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Rain all through the night and still raining on a dark morning.
I left Cumberland Gap behind and drove north on Hwy 58 up Powell Valley, then over a low pass into the Clinch River valley where Daniel Boone's father took the family when their area of Pennsylvania got too crowded, driving through small towns, more brick churches
more rain
looking without success for a cafe. Unexpected, how local cafes have disappeared from small towns across especially Missouri and Kentucky, replaced by Hardees and MacDonalds. On up to Bluefield, another town that looks like it was once something significant, the same sad song of so many towns across the country.
A cafe! Nice talk with the owner, who explained that Bluefield was a big railroad town at the top of the mountains where small feeder lines used to bring coal out of the mountains, put together in trains at Bluefield for the long slide down to ports like Newport News.
Now mining in Appalachia is mostly mountaintop removal and much of the coal is going to China, because this is the “clean” coal and helps China meet Kyoto requirements. Indeed. I wish I had a month to explore the Allegheny area from West Virginia through Kentucky into Tennessee and really understand coal country, maybe another time.
North on Hwy 460, back into Virginia at Glen Lyn, up a lovely farming valley on Hwy 42 to New Castle, on 311
began passing the first wood frame churches I can remember seeing
through Catawba through Roanoke, 460 past Lynchburg, up 29 toward Charlottesville, I turned northeast on 6 up onto the top of the Shenandoah Mountains. North on the Skyline Road, the weather beginning to break, fog and clouds blowing off to the east, but still cold and windy up on top in Loft Mountain campground.
Cold and windy in the night, but brilliant stars and a bloodred sunrise through the trees.
Off the mountains and up into Culpepper, where I found several cafes and a bakery in a healthy downtown, surely a reflection of the large and healthy economies in and around Washington DC.
After breakfast, I followed Hwy 29, Lee Highway, past the Stone House
the Hwy 50 on a long slog through Fairfax and Arlington, across the Potomac and right into the center of Washington DC.
I drove north past the seat of power in the United States
to Sliver Spring and the art, flower, plant and preserves-filled home of Petey and Serge and a few days of visiting old friends before heading north to Vermont.
