Mountain State Matters

The Appalachian Regional Commission just launched a new site in cooperation with National Geographic: Visit Appalachia. The site offers driving tours throughout the 13 states that comprise the region of Appalachia.

The website is pretty well done, but has a couple of problems. Here are some pros and cons.

Pros:

• The layout. It’s cool…it’s like driving in a car. I like that it’s interactive, yet easy to follow and not confusing.
• The navigation. You can browse driving tours by state, theme or route, which should make it easy for anyone looking to plan a driving tour throughout Appalachia.

Cons:

• I don’t like the way the designers chose to scroll down the page. There’s not really a scroll, but instead you have to click and drag the arrow bar. This is a mild annoyance.
• This is a big one: it doesn’t always work. Although subsequent tests have proven that many routes do work, the first one I tried didn’t. The page for the Coal Heritage Trail (from Bluefield snaking up through Welch and Mullens to Beckley) worked beautifully, but when I clicked on “Visit Route Website,” the homepage for West Virginia Byways pops up. To find the information for the Coal Heritage Trail, I had to search that web page (the correct site, for anyone interested, is located here). Similarly, when you click on the “Google Map” link, you’re taken to a Google Map which doesn’t display the correct route (and instead takes visitors up I-77).

Anyway, just my two cents. The website has the potential to be a really awesome resource for anyone looking to drive around Appalachia, but these little bugs need to be fixed out first.

Photo: Erica Peterson

This idyllic picture of West Virginia life appeared today in The Independent, a British newspaper.

I’m conflicted about this article.

West Virginia is, indeed, idyllic at times. It’s a much quieter, slower life than can be found in any metropolitan area. The state also really needs to beef up its tourism, and with this article I can see hoards of Brits descending on the tiny town of Monterey, WV that the author chose to profile and taking a trip on the Cass Scenic Railroad.

One big problem is that there is no Monterey, WV, at least not one that Google Maps recognizes. And considering that Google Maps recognizes every small town in WV that I’ve ever been in, I have to come to the conclusion that Google Maps is right. Monterey is in Virginia.

Does it really matter? No. Monterey is near the WV/VA border. There’s probably no discernible difference in the cooking, which the author, Katharine Doyle, enjoyed. There is a distinct difference in the WV and VA landscapes, but that’s a topic for a different post.

After ordering what the “white-bearded mountain man in the corner” is eating, Ms. Doyle strikes up a conversation with waitress Dana.

Dana soon came over to my bar stool to fill me in on an agonising decision: whether to stay with her unemployed West Virginia beau through the bitter winter, or head back to the warmth of the Florida keys.”Sure, he’s cute,” she said. “He’s even got steel-blue eyes. But there’s not much for a computer guy to do in West Virginia. Matter of fact he’s out cutting wood for the winter today.” This is West Virginia: an unvarnished, what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of place.

He’s even got steel-blue eyes? That sounds like a deal-maker to me. Does anyone talk like that? Not anyone I’ve ever spoken to, neither in West Virginia or anywhere else.

That being said, the article did accurately describe some of the West Virginia landscape, as well as give a shout out to Colorado poet laureate John Denver.

At a gas station, we’d picked up a John Denver CD, which we played over and over as we wound through little mountain communities of trailer homes and broken-down cars, where some families still do not have running water.

West Virginia is quiet and idyllic, but there’s a lot more to the state, even for tourists. Ms. Doyle’s version of West Virginia is bordering on geriatric.

Whitewater rafting certainly isn’t quiet. The state’s numerous fairs and festivals aren’t either. If Ms. Doyle had wanted to dash her vision of “quiet West Virginia,” I would have suggested that she check out amateur wrestling night, which goes on throughout most of the state. Or snake handling. Or a small town’s only bar on a Saturday night.

Photo: Erica Peterson