May 30- June 9, 2007 West Virginia to New York

After our encounter with the campground on May 30, we drove up Route 119 to Sutton, WV, to a nice, flat, open campground but still with huge trees. This was a huge Days Inn that is so special it is actually a Days HOTEL and it has a campground directly behind it. It is set up especially for BIG RIGS so we were very happy!

On Thursday, May 31, we drove BACK down to where we really wanted to be and visited the longest arch bridge in the US. (It used to be the longest arch bridge in the world, until the Japanese built a longer one…) It is a bridge over the New River which is really the oldest river in the US still flowing in the very same stream bed it has always been in. Even with uplifts and mountain building, the river has not changed course. Interesting…

West Virginia is really like stepping back in time. Until very recently, when the Interstate Highways were built, people were separated by mountains and valleys and streams. The railroads brought some civilization to the area in the late 1800’s. But since the railroads were first built to transport the coal, that really only allowed the people who lived near enough to the train tracks to leave their home, walk to the train and take the train ONLY to where ever it went. If the train was not near enough for you to walk to, you might go your whole life without ever leaving your area. When the roads WERE built, they were windy, narrow and steep with lots of hairpin turns. We drove down the old Route 82 (in the Jeep of course) to follow the road to cross the New River before the Interstate Bridge was built. We wove our way down the side of the mountain, crossed an old bridge and wound our way back up the mountain. It took us about 30 minutes to go the same distance you would go in less than 1 minute on the new bridge!

Driving through West Virginia is beautiful. It is just a long series of mountains and valleys with a river thrown in here and there. They have dams built to provide lots of water recreation areas. (Well, that is probably not the reason they built the dams but that is the end result!) The trees are HUGE. We guess they are about 120” to 150’ tall. There are trees EVERYWHERE! Anyone who says America doesn’t have enough trees needs to come to West Virginia! We drove BACK up to Sutton for the night.

On Friday, June 1, we just spent the day doing business work in the motor home at the campground.

We drove back DOWN the road on Saturday, June 2, to go to White Sulphur Springs to the Greenbrier. What an interesting story!

The Greenbrier was started in the 1830’s for people to come to “take the waters” from the White Sulphur Springs. The original hotel was built as a private home in 1835 and 5 US Presidents summered there before the beginning of the Civil War. In the 1880’s the corporation that owned the railroad bought the property and used it as a plush hotel to bring tourists in on railroad junkets. In the 1940’s the whole complex was used as a military hospital. Eisenhower was quite familiar with the hotel and stayed there often. At the beginning of the cold war the US leaders were quite concerned about the safety of Congress should the US be attacked by a nuclear weapon. In 1956 the leaders of the House and the Senate (including LBJ), after having had conversations with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, (who owned the
Greenbrier) sent a letter asking the Company to cooperate with an architect they were sending to discuss a “matter of vital importance”. (See photo) Remember, the US leaders were very familiar with the property both because it had been a military hospital and because Eisenhower and others had been guests there many times. Plans were made for a new West Virginia Wing of the Greenbrier that would provide hotel rooms, a conference center and exhibition rooms as well as a hidden shelter for Congress. Excavation for this complex began in 1958 (see photo) and there was nothing hidden from plain view of anyone driving by. The Government and the contractors felt that the “best kept secret is a secret in plain view”. The entire cost of the West Virginia Wing AND the underground facility was paid for by the US Government. As far as anyone knew or was concerned, they were building an exhibition center. There WAS an exhibition center and it WAS underground beneath the West Virginia Wing. But a large portion of the underground area of the building was a “nuclear fallout bunker”. (It was not a bomb shelter because it could not take a direct hit, but it COULD survive a nuclear blast from 30 miles away.) The bunker is buried 720 feet into the hillside beneath the West Virginia Wing and separated from the hotel by 20 to 60 feet of dirt. There WERE exhibition rooms and conference rooms under the hotel also. Anyone who was down there attending a conference was not aware that they were not seeing the entire complex. There are 4 entrances protected by blast doors (see photo). Some of these blast doors were actually kept open and the convention attendees walked through the deftly camouflaged doors to get to the exhibition rooms. The facility totaled 112,544 sq ft with 44 separate locations and 153 rooms on 2 levels! The dining room that would have been used by Congress if they were in attendance was actually used by the conference attendees. In the NON-Public areas, there were beds for each member of Congress plus one aide for each member. (Wives and families would have been staying upstairs in the West Virginia Wing breathing all of the nuclear fallout unaware that their husbands –or wives-were being housed below them!) There were two auditoriums that were used as conference rooms, but if anyone had counted the seats they would have discovered that one conference room had exactly the right number of seats for the House of Representatives and the one had exactly the right number of seats for the Senate. There were 2 main entrances that the Congress would have used in an emergency. Just inside each of those entrances were special decontamination areas where the Congress person or aide would have disrobed, showered and been given new clothing. All old clothing would have been burned. The facility has a communications area, telephone access to the outside world, a television production area in case Congress needed to make announcements to the outside world. There were 18 bunkrooms with 60 beds each (30 bunk beds). The leaders of the two Houses had individual beds but still were 2 to a room. There was a clinic with a pharmacy that was kept fully stocked at all times and the drugs were rotated to always have the most up-to-date and fresh drugs. There was a 60 day stockpile of food stored in one tunnel AND THE FOOD WAS CHANGED OUT ROUTINELY TO BE SURE THAT IT WAS ALWAYS IN DATE! The power plant was 3 generators each with a 14,000 gallon diesel fuel tank. There were three 25,000 gallon tanks of fresh water along with water purification systems. There was an incinerator that would burn ALL waste (including a dead body if there happened to be one). The generators and the incinerator were vented up through the mountainside behind someone’s house who was told that it had to do with the steam power plant in the hotel.

There was a select group of technicians called the Forsythe Associates who ostensibly worked for the Greenbrier, but their real job was to keep the bunker in a constant state of readiness in case it was needed. They did actually repair TV’s and telephones in the Greenbrier, but only as a cover for their real job. This facility was maintained in a constant state of readiness for 30 years! On May 31, 1992, the facility was exposed in a Washington Post article. The day after the story was published, the facility began to be phased out. In July 1995 the lease between the Greenbrier and the Government was ended.

The Greenbrier spent a number of years deciding what to do with this facility next! They thought about a Casino, but the town wouldn’t hear of it. They finally decided that with the blast doors and the security of the whole area they would use it to store data and documents. Of course we don’t know WHOSE data is stored there, but there are probably some computer servers and data storage for lots of huge companies.

This is a VERY ritzy place. The rooms are about $300-800 a night. A cup of coffee is $5.00. We didn’t spend too long in the hotel after the tour…

Mark and I were commenting that there must not be ANY farm land in the whole state after our ride the day before! We made our return trip further east than we had traveled the first 2 days and we did see some very nice farms and farmland (see photo). However, there were still lots of VERY tall trees.

So, we drove BACK up the road to Sutton and stayed overnight again behind the Days Hotel. On Sunday, June 3, we headed north on Interstate 79 to Washington, PA, and stayed at our favorite campground (WalMart) just off of the Interstate. Again, it cost us more than any campground would after we went grocery shopping!

On Monday, June 4, we left the motor home in the WalMart parking lot and drove back into West Virginia toward Wheeling to go to a toy and train museum. It was interesting, but reminded me of Grandma Etta’s house… We drove in the country to visit a house that a businessman had donated to the City of Wheeling with the understanding that the City would maintain it and use it for the public. The City has turned it into a nice “artsy” area with a lodge, golf course, ski lift, garden shop, museum and glass museum.

On Tuesday, June 5, we again left the motor home in the WalMart parking lot and drove past Wheeling to Moundsville to visit the old West Virginia Penitentiary which was ordered closed due to inhumane conditions in 1995! It took the prisoners themselves 9 years to build it in the 1880’s (no machines, just hand quarrying the stone and laying the stone). It took paid workmen 30 years to add an addition in the 1940’s… Prison is not a nice place. It was really depressing. After that tour we picked up the motor home and headed up to Erie, PA. Check your US map. Pennsylvania really does have about 40 miles or so of land along Lake Erie. I guess New York and Ohio felt sorry for them and gave them a little bit of waterfront between the two states.

On Wednesday, June 6, we did a lot of paperwork and then drove out to Presque Isle which is a peninsula into Lake Erie from Erie, PA. It was a gorgeous beach with tall trees right up to the beach sand. At the water’s edge were zillions of very small rounded stones instead of beach sand. We found lots of “skipping” rocks and brought a bunch with us for when we have Rachel an Abby!

On Thursday, June 7, we drove east toward Westfield, NY, and the Chautauqua Lake area. This is GRAPE country. Welch’s started here in the 1920’s. There is an area 2.6 miles wide and 50 miles long that is the best grape growing land in the US. It has something to do with the soil and Lake Erie covering the land ages ago. We have photos of the grape vines and a photo of a grape flower. The flower is actually the bunch of grapes before the grapes ripen. There should be a close up photo of the flower for you to see in the photos.

The countryside was nice rolling hills, not mountains, and the little town at the north end of Chautauqua Lake reminded me of the town in Lake Placid. The lake really is beautiful. We visited Tom and Jane Welch who summer in Chautauqua. They took us in their boat to the other side of the lake and we had lunch in a restaurant there. It was a simply beautiful day on the lake!

Then we drove on to Jamestown and had dinner with Tim and Jan Stowell and Stephie and Harry Kolb. You all remember the name even if you didn’t meet them. Grandma Etta and Grandfather met them at Juniper Springs and they became lifelong friends. We haven’t seen them in ages and we had a great visit over dinner.

On Friday, June 8, we had to get the windshield replaced in our car because the crack from a stone months ago was getting to the point where we couldn’t ignore it any longer. So I worked on the Johnson Family Living Tree for the Reunion ALL day and Mark got the windshield replaced.

Today, Saturday, June 9, we left Erie and headed to Panama, NY, to see the Panama Rocks. This area used to be sea islands of sand and gravel when the inland sea extended to Utah, about 300 million years ago. The Rocks are sedimentary rocks from an ancient river delta and are made up of small flat oval stones naturally cemented together. (See Photo) The area was uplifted about 165 million years ago and there was a lot of fracturing of the rocks. The Ice Age of about 10,000 years ago compacted the rock and then the water action since then has created deep crevices and alley passageways. This ridge of rock is about ½ mile long and there is an easy trail along both the lower and upper parts of the Rocks. The whole area is covered with trees, ferns, mosses, etc. (See Photos). We met a group of adults and kids trying to get the kids to climb up a crevice in the rocks. Dad and I laughed because our grandkids (and our kids!) would have just grabbed hold and climbed up. These kids were so tentative and scared… There are some good photos of the climb out of the passageway. During the 1800’s outlaws used this area to hide from the law. Then honeymooners came to visit the secluded areas. The area is privately owned and has changed hands quite a few times. It was really an interesting area.

Then we headed on to our favorite campground again in Bradford, PA.

And that is the end of this week!

One of the things I meant to tell everyone happened along the Interstate in South Carolina… We were driving along at a snail’s pace because of what we assumed was an accident up ahead. About 4 vehicles in front of us was a flat bed truck with one new red van on it. We all went along very slowly for about 20 minutes before we could see that there WAS a minor accident up ahead of us but that the cars were both off the road in the median strip and there were police there. The flat bed trailer in front of us pulled over to the left lane, then onto the median strip. Since we were only moving a few feet at a time we watched as the flat bed truck began to unload the new red van to replace the “used-to-be-new” red van that had been in the accident. The people were unpacking all of their stuff from the van in the accident to load into the new van. I thought, “Now THAT is the way to get a replacement car!” Just call up the new car dealer and have him send out a brand new van just like the one that just got smashed up!...

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