Welcome to West Virginia!

After driving all the way across Kentucky, we crossed into a new state in our relocation drive this day. Welcome to the wild and wonderful state of West Virginia!

We drove 50 miles past the state line, to the city of St. Albans. Mark had read about a tiny city park that has three RV sites situated on the Kanawha River that runs through town. These parking places have built-in entertainment, as we watched the sizable barges going down the river right in front of us.

In the course of the our two-day stay, we watched as different boats paraded down the river. Some were on the water just for fun . . .

while others were working to deliver full loads of coal. We could see the coal and knew that it was a heavy load because that barge is sitting low in the water. The picture of the first barge is empty, as it is sitting high in the water.

But the best view today is the one of the rear of our motor home, plugged into that electrical pedestal. The city of St. Albans provides this camp site with 30-amp electricity for free! What a great deal for people like us that are traveling across the state. Campers are limited to two nights, and that will be perfect timing for us. Thanks St. Albans!

We had great neighbors while we camped here, and we spent a lot of time visiting with both of them. We also had good feathered neighbors, that seemed to enjoy the river views as much as we did. We also read the historical marker in the park that explained that this land was once owned by George Washington.

We always try to fit state capitols into our travels, and we were looking forward to seeing West Virginia's capitol. That's when we decided to check our blog, and discovered that we had already toured this state capitol back in 2017! Oops! It's a good thing we have the blog to look back on because we have been so many places that we obviously lose track! But in 2017 we didn't have time to visit the West Virginia Museum. So that was first item on our agenda this time. It included items like this bigger-than-life-size steering wheel off one of the boats that came up the river in West Virginia.

This museum is nicely organized, with displays that are arranged in chronological order. We meandered down a curved pathway while learning about the history of West Virginia. As the visitor enters a new era, the year is imbedded on a tile in the floor. The two of us often go through museums at different speeds, and we got separated from each other. When Denisa couldn't find Mark, she called him to find out he was still in 1890, while she was way ahead in 1954.

One of the displays explained this statue that is entitled, "Lincoln Walks at Midnight." Instead of being sculpted in his usual suit and hat, he is dressed in his pajamas. The president was up late, deliberating about whether to accept West Virginia as a state, and the ramifications it would have during the turbulent times of the Civil War.

Besides a very well-done museum, the foyer of the building holds an exhibit that changes periodically. Each year the museum hosts the winners of several quilt competitions, and Denisa loves to marvel at the handiwork found in these quilts. She snapped a picture of a quilted flag, hanging close to a real flag.

The detail on the quilt flag is just amazing! It is made up of 260 squares that are less than three-inches in size. That means that the tiny strips of material that makes up each square, are only 1/4 inch in width. That's tedious, but very precise sewing! Wow!

Since we have already taken the capitol tour, we didn't need to do that again. But Denisa did run up those front steps just so you would have some scale of size to understand just how big this old building is.

At the center point of the front entrance is that full-size statue of Abraham Lincoln walking at midnight, and now we recognize its significance from the museum visit.

Literally, the crowning jewel of this beautiful building is its dome. That glittery dome is the real deal. That's gold leaf that was carefully applied in tiny sheets of gold. This dome was designed after the U.S. capitol, but West Virginia made theirs 4.5 feet taller.

It was starting to rain outside, so we darted into the capitol to get a quick picture of that dome from the inside. Actually, we couldn't dart too quickly, as entry into the building requires emptying your pockets and going through a metal detector. That used to be awkward, but now almost every state has a guarded entrance like that. 

We've seen many states have caved to demands of removing statues of important leaders in this era of "cancel culture." We are glad to see that Stonewall Jackson is still standing guard in West Virginia.

It's hard to have pretty flower beds under the shade of the large trees that surround the capitol. But they made a beautiful statement with these shade-loving caladiums that will be colorful all summer.

Speaking of flowers, our next stop was the Capitol Market just a few blocks away in downtown Charleston. On this weekday, most of the market space was filled with flowers and vegetable bedding plants. But Denisa still managed to find some home-grown tomatoes and cucumbers here as well.

It was still sprinkling, but we made a quick tour of downtown Charleston looking for two new public art pieces. The first was the aluminum and stainless steel tree called "Deep Roots, Long Reach," which creaked and groaned as the branches changed shapes in the wind.

Inside the Charleston convention center, we found this 4,000 pound helix that reflects light from its 512 glass panels. Very nice!

While we do enjoy the art, we were really stalling for the beginning of the weekly "Friday on the Levee" free concert. The street by the river is closed each Friday, and it becomes a pedestrian area with food trucks lining the road. That is the Kanawha River in the background, so we are just ten miles up-river from where we are camped. We ate dinner, and then waited for the first band to begin. We were glad to have shade and rain protection from the giant tent-like top here at the Haddad Riverfront Park.

We have to say that the first band wasn't our kind of entertainment--especially when the lead singer took off his shirt and then his pants and paraded through the audience in his gold cape and gold shiny shorts. But we suffered through it to see the headlining band that was quite good. It was getting late by the time we left the water-front park to head home to our water-front camping spot. It was a fun day, and we feel very welcomed here in West Virginia.