Our vacation Installment #3-Dolly Sods

Well, there's no time like the present to post our family photos.
So here goes.
         This was our last day at Timberline cabin #99 up on the hill beside the ski slope, almost to the top if the mountain, on the other side of the hill from Dolly Sods, or so said the map. We had found Trout Pond, the only natural lake in WV, earlier in the trip, but it is now inside a private compound and therefore unavailable to the general public.
        The door to our lodging has a stained class skier and a big white tree as its motif and the house is called White Tree.   
         The house has three levels. The main level has a kitchen, gas fireplace in the great room, a gas fireplace in the master bedroom suite. Each level has bedrooms and baths. The lower level also has a kitchen and a wood burning fireplace. There were bear and deer objects everywhere: a reminder that we are, in fact, in the woods with wild animals. We saw deer, raccoon and heard other things outside...

 Zoey, age four,  is the only one I could catch going in and out to pack the car. She was a willing subject ;-)

 She is walking on the decorative wall outside our lodging. It was about two stones high and she was balancing very well. The hillside is steep here to the lower level of the house. there is an access road, grass and gravel, at the back of the house. Someday there will be houses built near this one - right now, there is only one near neighbor and it's out of sight to her right.

 Lots of decorative walls hold back the hillside. She is standing with her back to the east where we think the edge of Dolly Sods may be traveling along that hill top ridge from her right to her left above our house.

This is the view as we drove out of our Timberline  residence, White Tree, October 22, 2012. The elevation is responsible for the leafless trees; we saw many trees with leaves at lower elevations that weekend. But, the place was beautiful every day we were there.


          WV Historical Marker:  On our way out we caught this sign - made in Marietta and full of information about the geology of the area. The sign is somewhere in Canaan Valley to the north of Timberline I think toward Davis. Davis has a Supermarket - maybe a Giant Eagle. Everything else is small town and rural looking until you get to Elkins...

         US Forest Service/WV DNR sign:  This next sign must have been on the other side of the mountain. I think the Blackwater River is in the Cheat, Mononghela River Basin and flows west. The Potomac, of course, flows east toward the Chesapeake Bay. This makes sense if you know that Dolly Sods is on the Allegheny Front which is the mountainous area that faces east toward Virginia and edges the Chesapeake basin.

 I needed this sign to prove we were going the right direction. I could not remember the scenery as we drove - (THIRTY YEARS IN THE PAST, COME ON...GIVE ME A BREAK) Later, I did discover we had driven into the Sods from an entirely different direction.

We drove through rural WV and finally got to the plateau past these signs. then we saw the rocks that make this place memorable.

 And its not just the rocks, its the trees, with the branches on one side -the wind blows constantly and powerfully here -- all the time.

 There are hiking trails, not well marked. One can get lost here for a short time. But one can walk for a long way without being out of sight of one's car. Daddy thought Zoey needed more protection from the cold wind. He likes the cold, but she didn't bring a coat.

 We all needed time out of the car.

We are not yet to the Roaring Plains, but the plateau effect is visible everywhere.

This is the Roaring Plains - see the edge of the glacier push? It's the row of stones.

these are the famous trees caught in the constant wind.

This is the view from the end of the glacier push. we are looking toward the south.

More rocks and trees (out of order, I think)

 Our trusty chariot, with the 4 wheel drive, at the end of the Sods. After 30 years the wind filled the cracks in the rocks with soil and vegetation. It doesn't look like I remember. I wish I had some pictures of the place in the 1970's... Here is the place my memory stick was filled up.

 

Trisha is up there in those rocks with Zoey. I could see her with her red scarf, but she kept moving out of the photo. And so it goes.

The road off the plateau is in the middle of this photo, too.  Next stop, Seneca Rocks, Yoakum's store, then on to Elkins and linner at CJ Maggie's. Then home.