have an extra blanket ready just in case.

   The important thing at the end of the day is that I'm more than halfway to my destination this evening. Not quite 400 miles today, but close enough. My butt hurts! (But my feet feel much better today, just like I said they would). Am holed up in a rest stop on I-80 just west of it's intersection with I-99. Pretty much out in the middle of nowhere here in the state of Pennsylvania. Lot's of big rigs all around me and it 'sounds' like some of them will be keeping their engines running while they're here. Need to go find my ear plugs. One good thing is that it gets me up early in the morning.

    Here are a few photo's from a road trip on Saturday. These are of the town of Thurmond, once a thriving town built on the banks of the New River just east of present day Fayetteville. It was a railroad hub with steam train service shops and buildings including water and coal towers and engine house. It also had more than 75,000 passengers pass through it in 1910. With revenue from passengers and coal shipments the town supported two hotels, two banks a jewelry store, movie theatre, several dry goods stores and many other businesses. In 1958 the last steam train operated in the New River Gorge and by 1963 most of the town was gone either having been burned down or abandoned to rot.

The train station at the town of Thurmond, WV. Built in 1904, this is the 2nd depot to be built after the 1st one burned in 1899. It was restored by the National Park Service in 1995 and you can still catch an Amtrak passenger train here if you want. (I liked the idea of this picture being a metaphor for the choices facing all of us in our daily lives. You have the mainline to take you to the big cities where all the other people are, or you have the branch line to take you off to someplace new and possibly exciting. It's your choice!)

Another view of the station. The upper floor had offices for the dispatcher, train master, conductors as well as the signal tower. The lower level housed the ticket agent, baggage room, waiting rooms and snack room.

A semaphore signal, used to signal the engineer of a train to stop or that the line is clear ahead.

A view looking at the remains of the town. On the left is what is left of the coaling tower for the steam engines. Built in 1922 it had a capacity of 500 tons. The engine house would of been just this side of it, about where the single tree is now. The grey building on the right was originally the railroad commisary but was later used as the town post office. It was closed for good in 1995. The other buildings beyond are a few of the remaining businesses buildings that are still standing.

Another view of the same scene. I liked the look of the tracks, old buildings and the foggy mountains.

The original truss bridge across the New River. This line continues up a valley on the other side and tops out on the same level as the town of Fayetteville and Beckly. I assume it serviced some of the many coal mines that were on the south side of the river.

    Finished up the last day of dancing at the White Water Whirl early this afternoon. It was a wonderful time seeing everyone and doing some really good dancing. Sundays are always fun times at these weekend dances because that is when the truly hardcore dancers stick around for those last pure moments of fun. The band always seems to be hotter, the caller is more relaxed and by this time you have had enough time to figure out the dancing styles of a lot of the other dancers, so it is much easier to make everything work. Of course, you are also a lot more tired, and today was no different. Still; it was a lot of fun and it will be hard to go for nearly 3 weeks before the next big dance weekend. Will just have to go out and find some regular weekly dances to attend instead.

   Will be packing up and heading further north in the morning. Emma, my GPS, says it is almost 700 miles to our next destination, an RV park just north of  Johnstown, NY. The plan is to take at least two days to get there, but it may actually take longer. There is no real hurry to get there at any specific time so if something interesting pops up along the way it won't be to hard to stop and check it out. Otherwise, life is really good right now. My feet still hurt a bit as do other parts of my anatomy, but a couple ibuprofen and a couple days of rest will make that all better again. Looking forward to seeing the place where some of my ancestors settled more than 200 years ago. But for now I think it is time to go get some sleep.

   Here are a few interior pictures of the Grist Mill I posted exterior photos of a couple of days ago. Sorry they are separated by a couple of days, but didn't get these pictures until yesterday. Will try to explain what is going on in each as best I can.

The main grinding floor. On the left is the grinding stone to grind wheat and the one on the right is the one to  grind corn. Didn't know this but the wheat stone needs to be heavier, 1,200 lbs, versus the corn stone at about 1,000 lbs because of the size and hardness of the seed. The wooden contraption in the middle of the picture is a stone fork or stone crane, used to lift the stones up to either be replaced or resharpened. The stones needed to be resharpened, or 'dressed', about every 8 years. The corn stone is overlaid with a wooden case that helps hold the grain in as it is pushed out from between the stones and feeds it into a meal spout where it can be bagged. On top of it all is a wooden hopper where the grain is fed into the stones through a central hollow called the 'damsel'.  On the back wall just to the left of the corn stone is the metal wheel that was turned to open or close the sluice gate outside in the wooden flume. This allowed more or less water to run over the water wheel and was a method of controlling the speed of the machinery. The large lever to the right of the wheat wheel is what would engage the idler gear below the deck and push it into the path of the main power gear connected to the water wheel.

A closer view of the wheat stone with the metal ring used to lift it off. The complete set up for grinding is made up of two stones, the bed stone, on the bottom, which does not turn, and the runner stone on top that does. Both have a series of groves cut into them which funnel the grain down into progressively smaller sections until it is finally small enough to grind the individual seeds. In the background on the left is the wooden vat that fits over the runner stone. Also note the stone crane to lift the stone if needed.

A closer view of the corn stone. The metal wheel on the floor just to the left of the wooden vat was used to adjust the gap between the two stones and hence how course or fine the grind would be. On the front of the vat was a little wooden cup used to take a sample of the grind to see if it was what the customer wanted. On the other end was a wooden plug to block the hole in the vat. Note the octagonal wooden shaft and wooden gears on the right side of the picture.

A closer view of the wooden gears from the last photo. When the mill was actually in use the grain that was ground would actually go from the grinding floor to the next floor up by means of a primitive hoist mechanism and dropped into a sifting machine. Here the grain was sifted into various grades for different uses. These wooden gears not only supplied the power to lift the grain up to the second floor but also powered the sifting machine.

Here we are back on the first floor and you can see 4 chutes from the sifting machine upstairs. In the case of ground corn you would of had, from left to right, corn flour, corn meal, grits and on the far right, chicken or animal feed. Also against the wall you can see part of the leather belt with metal cups sewn on that was used to hoist milled grain from the grinding stone to the sifting machine.

Below the grinding floor you can barely make out the main drive wheel that was connected directly to the water wheel outside. An idler wheel would of sat above this and been engaged by a lever from the floor above. Power would of been transferred to various turning parts via rubber or leather belts.The twisted belt in this photo goes to the drive shaft under the wheat stone.

This is the main drive shaft where most of the belts for various machines are attached. This big belt feeds the shaft that turns the corn stone to the right.

Here we see the belt from the last photo as it turns around the shaft for the corn stone above.

Noticed that when they rebuilt this mill back in 1976 they left the old knob and tube wiring in place. They did replace the bare electrical wires with ones that had some form of insulation on them so you didn't have as great of a chance of shorting something out accidentally and burning the place down. Reminded me of some of the old wiring in the last two houses I lived in. But of course, it had all been replaced at some point.... or had it?

   Very tired tonight, it has been a long, but really fun day. Up earlier than I really wanted to be, but a friend of mine from the Nahville area wanted to go explore some of the local area, so I was out the door and on my way to pick her up by 10:00. Unfortunatly, it was still raining pretty hard, but we decided to take a nice drive anyway and hope that the rain might stop somewhere along the way. It never did, but no problem, we had a good time anyway.

   Wanted to take her over to Babcock State Park and show her the Grist Mill that is there since she had never seen it. The creek it is on was a raging torrent compared to a couple of days ago. One good thing is that the mill was actually open and running today..... just not while we were there. Actually the building was open so we got to go in and look at all the inner working of the mill. Pretty neat little setup. They were milling some corn into corn meal today, but they had to sift through a couple sacks of corn first to get the right size for what they were milling and that was going to take them until after lunch time to do. So we satisfied ourselves with looking at everything, taking a few pictures and talking to the guy running the mill.

   We drove back toward Fayetteville via some of the smaller back roads and that was a lot of fun. We took one detour down to the New River and the old town of Thurmond. The old RR Station is still there and some of the old buildings. Again, because of the rain, we didn't get out and explore much of it this time. Plus we were a little concerned that the single road into the town might wash out at some point because the creek along side the road was raging and there were several streams of water washing over the road in spots. So we didn't spend much time down there.

   Got back to Fayettevelle and ended up going to a little restraunt in the old town area called 'Pies and Pints'. Very busy when we got there and with good reason. We ordered up a large white pizza with shrimp, artichoke hearts, calamata olives and lots of garlic along with a pitcher of this really fine tasting dark beer that is brewed somewhere there in town. So we spent a couple hours there drinking beer and eating pizza.... I love pizza!

    Dropped her off after lunch and I think we both went back and took naps in order to be ready for this evenings dancing. I got there around 7:30 and it didn't wrap up until after midnight. didn't dance every dance,  but more than enough of them to make my feet sore again. Lots of good calling and music and some wonderful dance partners again. I would say that on the whole the 'quality' of the dancing is maybe not as good as last weekends dance, but there are plenty of people here this weekend who are that caliber of dancer. It just doesn't seem to be reaching that top shelf of dancing for some reason.... Not going to complain to much though because it is still some wonderful dancing going on and it is certainly better than no dancing at all.

   One final thing; I got the nicest compliment from a dancer this evening whom I've seen at dozens of dances before, but whom, for some reason I've never actually had as a partner.... anyway; at one point we did a move in the dance which put her spinning along the line into my arms for a swing and she said that she could always count on me to be exactly where she needed me to be in a dance. That just made me smile.

    Just finished up the first night of contra dancing here at the White Water Whirl. Very similar set up to the last dance in N. Carolina, in that the venue is a 4-H park where the CCC's built most of the buildings way back in the 30's. The building we danced in was nearly a twin to the last one except that it had some additional stonework and columns and large doors on each side that could be opened up to get some good cross ventilation.

    It was good that those doors were there and that they were open this evening as it was rather humid and hot for most of the night. I made the joke on Facebook that it was going to be a 3-shirt night, meaning that I would have to change 3 times because of all the sweat, but actually it wasn't quite that bad, plus the shirts I wear don't feel as sticky as cotton ones do. So I got by with just the one shirt. Really, even if it is hot and humid, as long as everyone is sweating equally, I don't mind a bit. That being said, there are always a few people that sweat  a lot more than I do, you just learn to deal with it and enjoy all the other aspects of the dance.

   Not as many people here at this dance as there have been at others, but still plenty to have 3 good lines. Lot's of people I know and a lot of faces that were familiar. Starting to see faces from Ohio and Pennsylvania and other points north now that I've come up this far. Some of these people I haven't seen for 6 months or more so that is kind of neat. Good music, the bands are 'Avant Gardener's with David DeGuiseppe' and the Contrarians. Calling was by Gaye Fifer (sp) and another women who I've never heard before. All good stuff, but it never seemed to hit that 'high' point where everything is just perfect. Still pretty good though and certainly better than no dancing at all.

    Not much else went on for most of the day. Spent a lot of time here at the trailer reading and relaxing. Did go out and do some grocery shopping. Had to get some more milk and bananas among other things. Did make a cheese cake this afternoon. Granted, it was from a mix and it was no bake, still, I did jazz it up some and it looked pretty good when I got back this evening. Just wasn't hungry enough for a piece yet, plus it still needs blueberries on top.

   Going to goof off most of tomorrow with a friend of mine from Nashville. Not exactly sure what we will do yet, but I imagine it will be pretty low key. One thought is to go back over to Babcock state park and do a bit of hiking. Will just see how the day goes and what the weather is doing. Right now though it is time for some sleep.

    Not a whole lot going on today. Woke up around 5:00 a.m. for some reason and couldn't get back to sleep. It may have been because of my allergies kicking in, but they didn't seem to be all that bad. Still, took an allergy pill and used the time to finish up a book that needed to be finished. Must of worked because the next thing you know it's after 9:30 and the sun is up and streaming into the overhead skylight/vent.

    A quick breakfast and a fast read of mail and FB before hitting the road. Needed to go get the oil changed in the truck so it was off to Wally World. Not my favorite place to patronize, but have found that while on the road they are remarkably consistent with their service. The truck uses full synthetic oil in it so when it was all said and done the bill was $98 for the service and a bottle of engine treatment. Something that goes in every time the oil gets changed. Hard to put out money like that until you think about the chances of a breakdown if you don't keep up on the maintenance, so it gets done whenever it needs it.

    Went and had a late lunch afterwards and sat and watched the latest episode of 'Castle' on the computer. I don't own a real TV, and probably won't ever own one again. But a couple friends got me hooked on a couple of shows, so when I can, I'll boot them up on the computer and try to stay current. Castle is fun just because Nathan Fillion is the main character in it and he has been one of my favorites since his days on the 'Firefly' series. Other shows I try to catch once in awhile are all the CIS-NCIS shows, Hawaii 5-O and of course The Big Bang Theory.

   Finished up the afternoon-evening by taking a walk around the RV park here, ate a bit of dinner and started planning for the next couple of weeks of travel. Will leave out of here next Monday sometime and head north into Pennsylvania and on into NY state. The objective is to end up in the finger lakes region of the Mohawk Valley and explore the area around St Johns and Fort Klock. Yup, that's correct, there is a fort up there that my ancestors built back in the early 1700's and it is now a national monument site. It's about time someone from the immediate family actually visited it, took pictures and became better acquainted with the area one side of the family comes from.

   For now though, that's about it for the day, going to finish up here, read some more and maybe watch some more Beverly Hillbillies. Those early episodes in B&W are a real hoot.

ps Does anyone know how to link a Blog up to their Facebook account? I know it can be done, I just can't seem to figure it out. I would appreciate some help.
 

   Very nice day today. A normal morning for the most part, the only sour part was the milk.... first time it has never been used up before going bad. But it may also be because of the defrosting that was done two days ago. No big deal, just meant eating cereal with water instead since it had already been poured and banana and blueberries added. It really isn't that much different from the non-fat stuff that usually goes on it, but the milk does have enough of a taste to make me prefer it.

    Took a bit of a road trip this afternoon. Drove north and then east to Babcock State Park. A brochure I had seen had some pictures of a beautiful old grist mill there so it was time to go and take a look. Plenty of other nice reasons to visit the park, including the fact that it is free, but the mill was indeed stunning. Sitting on the edge of a rambunctious creek it looked just like an old grist mill should. A nice metal overshot wheel with power from an old wooden mill race. The building was a combination of lapped wooden siding and board and batten all on top of a laid stone foundation. Spent a bit of time there getting some pictures, the light wasn't great, but maybe a few will come out. They also had a nice gift shop there where I managed to find two nice books on logging railroads in the Appalachians and a couple shot glasses. Total damages to the pocket book were more than was planned for, but no real regrets.

   Continued my little circular drive and ended up in the town of Beckley around 4:00, just in time to go and get some Chinese food and leaf through one of the new books. It was a quick meal because I wanted to make a movie at 5:00 in a nearby theatre. No problem eating quickly enough of course, but when it came to finding the theatre my GPS, Emma, kept pointing me into a parking lot with a bunch of warehouses in it. Was just about to give up when the brand new theatre popped into view in a new strip mall. Being only 10 min's late was no big deal cuz we all know how long it takes to work through all those ads and previews they do these days.

   The movie tonight was called 'Safe' and stars Jason Statham as the main hero. It functioned very well as a 'Guy's Night Out' kind of movie, lots of gratuitous violence and mayhem, not a lot of sex in this one, and it had at least a plausible plot considering the genre. It was entertaining enough and after all, isn't that one of the main reasons for going to a movie?

    Back at the trailer now of course. Going to read my book a bit more this evening, maybe watch an episode or two of the 'Beverly Hillbillies'. Picked up a couple DVDs the other day of old TV shows including one with 40 episodes of the BH's. Watched the 1st two last night. All black and white of course and though the theme song was played by Flatt and Scruggs, it didn't start out as the one we all remember. Same thing goes for 'Pettycoat Junction' by the way. Kind of fun seeing the very first episodes, it introduces you to nearly all of the main characters and it's fun to see how it is going to change as time goes on. Anyway; here are a few photo's from today's excursion.

Everything a Grist Mill should be. The wooden flume, or mill race, evidently got it's water from up river a ways. I liked the cantilevered walkway that was evidently added after the addition on the right side was added. It was also nice to see it 'nestled' in next to that big rock just downstream. Not only does it look nice but in event of high water it would have also helped channel it away from the down river side of the structure.

A view from a little farther away showing how rugged this stream is.

From across the creek you get a view of the whole structure. The bridge on the up river side was built by the CCC's back in the late 30's and takes the road up to a lake and some picnic spots.

This view shows the wooden mill race, the waterwheel and it's protective structure a little better. It always amazes me how little water it actually takes to run one of these. The mill race is maybe 3' wide by 2' deep, but from the staining on the inside it looks like there was never more than 6"-8" of water in it at any one time. Upon further thought I guess 2-6 cfs would be enough to turn it. 

A view of one of the waterfalls just down stream from the mill. This particular one actually extended all the way across the creek in this location. Really a nice place to just sit and watch the water go by for a bit. I'll bet there are fish in there.

A view from the land side of the mill. I think the porch roof must of been a late addition as they had a loft door and a pulley system above it for hoisting grain and such out of wagons. Would of liked to see the inside as the mill is suppose to still run a few days out of the year, so everything needed to do that should still be in there. Alas; not today.

   Woke up around 2:00 a.m. last night with rain, wild lightning and blast's of thunder all around. Had to get up for awhile and just watch the show going on outside my window. Opened the shades in the living room as well as the back door, grabbed a glass of wine and sat back on the couch and just watched and listened for more than an hour. What a show!  

   It rained off and on all morning so there was no hurry on getting out and about until after lunch time. Went and found the county park where the contra dance will be held this weekend. Looks like it should be a real fun venue to dance at. After that short errand it was off to the visitor center on the north side of the New River Gorge. The whole area is a national park like place and they had a nice visitor center that had displays and movies about the history of the area from millions of years ago until the present. It seems that the 'New' River is actually a very old river, some say the 2nd oldest river in the world. The Nile river being the only one older. But no one knows for sure, so we will just figure it to be older than dirt and leave it at that.

   Many of the displays they had were about the coal mining that took place around this region and it was the reason why any one was here in the first place. Lot's and lots of very high quality bituminous coal was discovered in the cliffs along the river gorge and once the C&O railroad managed to lay tracks into the region, the coal industry just boomed. Lot's of small communities were born and died there along the banks of the new river as new deposits of coal were discovered and then worked out. Now a days it is the tourist trade that supports a lot of the people in this region, though there is still plenty of hard rock coal mining going on in certain spots. There was one coal train that went by this afternoon that had close to 200 full cars in it.

    Of course the main attraction out at the center is the steel arch bridge that spans the gorge and turned what use to be a nearly hour long transit from one side to the other, into little more than a 30 second blip in the day. The bridge is truly a marvel of engineering in both how it was built and the stats it racked up once opened. I'll forgo a bunch of the engineering particulars, but know that when it was completed in 1977 it was the 2nd longest single span arch bridge in the world. (Since then it has dropped to 3rd place). Also; it is the 2nd highest arch bridge in the U.S. at more than 850' above the river. And if that isn't enough, it is also beautiful as the pictures below show.

   Hiked a couple short trails there at the center, climbed up and down enough stairs to span 600 vertical feet, and saw some beautiful views. The park service had one map showing various road trips around the area so I drove the one right under the bridge that would of been the way people got from one side to the other before the new bridge was in place. It was paved now, which was nice, but so narrow and steep that for the most part it was a one-way from the north side to the south. Stopped several times along the way to get different views of the bridge and read a few signs. Really just a pretty little drive all in all. Will try to get out and do a few more short drives tomorrow, especially since it is suppose to be cloudy and rainy again.

   Got back to the trailer around 5:30 and made a little dinner. Started another book and read for a couple hours and then watched the movie 'Iron Man II'. Certainly not as good as the first one, but it was entertaining enough if that is all you are looking for in a movie.

A view of the New River Gorge steel arch bridge from the north side of the gorge. The bridge is made out of 'cor-ten' steel, a specific amalgam of steel that has the property of producing a thin 'veneer' of rust on the exterior surface that then protects the rest of the steel from further rusting. I remember this because the 44' motor life boats I once ran had hulls made out of the same stuff. Of course the Coast Guard still made us paint them.

Another view of the bridge taken from the north side. The bridge has 29 vertical truss like members spaced equally along the length of the structure. They range in height from 28' to more than 200'. What surprised me was that there are no cross member supports on the outside plane of the bridge connecting these members together.

 

Here you have a better view of those vertical truss like members. They have plenty of cross bracing within each frame, but no bracing at all between members. I would of thought in a structure like this with exposure to very high winds and large loads that it would be necessary to add sway bracing in all directions. Apparently not though.

A view of nearly the whole span of the bridge. This was taken from the old truss bridge that use to be the only way across the river for many, many miles in both directions. Here you can really see the lack of sway bracing between the vertical members. Would love to see the calc's they used to design it by. Obviously it was enough without adding anything else to the design.

This view was interesting because it makes the bridge appear like it is simply growing out of the trees on the side of the mountain.

One last view.... The lighting on this one looked nice.

Tons of caterpillers out on the ground, trees and bushes today. A simple 'Tent' catepiller, it is remarkable how beautiful it can be if you can just get close enough to see it.