Barns, Beans, and the Corn is looking good

  So, after you pass the Golden Domed WV State Capitol Building in Charleston WV. you follow I-64 over a little way past Nitro WV and pick up another one of my favorite roads.
  Actually for years it was one of my most feared roads. In years past, US-35 was a very narrow 2 lane road that ran along the beautiful Kanawa River in WV. It has since been replaced in part by a new 4 lane divided highway and it bypasses some of the scariest part.
  When I first started driving Big Trucks, one of my first trips was along this route. I was new, I was nervous, and this road was bumper to bumper with Big Trucks who were in a a very big hurry. It was dark, and to top it off this part is very prone to dense fog as well. The road runs along the Kanawa River, and I mean on places it is RIGHT NEXT to the River, and there are places where it is clear the land is shifting, and looks like it may slide away any moment. When you were going along and would hit one of these area where the road had shifted and been patched over and over the truck would rock violently sometimes launching your beloved coffee cup across the cab, covering everything with the needed caffeine juice.
  It follows the river over to where you pass what used to be the biggest Ammunition Factories in the country, several chemical plants, and a few refineries, all constantly being serviced by huge River Barges that navigate the Kanawa, and Ohio Rivers carrying anything you possibly imagine that would fit into a barge. It's a bit distracting trying to drive, and watch the big barges, being constantly amaZed at how they could possibly make these huge rafts of barges go where they want them to go. How they negotiate the constantly twisting river course, the never ending bridges, and then slide them in and out of any number of huge River Locks that make navigation on the Inland River System possible, is always so interesting  to me.
  Once you cross the the big bridge in Point Pleasant which I think is named after Chuck Yeager of "The Right Stuff" fame, you follow US-35 diagonally across southern Ohio in what I always enjoy as "the parade of barns".
  As some may know I am a huge fan of barns. I guess is comes from working in the fields as a kid in Ohio. I just love looking at all the different barn designs, and some of them are huge. It's hard to believe how they could have possibly built these giant wood structures back in the days without cranes, man lifts, and structural steel. Many of these giant beasts were raised by hand, and held together with "post and tenon" joints which basically means they are held together by hand driven wooden pegs.
  From Southeastern Ohio, to where I am not in eastern Minnesota you are treated to expansive green plains of mile after mile of corn fields, followed by bean fields, that alternate like that across a half a doZen states.
  The barn designs change as you go depending on the brand of Immigrants who were settled in that area. It also changes depending on the amount of "snow load" the structures were expected to have to support. The farther north you go the steeper the pitch of the roofs, and often the rounder the roofs would be.
  All along this route you are driving thru the Ohio Valley where the dirt is real dirt, not red clay. The dirt is dark, nearly black, very fertile, and you can smell it, because it smells like real dirt should smell.
  The rivers flow slowly, and wind in craZy snake like routes. One such river is the Scioto River which is a shallow winding river I played in, and built Tom Sawyer type rafts to float on when I was a kid. Looking back now I realiZe it was probably very polluted and it's a wonder any of us are still alive after swimming in it and probably drinking from it too.
  So the barns are looking good, the corn is very tall, and the beans are looking great.
  More later about Michigan, and the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. And by the way......I am pretty sure I have entered "Indian Country".

Driving The Dynamite Trail

One of the gifts of my truck driving trip to Minneapolis MN is that I got to drive what we refer to as  "The Dynamite Trail". Regular folks call it the West Virginia Turnpike.
  When I was a kid, my Father was an Iron Worker. He walked "tall steel" all over the Eastern U.S.
  In the beginning he worked for a company named American Bridge, and later for a company called Armstrong Construction.
  Back then the American Interstate System was being built in big sections. Some sections were completed fairly early, and some sections like I-95 thru South Carolina and Georgia were not finished until the mid 1970's.
  When I was maybe 6 or 8 the section of I-64 in WV was where Dad worked a lot and he would take me with him in the summer. The safety laws were very different back then and I would hang out on the job site  all day. The other Iron Workers would keep an eye on me, and the Crane Operator named Joe Armstrong took me under his wing and I spent a lot of time in the cab of the crane with Joe.
  When there was nothing to lift or place with the crane (between picks) Joe and I would take out fishing poles down to the river under the bridge they were building and fish until they needed something picked with the crane and then we would have to run up the steep riverbanks so Joe could operate the crane. Joe taught me how to operate a Bay City Friction Crane when I was 8 years old.
  I will never forget the sight or sound of when they would "shoot" the side of a mountain. That was when after days or weeks of drilling into solid rock they would stuff the deep narrow holes with Dynamite, tie them altogether with Det Cord (detonation cord), and then when it was all just right the sirens would go off, someone would yell over the radio FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!! and the earth under your feet would vibrate, and a whole side of a mountain would swell. Then you would hear the noise of the explosion, and the rocks, and giant cloud of dust would slide down the mountainside.
  Those Explosive Guys were almost artistic. The carved stone. They created shapes and slopes, and they did it all with TNT.
  I spent hours watching the D-9 BulldoZer Operators work on slopes so steep you would swear they somehow had figured out how to defy the Laws of Gravity with huge steel machines that weighed tons. Every now and then I would hear the Iron Workers, or maybe the State Bridge Inspectors talking quietly about how "So and so had one get away from him on the grade......the funeral would be announced after they recovered the body".
  Even now when I drive the Interstates that are carved out of mountains, I look up and I can still picture what were massive iron machines, that looked like some sort of bugs crawling up and down the grades that seemed be far too steep for anything to stick to.
  So......I have some history with The Dynamite Trail, and I love driving both I-64, and I-77 which is actually the WV Turnpike.
  West Virginia is one of the most underrated States in the Union. It is unique in geography and culture.
  We have some wonderful mountains in North Carolina, but the WV Mountains incredible. Once you cross the The Blue Ridge, and go thru the I-77 Tunnel at Big Walker Mountain you see that the mountains become much more rugged. They seem to be steeper, and more of them.
  In NC you often navigate by the names of hundreds of roads usually named after a Family, with the words CHURCH after it, Like Shiloh Church Road.
  If it is not named after a church it is probably named after a family with the word Dairy tacked on.
  In WV it seems that every road be it paved or little more than a mud path is named after the Creek it follows.
  Driving the Interstate thru WV you look out and get the feeling that if you ventured off the Big Road more than a quarter of a mile you would quite possibly be lost forever.
  The WV Turnpike is a fun road to drive. I am not sure but I may have exceeded the posted speed limit one time. It is even more fun on a Motorcycle.
  John Denver sang "almost heaven, West Virginia" and as a Motorcycle Rider, it truly is Motorcycle Heaven.
  I always talk about "taking the big motorcycle trip" by riding all the way across the country, but the reality of it is, I could spend the rest of my life riding and could not even begin to cover the range of EXCELLENT motorcycle rides just in North Carolina and West Virginia.
  So I command you........put down the controller, the mouse, turn off the computer, get in your car, your truck, get on your bike and head North on I-77, up over Fancy Gap Virginia, over the New River, thru the tunnels, and drive the Dynamite Trail, then follow I-64 West to Charleston WV and look at one of the prettiest gold leaf decorated Capital Domes in the country.
  I promise.....you will understand what John Denver was talking about.