We didn’t visit West Virginia on our ’97 road trip, but I should cover it now, for geography’s sake. Not long after that trip, when I was living in Connecticut, my whole family traveled to Parkersburg, where my mom was born, and looked around the town cemeteries at the graves and crypts of our ancestors, including the massive one picture above. My mom, ever the faithful genealogist, is copying some information down, while my dad, with camera, looks on, and my brother, with camera, takes a look at the stone work. Add in me, taking the picture, and that’s three cameras for four people. That’s how we roll, I guess.

Aimee and I spent a night in western West Virginia on our way to Kentucky on a road trip a few years later, if we’re going to be completists about it, but beyond that, I haven’t spent much time in the Mountain State – though I have listened to a lot of Mountain Stage…