Rolling With the Punches

We are in West Virginia, right on the Virginia-West Virginia border, an area of hair-pin turns and forested slopes on some of the oldest mountains in the world.  

We had a great day yesterday, starting out with breakfast at “Dan’s Den,” which is about a half mile from the place we are staying.  

Dan’s Den is a roadside place in tiny Frost, West Virginia.  It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but like a Hobbit hole it seems a bit larger on the inside.  

Service here was cheerful, the cook himself took our order, and nothing was too much trouble.  

Rye toast? Got it!  

Croissants?  Got it! 

Good coffee and four eggs later, and we were happy campers.  We came back for excellent burgers in the evening (yes, they had a vegetarian “Impossible Burger” for the wife) and will be back for breakfast in the morning.  This was nothing fancy, but it was cooked right by happy people, which is all you can ever want from a country kitchen.  

Four stars! 

Our culinary impression, of course, might have been a little impacted by our mood.  

You see, Carolyn badly sprained her ankle just before we left, and we spent Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning (7 hours!) making sure the two metal plates in her foot from a previous surgery hadn’t actually busted loose. 

The good news was that it was just a sprain. With the help of ice, prednisone, extra strength Tylenol, and a 6-hour drive with her foot up and resting, she managed to e-bike about 20 miles up the Greenbrier River Trail on Thursday.  A real trooper. So yes, our mood was good because just 24-hours earlier we hadn’t expected to be anywhere at all.

The Greenbrier River Trail is an 80-mile Rails-to-Trail gravel path that snakes along a narrow river bed that eons of erosion has cut through the hard rock and steep slopes of the Allegheny mountains.

This land is not too different from what Daniel Boone and Shawnee warriors once prowled. The exception is in the narrow valleys, where flat bottomland has been cut by water, and where some of the larger flood plains have been planted in lush pasture and corn.

On the drive up, I was surprised to discover we were near where Donald McCaig used to live in Highland County, Virginia.  Donald was a wonderful Border Collie man, and a great friend to working dogs.   He could write too, as a simple check on Amazon, or my bookshelves, reveals.  I miss you Donald!

We stopped at a Dollar Store in Marlinton for some missing (now forgotten) essential, and Carolyn came back to the car like an 8-year old from a candy store.  

A dollar store!  

I’m not sure she’d ever been in one, and she was happy to find bargains, from disposable lighters to her big buy of the day, a $6 pair of Keds Tennis Shoe knockoffs that were wide enough to fit her bandaged foot.  

Score!

Willow, the Italian Greyhound, is with us on this little trip, but she got car sick on the way up and managed to soil three towels in her crate over a 6-hour dive.  Hopefully things will be a bit better on the drive back today, as no food will be served for 8 hours prior.  

The terriers, of course, are at home and being cared for on their regular schedule by my son, who is staying at the house.  Dogs love schedules, and if you ask Willow, travel is greatly over-rated.