West Virginia - Wild, Wonderful

Around hundred miles to reach West Virginia, more than half of the trip being made on the Custis Highway (the Sixty-Six, as it is better known by the drivers). The parkway is bordered at the beginning by walls with corporate buildings behind, but the landscape changes very quickly: large pastures and gentle hills. The hills get higher and the line of the mountains appears at the horizon.

The Sixty-Six ends in a fork: the left side leads to Front Royal (an awesome name for a small wooden town, at the foot of the mountains). From Front Royal you go on with the skyline over the mountains, or you can hike along the valley of Shenandoah.

We take the right side, toward Winchester, and then further in the mountains. Farms with horses, or cows, or goats here and there, wooden houses, some run-down sheds, and deep forest everywhere.

They say you can do here fishing, or hunting, or hiking, or swimming, or kayaking, or climbing, or even wrestling, you can have a great barbecue, one or more beers, or a fine glass of wine. It's up to you, how you feel fine. You cannot vote for Obama, though.

The car climbs the last mile on a narrow rocky footpath. And here we are, it's West Virginia, the wondrous country of wilderness.

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