One of the things I was looking forward to the most in my travels through West Virginia was the opportunity to listen to some great Mountain Music. West Virginia music leans heavily towards bluegrass and country, with a wonderful dose of mandolin thrown in now and again. There are many other kinds of music around the state too and you can check out my favorites on my West Virginia Playlist HERE or on Spotify HERE. There are some legendary venues around the state, too and I was really happy to visit some of these. This is a quick look at some of the great and not so great spots I found in my travels.
My musical journey through The Mountain State began at The Troubadour Lounge outside of Berkeley Springs. I'm kind of sorry it did. This bar was owned by country music legend Jim McCoy until he passed away in 2016 and houses the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. I'm told it was quite the place back when Jim was running it. When I pulled in, it looked like...
Food is an interesting and underrated form of communication and an essential part of travel. Even if we are cooking for ourselves, regional differences can be spotted in grocery stores from place to place. Things you may have never seen or heard of are piled high and the locals are all grabbing some. Every state has its culinary specialties and must-try delicacies and ideally when you try them they will help you understand the State or region better. Hopefully they’ll be made with local ingredients and you can get a taste for what grows in the area, and there will probably be hints of where the people who make them came from as well. America is and always has been a great melting pot of flavors from around the world and our culinary traditions are ever-shifting. I encourage everyone to be bold when travelling to new places and eat as locally as you can. You know those big national chains will be mediocre at best. Even if you want fast-food, the local option it bound to be better. Use Yelp to sift through them (with a grain of salt obviously, but a 1 or 2 star place is probably that for good reason), or better yet, ask the locals. Here are seven of my favorite meals from the month I spent in West Virginia..
Finding a true multi-generation craft shop these days is getting harder and harder. Finding one where you can actually see the products being made is even harder still. I treasure these finds because they are so rare. Having been to factories which churn out thousands of pieces an hour, all exactly the same, it is nice when you can find somewhere where things are made one at a time and each piece is unique and distinct. Wandering into Appalachian Glass in Weston, West Virginia I knew I was somewhere special. In the hour or so I was there, I saw really beautiful glass ornaments being blown by hand, learned some history about the area and the industry, had a cup of coffee and walked out with some beautiful hand-made glass pieces in my hand and a smile on my face...
’m going to go right ahead and say it. In the incredible ethnic food scene that stretches across America, the most inevitably disappointing is Italian. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. Having spent plenty of time in Italy I know how good Italian food is. The Italian-American population is huge, and if you go by their houses you will find amazing dishes in every pot. Why then is it that every time I go to an Italian restaurant I find it so underwhelming? If I order pasta I usually feel as though I could have made better at home in 20 minutes. It’s actually gotten to a point where I won’t even go to an Italian restaurant anymore. This is why Muriale’s in Fairmont, West Virginia was such an amazing find...
Leaving Spencer, West Virginia, I travel out state highway 14, make a left on Colt Ridge and then a right on Colt Run and just like that, I find myself in a different time. The road turns quickly to a one lane dirt track through the woods and leads deep into a hollow. Having spent enough time in West Virginia now, my hope is that I won’t see a massive coal or lumber truck come barreling around the corner towards me. I don’t, and soon I find myself bouncing happily down a West Virginia back country road and quickly pull up at my destination under a sign that reads “Hatfield Farms”.
Hatfield Farms is home to Devil Anse Hatfield’s Great Great-Grandson Mark Hatfield and his wife Brenda. It’s also home to their latest business ventures: Hatfield and McCoy Vineyards and The Sweeter Side of the Feud Winery and Distillery...
Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco Treat Yourself to the Best. While I don’t actually advocate chewing tobacco, or using tobacco at all for that matter, I do love a good Mail Pouch outdoor advertisement. Between 1891 and 1992, West Virginia Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco, based in Wheeling, had its name painted on as many as 20,000 barns in 22 states. Barn owners were paid a nominal fee to use their barns, less than $50 a year in today’s money, but every few years they got their barns painted for free. If a side wasn’t visible from the road, Mail Pouch would paint it any color the owner wanted.
One barn painter, Harley Warrick, spent 55 years painting Mail Pouch advertisements. A barn would usually take him and a partner about 6 hours to finish and he never used a stencil but painted everything by hand. It is estimated that over the course of his career Warrick painted or retouched over 20,000 signs...
Southwestern West Virginia doesn’t get a lot of visitors. This is a shame because there are some really cool places to see there. But it’s a shame for them as well because jobs are scarce in the southwest since coal has dried up and the economy could use some tourist money coming in. During my time there I saw some wonderful tourism initiatives, some things I would change and some things that just left me shaking my head.
I started my tour in tiny Bramwell in Mercer County. Historically, Bramwell was the business center of the Pocahontas Coal Fields. During its heyday, Bramwell supported a population of over 4000 people. The Bank of Bramwell was the financial center for the whole region and 14 passenger trains a day pulled into the station. In the late 1800s, Bramwell was said to have the highest concentration of millionaires per capita in the country...
If you've ever heard a joke about West Virginia, West Virginians tell the same jokes about people from McDowell County. McDowell County is the poorest county in West Virginia, with a median household income below $22,500, and has the lowest life expectancy in the country for men and the second lowest for women. Opioid abuse is off the charts. This is that Appalachia.
The night before I went into McDowell County I was sitting at a bar in Bluefield in neighboring Mercer County. The gentleman I was speaking with told me they had three rules when they went into McDowell County: have a full tank of gas, make sure your car door locks worked, and bring a gun. He made very clear that he wasn't kidding...
John Henry is a popular American folk hero. His story has been told in print, story and song for almost 150 years. His is a classic tale of man vs. machine which is as valid today as ever, especially here in West Virginia.
Whether or not John Henry was a real person has been debated for over a century, but there is no doubt if you ask people in Talcott. West Virginia. Talcott is the town that sits on top of the Big Bend Tunnel, cut for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad between 1870 and 1872 and the site where the story of John Henry supposedly took place. They have built a beautiful park with a statue to this hero of the working man and local history includes many people who claim to have known John Henry and witnessed his famous competition.
I am a proud Washingtonian, born and raised. In my adult life, however, I have spent far more time out of Washington D.C. than in it. So when I am home, I make it a point to dig a little deeper, explore a little further and expand my knowledge of the city I call home. My mother, also born and raised in D.C., has become my accomplice on these adventures and we have found some amazing little spots all over the city that if you weren’t looking for, you’d probably never find. This winter, we set out to discover the original boundary stones that marked the surveyed borders of Washington D.C. when it was laid out in 1791-92. And while we haven’t made it to all of them, we have found the four corners and many in between and it has been a fascinating mini-adventure super close to home...
