After eight days of full-hook-ups, we decided we could boondock for a couple days with no hook-ups. Mark found a casino in Charles Town, West Virginia, with a large parking lot for RVs to spend the night. Charles Town is right in line with our next destination, and we needed to exercise our generator. It seems like a win-win situation, and a couple free nights of lodging sounded great! We left the slides in and didn't even put down the jacks, so set up just meant pulling into the parking lot and setting the brake. By evening, the parking lot was an interesting jumble of long vehicles, all trying to get level on a slightly sloped parking lot.
Our new home base, Charles Town, is named after Charles Washington--George's brother. This area is known as the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, so when we drove even short distances we suddenly found ourselves in Maryland or Virginia. We also found this area to be rich in history. Just down the road a few miles is the Bolivar Battleground from the Civil War. No, we didn't remember that battle either.
A little further down the road, we stopped in at a farmer's market and cafe. That started a long conversation with the owner, a 12th generation Virginia farmer.
When he found that his family could no longer make a living farming traditional crops in this area, he decided to try raising vegetables inside a greenhouse using hydroponic methods.
He gave us a tour of his greenhouse, that includes these tomato plants he started 17 months ago. You can see the thick stems of the original plants running parallel to the ground, still producing nice tomatoes a year and a half later.
He also grows cherry tomatoes, but these plants are younger. He claims he can grow more vegetables per acre with less water and fertilizer, and no pesticides.
This picture was taken in the cafe, with a row of leaf lettuce that looked like a long line of beautiful green bouquets. We are finding that using fresh foods in restaurants has spurred a popular farm-to-fork trend. Since you can see his cattle herd out the window, and he puts fresh tomatoes and lettuce on the hamburger from the green house, his place is the epic farm-to-fork establishment.
Another new way to make a living in this agricultural community is to plant those acres into vineyards and start a winery. We saw many of these establishments as we drove across northern Virginia.
Because Denisa so enjoyed the grapes she bought in the Finger Lakes area of New York, we stopped in at this vineyard. The grapes look like they are ready to pick, and they are using nets to protect the harvest from the birds. But we find they don't sell any grapes--they are all selfishly used to make wine.
On a trip across the border into Maryland, we stopped at Lock #38 of the C&O Canal tow path. If we had a little extra time, we would have unloaded our bikes for a nice level ride along this old canal. We did visit with several bikers that were making the 335 mile journey from Pittsburgh to Washington DC along this trail. Bikers take from 6-8 days to make this ride, with the last 185 miles on the C&O Canal tow path. The last couple we talked to was using this as a training run for a bike ride across America starting next May. We were amazed with their biking adventures, and they were interested in our motor home adventures. We could have talked for hours.
We can tell that the days are getting shorter, and sunset is getting earlier. Surrounded by trees, we often see evidence of what must be an amazing sunset completely hidden by the forests around us.
If we finally find an opening in the trees, we usually see that it was cleared for the electric lines. Somehow, it's hard to enjoy a slice of the sunset with that many poles and lines in the way.
So we dashed to the top of a six-story building to finally achieve an unobscured view of a colorful West Virginia sunset. It's nice to see that God makes beautiful sunsets everywhere, you just have to work harder to see them some places!
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