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| Summersville Lake |
West Virginia is open for business and #vacation #travel fun! Come on down!
NOTE: Due to possible COVID-19 restrictions, which seem to be changing daily, before you travel or book Anything, CALL every place you want to go and make SURE they are open and operating! I have included phone numbers for almost every place we went to and enjoyed in this post. Although I have also included website hotlinks, do NOT rely on websites and online reservation sites- they are often not kept up to date! Every place we stayed at was spotlessly clean, and we had NO negative issues whatsoever! Dan and I are not kids- he is 73, and I am 61- and we had a fabulous West Virginia getaway!
Our 9-night Road Trip loop thru West Virginia first took us from the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre in the southern mountains of Landgraff, in McDowell County, up to Romney, in Hampshire County, to ride the Potomac Eagle Dinner Train (see this post: https://southernwestvirginia.blogspot.com/2020/07/west-virginia-road-trip-come-on-down.html). Then we drove a little farther north to Berkeley Springs, in Morgan County, to "take the waters" at America's First Spa: https://southernwestvirginia.blogspot.com/2020/07/west-virginia-road-trip-part-2-taking.html We next drove south to Shinnston, in Harrison County,
to stay at Gillum House Bed-and-Breakfast, meet Punjab the Camel, and sip some great whiskey: https://southernwestvirginia.blogspot.com/2020/07/west-virginia-road-trip-part-3.html We then drove south to Cass, in Pocahontas County, to take the Cass Scenic Railroad, enjoy a Kissing Bridge, and see the Ice Age Forest: https://southernwestvirginia.blogspot.com/2020/07/west-virginia-road-trip-part-4-cass.html
West Virginia Road Trip! Part 5: Summersville & Fayetteville for wine & food with a view!
Our
final stops on this trip before heading home were Summersville
and Fayetteville, specifically to go to the Kirkwood
Winery and Isaiah Morgan Distillery: https://kirkwood-wine.com/
Tel: 1-888-4WV-WINE right
outside
Summersville,
the
first winery and distillery we visited in West Virginia, back in
2002! At that time Dan was deployed to West Virginia by FEMA, following the floods that had devastated southern West Virginia, and we
were staying in Beaver, WV. On Dan's days off we went and did all the
fun, "touristy" things
one does in West Virginia, including white water rafting, ATVing, taking train excursions, camping, fishing, and
horseback riding, and although Dan was no lover of wine back then, I
convinced him to "humor" me
and go to the nearby Kirkwood Winery. Kirkwood is famous for their
fruit and uniquely West Virginian vegetable wines, and we both fell
in love with them the first time we visited, when we met the late
Rodney Facemire who founded it. Among their truly unique West
Virginia wines are Ramp
Wine, which
Chef Dan uses to marinate meat and to make reduction sauces, Ginseng,
Dandelion,
and Rhubarb
Wines! They
also have a large variety of grape and fruit wines made from the bounty of their vines and orchards. In creating the Isaiah Morgan Distillery, Rodney
Facemire brought the "naughty" Appalachian
tradition of the illegal moonshine still into the legal daylight,
obtaining the
license for the nation's smallest still in 2002. He conceived the
vision of mini-distilleries, formed a team of government and business
leaders, and created what has truly become a fabulous industry for
the state of West Virginia, now nationally famous for our legal
'shine! Isaiah
Morgan makes Moonshine, Rye Whiskey, Grappa, and now a fine, aged
Bourbon, and after indulging in another yummy tasting, we bought a
selection of their wines, as well as their Bourbon, and a bottle of Grappa
for our Italian Inn-Sitter! We had Kirkwood wines at our wedding at
the Elkhorn Inn, and our guests all loved them, and a few years ago
we went to one of their fun, fall Grape Stomping Festivals, where
we got in the vat and stomped grapes with our bare feet like Lucy and
Ethel did on I Love Lucy! (Unfortunately the Grape Stomping Festival
has been canceled for this fall, but we are trusting it will be back
next year- it's truly another West Virginia "Must-Do"!)
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| Whine and Whiskey Tasting at Kirkwood Winery |
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| Kirkwood Winery |
Tooling
around Summersville and Fayetteville, we drove across the famed
New
River Gorge Bridge several times: https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/nrgbridge.htm, and at one point finally stopped to get a look at it from
afar!
 |
| New River Gorge Bridge, peeking thru the trees! |
The
Bridge has spectacular views of the river on both sides, but it's
impossible to get a good photo while driving across it, as all you
can see from a car window is the darn barricade!
The
Bridge is on Route 19, just north of Fayetteville, and when it was
completed, in 1977, it turned a harrowing, 40-minute drive down narrow
mountain roads and across one of North America's oldest rivers into a
one minute drive! The Bridge is famed for being both the longest
steel span in the western hemisphere, and the third highest in the
United States, and it even has a day of its own: Bridge Day- the 3rd
Sat. in October! On Bridge Day, the bridge is open to pedestrians
and hosts a wide variety of activities, including BASE jumping,
rappelling, music, and more, but unfortunately it has been cancelled
this year: https://officialbridgeday.com/
You CAN, however, take a Bridge
Walk, which
is a guided tour of the New River Gorge Bridge from the catwalk 25’
beneath the Bridge:
https://bridgewalk.com/
Tel: (304)
574-1300 - something we intend to go back and do!
We
stayed in Fayetteville for two nights at The Historic Morris
Harvey House:
https://www.morrisharveyhouse.com/ Tel: (304) 250-7090, a very pretty, 3-story Queen Anne-style house dating from 1902 that is
on the National Register of Historic Places. We stayed in their
Harvey
Room, one
flight up, which has a half-bath within the room, and a full bath
with an antique claw-foot tub next door.
 |
| The Historic Morris Harvey House |
 |
| The Harvey Room |
 |
| Southside Junction Tap House |
https://adventuresonthegorge.com/adventures/zip-line-aerial-adventures/treetops-zip-line-canopy-tour/
(totally awesome and wonderful, and an Absolute "Must-do"!),
and
it was still a relatively small operation; Smokey's was rather
elegant, with fine dining... It's now a huge operation, and the new
Smokey's is a humongous, family-style restaurant... Dan had their
ribs, and I had their Brisket, with two tasty sauces, including a
novel White Alabama BBQ Sauce, and we ate outside on their deck and
enjoyed the beautiful sunset view over our plastic cups of wine, and it was very nice... but it wasn't as we remembered... Is anything, ever? ;-)
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| Dinner at Smokey's on the Gorge |
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| Summersville Lake |
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| Summersville Lake |
 |
| Above Summersville Lake |
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| Summersville Dam |
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| Above Summersville Dam |
We then Had to go see the
amusing Summersville
Lighthouse at Summersville Lake Retreat:
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| Summersville Lighthouse |
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| A doe and her fawns! |
While
many of the roads we traveled were devoid of cars, and we often felt
like the only people out and about, we did see a Lot of deer on this
trip- basically everywhere we went! And they were fearless deer,
totally unafraid of people, and several posed for photos, too!
 |
| Deer! |
That afternoon we found a fun “private club” bar in Fayetteville: Jaybird
and Charlie's Pub: https://www.facebook.com/jaybirdandcharliespub/
Tel: (304)
574-0822
and
had drinks at their bar and outside on their patio, as well. Jaybird was
really nice, and we were made to feel very welcome; his bar has pool
tables and foosball, and this is definitely the place that would be
our "Cheers" if
we lived in Summersville! We'll definitely return if we get back to
the area!
 |
| G&Ts at Jaybird & Charlie's |
Our "foodie
find"of this trip
was that evening, when we had dinner at Wanderlust
Creative Foods (formerly
New River Curry): https://www.facebook.com/newrivercurry/
Tel: (304)
574-3111
in
downtown Fayetteville, a charming, informal, friendly, not expensive,
chef-driven restaurant serving inventive, international,
gourmet-level cuisine! Dan and I shared three yummy appetizers for
dinner and left stuffed: their Samosas, served with an excellent
Mango Chutney, delicious Sisig, caramelized pork belly sauteed with
ginger, garlic and Thai Chilies and topped with a fried egg, and
scrumptious seared Gulf Shrimp in a Sherry Reduction Sauce, garnished
with seasonal microgreens. I had a unique and delicious Thai fruit
drink, as well, that included gelled basil seeds, which I'd never
seen in West Virginia before, and it was so good that I got one to
take with me! If
you get to Fayetteville, THIS is where you want to eat!
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| Sisig - Carmelized Pork Belly |
 |
| Shrimp in a Sherry Reduction Sauce |
We
did a leisurely drive home the next day, taking the “back roads”
through the mountains, stopping to see pretty places, historic sites, and fun things along the way...
 |
| West Virginia... |
 |
| The cutest playhouse! |
 |
| Big Lime |
 |
| Greenbrier County |
 |
| Chainsaw Sculpture Adorableness! |
 |
| Big Beaver Creek |
 |
| Camp Jones |
 |
| Napoleon Bonaparte French |
 |
| Engagement at Falls Mills |
...and
passing through Oak Hill in Fayette County, whose claim to
fame is apparently as the place where Hank Williams was pronounced
dead...
 |
| Hank Williams Memorial |
 |
| Hank Williams Memorial |
We
stopped for lunch at Kimono
Japanese Seafood & Steak House in
Princeton,
WV in Mercer County:
https://www.facebook.com/Kimono-Japanese-Seafood-Steak-House-157785594261594/
Tel: (304)
487-8008. Kimono
is our
fave local restaurant, and we ended our WV Road Trip with an epic
seaweed salad-sushi-sake feast! We Love this place, still amazed,
after 18 years, that our landlocked southern West Virginia mountains
boasts a sushi bar that beats every place we've eaten at in the USA,
including NYC, where I'm from!
 |
| Sushi-Saki feast at Kimono! |
We
then drove through Bramwell,
also in Mercer County: https://www.bramwellwv.com/ ,
famed as “Home
of the Coal Baron Millionaires” for its many historic mansions,
and stopped to photograph the train trestle, and again to photograph
a Norfolk Southern train chugging 'round the bend through Keystone...
 |
| Train Trestle in Bramwell |
 |
| NS Railroad coming thru Keystone |
and before we knew it, we were back home in Landgraff, at the Elkhorn Inn: http://www.elkhorninnwv.com
Tel: 304-862-2031, and unpacking all the wine and booze and foodie treats we'd picked up along the way! :-)
West Virginia is open for business, and #vacation #travel fun! Come on down!
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| Our West Virginia Souvenirs! |
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| NS Railroad coming thru Keystone |
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| NS Railroad coming thru Keystone |
