Travels with Serge and Jeanne: north to Amish country!

After a hearty breakfast in Blowing Rock we started north again on the Blue Ridge Parkway. At our first overlook we saw that any kind of weather could be developing.

Although it grew overcast the precipitation held off for much of the day. The travel schedule called for a series of smaller stops, but covering a lot of miles. First stop: E. B. Jeffress Park, which has a moderate trail to a cascade.

Here Serge and Jeanne admire the waterfall.


Serge was kept busy taking flower photos on the loop trail, including jack-in-the-pulpit and doghobble. The latter's common name comes from the entrapment of hunting dogs; if bear-hunting dogs became stuck in a thicket of doghobble the bear could play turn-about on its pursuers!

Here Joan provides scale for a jack-in-the-pulpit. They were easy to find on this trail, more so than back in Ohio.

Doghobble is very toxic, although the pendant blooms are pretty.

Continuing up the Parkway, the landscape shed some of its extremes, and more settlement was on either side. We had to turn the car around to admire this fellow.

The next step was Doughton Park, where we briefly investigated the Brinegar pioneer cabin and its grounds.

Just down the road was the Mahogany Rock Overlook. Opposite the parking area there were views of hard granite hills, on which vegetation finds it difficult to gain a footing.

Language diversion: we needed to explain to Serge and Jeanne that an overlook is a place to get a good view, and to look over is to inspect something, but to overlook something is to miss it, to inadvertently ignore it. It helps to be a native English speaker.

We crossed into Virginia and left the Tarheel State behind. Lunch beckoned to us at the Lake View restaurant in Fancy Gap, just off the Parkway. Jeanne took a good photo of the interior of this down-home local restaurant.

Afterwards we refueled the car and prepared to leave the Blue Ridge Parkway behind, to take I-77 up to Beckley, West Virginia. Here Jeanne caught Joan and Serge in a squeegee competition while I pumped gas.

Serge took this church photo from the moving car on our way to Beckley.

He found the US proliferation of churches of all types and in all locations interesting. Historically France has been 80% or more Roman Catholic, although this has been changing in modern times. Serge and Jeanne are accustomed to seeing one and only one church in each small French town, a Catholic church near the town center (along with a bakery).

Further north, in Ohio, Serge spotted roadside banners and calvaries.

It began to rain as we crossed into West Virginia, so there aren't any photos of that evening's activity. We checked into our hotel/motel in Beckley, and spent the evening at Tamarack, which features a café administered by the famous Greenbrier resort, and arts and handicrafts from West Virginia artisans. It's a stellar place to shop, with items ranging from postcards to exquisite glass, jewelry, and woodworking. Again, I can say that some purchases were made.

The next morning we continued up I-77, headed for Marietta, Ohio, on the Ohio River. Serge captured the West Virginia capitol in Charleston, WV, from the moving car.

Eventually we crossed the Ohio River and visited the town of Marietta.

Marietta, the first permanent American settlement in Ohio (in all of the original Northwest Territories, actually), has French connections. It's named after Marie Antoinette, and the Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette stopped here during his 1824-1825 grand tour of the young United States. Serge and Jeanne eagerly took pictures of these links to their home country.

The name 'Lafayette' is everywhere in Marietta, including the grand downtown riverfront hotel.

We strolled and drove around the town. One friendly citizen directed us to "the best place for lunch in town," but it was full, so we ate later on the drive. An old railroad bridge is now a pedestrian walkway over the Muskingum River where it flows into the Ohio.

There's a duck nesting in the closest hanging planter.

From the walkway, we could see a canoe being paddled up the Muskingum.

We continued north, had a late lunch and finally reached Dover, Ohio, for its must-see stop of the Warther Museum. Ernest "Mooney" Warther started carving at age 5, and continued to develop his skills even while working at the local steel mill between the ages of 14 and 38. The centerpiece of the museum is the collection of historic trains that he carved during his lifetime, piece by piece; the largest were up to 8 feet long and assembled from up to 10,000 separate individually carved pieces. We have no pictures, but you owe it to yourself to see the museum if you're ever nearby.

A short distance from Dover is Berlin, Ohio (pronounced BURR-lynn), the heart of northeastern Ohio's Amish country. We were to spend the next two nights at the Lamplight Inn bed and breakfast, two blocks north of downtown. The skies had cleared this far north.

We had dinner that night in Berlin, at the Boyd and Wurthmann restaurant. Their motto is "where the locals eat," and we'll vouch for that. Inside there's a whiteboard where the pies that are still in stock are tallied in eraseable marker. We came away well satisfied.

On our way back to the Inn, we passed a parked horse whose owner had an ingenious safety system.

As you see, each leg had a reflective strap, such as a bicyclist might wear. The owner of this horse must have a less-strict bishop. (An Amish bishop, elected for life, makes many of the decisions about what is permissible for his district of 25 to 30 families.) The buggy was parked next to the horse.

We would see a lot more of Amish life the next day.