We go further into the mountains -- March 18th -- Day 6

We spent the day with Mike touring family landmarks in north central West Virginia, including a house where my mother lived as a young child, the elementary school where her mother taught after her father died, and the grave site of both of her parents, my maternal grandparents, who I never knew because they both died almost twenty years before I was born. The photo at right was one of the more unexpected sights we have encountered on our travels. One of several we saw in front yards in Buckhannon, WV, it apparently refers to the pending selection of a new football coach at a local high school and is not--I repeat NOT--another post-retirement career plan for me! In between family landmarks, Mike regaled us with tidbits of family and local history, and we enjoyed the beauty of the mountains and at the same time were chagrined by the evident extreme poverty of the area. We returned via a twisty two-lane highway down the eastern side of the state, so far into the mountains that when Max tried to use her phone to call ahead for dinner reservations she received a message stating "Services used outside of the United States are charged at significantly higher rates." According to Mike, cell phone service in the area is prohibited to avoid interference with the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope at Green Bank, WV. As dusk fell we made what we hope will be the most unusual pit stop on the entire trip, where among other things the bathroom featured a handwritten sign reading "Flush" above the toilet (which by the way did not have a cover on the tank but thankfully did in fact flush).