pictures at last, and not a moment too soon…

Because tomorrow morning we’re, ummmmm… going to Charleston. The OTHER Charleston. The South Carolina Charleston! No, no, that’s not weird at all – there’s nothing strange about planning to go to one Charleston then changing your mind at the last minute and driving five hours in the complete opposite direction to another Charleston, then the next weekend heading out again for the first Charleston! We should probably try driving five hours west and seeing if we don’t run into a third Charleston. Charleston Tennessee?? 

We had planned to try the SC Charleston later in the month, but as it turned out there wasn’t a single weekend where we could both get off an extra day. Until November. Except this weekend. That actually works out just fine, since I haven’t really unpacked from the last trip.  

Since a trip to My Favorite Charleston will result in about ten million more pictures, I’m going to post some Weird West Virginia ones now. Now that I finally have them on Flickr. I’m not sure what was going on with it the other day – it’s perfectly fine now. Of course, I’m at home on Evil Evil Nasty Dial Up so I may not get as much posted as I’d like, but we’ll try. You really have to see West Virginia to appreciate how strange it is.

Of course we went through Virginia first and I’ve got pictures of church ruins in Glade Spring and this really strange teeny fully functional railroad a loony outsider artist has set up outside Saltville (Salt Capital of the Confederacy!) but those will have to wait, in the interest of time. We go up there pretty often – it’s not far from Abingdon.

So, after Virginia, we headed for … Annawalt and Jenkinjones. In the heart of Coal Country. Annawalt and Jenkinjones are in the middle of nowhere, full of falling down buildings, and so unsettling that we didn’t get out of the car. So a number of these are shot through the windshield. Baker B turned around in a driveway that was huge and looked more like a parkinglot, and this shirtless guy with a beer in his hand came rushing out of his house yelling at us. When we drove back by, he was still yelling. That’s the kind of place Annawalt is! And Jenkinjones is even scarier.

Annawalt:

Jenkinjones:

This was actually one of two ruins from the Pocahontas Coal Company. I did get out there, since it was out of sight  of the rest of the town. I certainly didn’t venture far from the car, though.  

The Pocahontas Coal Company has to be related to the town of Pocahontas, which isn’t very far from Jenkinjones and Annawalt. Pocahontas is actually in Virginia, but is right over the line. It is one of the most bizarre places I’ve ever been – it is FULL of falling-down buildings. They are all over the place. It looks like some terrible disaster hit years ago, knocked down half the town, and the residents just left the ruins where they were. We first found Pocahontas 7 or 8 years ago. Sadly some of the buildings have been torn completely down now, but there’s also another huge old hotel on the main street that was in one piece then, and now IT’S in ruins. It’s the weirdest place I’ve ever seen, and of course I’m crazy about it, since I do love ruins. But I’ve just decided that since Pocahontas really really really needs its own entry, I’ll post one picture here and do a entry just on it later. When I am not on dial up, as it is taking me FOREVER to do this. And I need to go pack.

Logan has to have its own entry too. Logan is also bizarre, although it’s scary-bizarre. I can’t take this slow loading up of pictures – it’s taking me a month to find them on Flickr – so I’ll post one of Logan too, and I’ll do more later. PLUS Charleston West Virginia, PLUS Charleston South Carolina…. and on and on and on!!!