It wasn't quite West Virginia, but the next best thing and John Denver was right in believing the country side would be like home. Wintergreen a ski and hiking resort on the border to West Virginia is what they call mountains here in Virginia. What we found was a mass of rather large hills as we would call them back home, beautiful never the less and part of the Blue Ridge mountains with the Appalachian Trail snaking right trough it. We hiked for two hours on the old Appalachian Trail...I have no idea what made it older than the new one as it looked exactly the same - same trees, rocks and views!!!
Unlike Bill Bryson and his good friend Katz in "A Walk in the Woods", a wonderfully funny account of his attempt to walk the entire trail, we did not encounter any bears rummaging in our rubbish or in fact chasing us down the mountain side. What we did see, however, were huge metal containers with chained doors, which I was rather puzzled about at first. Turns out the bears are very good at opening conventional bins, which consequently have to be almost padlocked to be save from Teddy.
Anyway, the hike was nice, great view and lots of fresh air. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of Finley slumped in his strange backpack construction at the end of the walk...the fresh air got to him and he seemed unconscious. I also felt a bit tired and in need of being carried as we had a couple of beers the night before and not much sleep due to our son acquiring a couple more teeth in his ever expanding collection. This did not in any way stop us from having more beer the second night and thanks to my lovely husband, who slept on the floor in the living room next to Finley, frequently peeking out of his crib and suffering from acute insomnia, I got lots of sleep.
We also visited some wine and berry farms on the foot of the mountain, drank some really nice berry wine and found a wonderful location in a wine farm for a picnic next to a little stream. The picnic consisted of two glasses of wine, which we purchased for $6 each (a bottle was $20????), a couple of packets of little cheesy goldfish crackers (hmmmm) and some beer we drank out of our wine glasses once the good liquid had evaporated.
All in all, I have to say, it was a very relaxing weekend. The weather was gorgeous with the most amazing blue, blue skies competing with all those fabulous colors of the autumn leaves.
It was not quite like home, but good enough for the time being and only an hour and a half drive from Richmond.
