My family just spent a few days in West Virginia. Here my daughter and I pose in front of the Ohio River.
It’s so disorienting to go someplace with hills or mountains. Toledo is an old swamp so it’s perfectly pancake flat. We have North-South roads and we have East-West roads and our neighborhoods are cut into perfect little squares. When you’re in the hills or mountains roads go everywhere and nothing makes sense. It led to some fun little adventures.
Here’s to roads that go everywhere!
Well, Boston is an old swamp as well (it’s interesting to compare historic maps with current), but the roads and neighborhoods are anything but squares. It’s a fun, disorienting time if you want to try getting somewhere without a GPS or dead tree map. Your metric for fun might vary depending on traffic and distribution of the local fauna “massholes”.
Boston is centuries older than Toledo and the roads there follow the old cowpaths and market roads of colonial America….or so I’ve been told.
West Virginia is an interesting place, at least the north panhandle part (the only part I’ve been to). There’s a resort named Oglebay with a zoo and a glass-blowing factory (stayed there for a conference) and other interesting things like a park with miniature golf and paddle-wheel boats and swimming pools, about 20 minutes from Wheeling, a major city. Did you get to see any of that?
That’s where we were! 😀 We stayed at Oglebay Resort. It was really beautiful! My husband and I got massages in the spa and my daughter rode a horse. We also spent an afternoon at the zoo. We ate a couple restaurants in Wheeling, too. We had a great time but I think it would be nice to go back in the summer when there are more outdoor things to do.
Glad you liked it! I liked it too, but it’d be a massive drive to get there for me. BTW, your daughter is your mini-me, isn’t she?
If you go again in warmer weather, get a wristband that lets you do all the activities. I had forgotten visiting a historic old house near the glassblowing studio; that was fun to see, especially the kids’ rooms with their old-fashioned toys. Also, ride the little open-sided train through the zoo if you can. There’s a little tiny pond where you can paddle a little boat.
There used to be a standing craft fair in Wheeling; I have a couple of lap-sized quilts I picked up from there, and I believe they also have food.
I’m reminded of Phil Ochs’ song, “The Hills of West Virginia.” (Am I showing my age?)
As someone who has lived most of their life in Massachusetts, I’m used to hills and irregular, crooked, winding roads. When I’ve gone to the midwest or other parts of the country with flat land and roads that are mostly in a grid pattern, it feels strange to me, almost eerie. So much depends on what one is used to.
I can definitely see advantages to flat land and roads in a grid, though – it sounds like it would be more difficult to get lost, although with my bad sense of direction, I could probably still manage to lose my way.