Suddenly, Summer is Over

Vacation was the star on the horizon to which I fixed my gaze, and now it is over, and D is back in school, Keith will go back Monday, and SUMMER IS OVER.

Keith became Master of the One Match Campfire on this trip.

I made pancakes and they were good.

The girls spent all of their time in the River.

First Day of Seventh Grade

I walk down Kingwood Street to work every morning and when Dawn and the Mimosa Blooms all come together I know it is summer.  Unfortunately for me, most of my sunrises this year were obscured by rain clouds - I'm not complaining, I have a bounty of Spaceship Squash and Tomatoes because of the rain.  But I am a little disappointed, because I am a hot weather girl, and I had about 4 weeks this summer of weather that was warm enough for me not to wear a sweater.  This week, when I started back after our hiatus, it was no longer light out on my walk to work, and the Mimosa showed me her gigantic seed pods, and the last hurrah of her freaky pink blooms, and I could smell the stale beer/vomit odor that heralds the return of the WVU students, and I knew... SUMMER IS OVER.

Technically it doesn't end till the autumnal equinox, but practically, in this town at least, all sense of ease and peace that the long warm days conveyed has evaporated in a haze of pot smoke and booze fumes and Hummer exhaust.  As I walked home this afternoon, some new resident of Clark Street stood on his porch, chucking beer bottles from the night before in the general direction of the trash cans sitting on the sidewalk, sometimes making it, sometimes hitting the concrete with a resounding shattering of glass.  The little old man in my soul wanted to holler, "you know the city has curbside recycling, right? Put those bottles in the GREEN CAN MARKED RECYCLABLES!" But I said nothing, mostly because I do not trust myself to have a civil conversation with a kid who drives a car more expensive than my house, but also leaves broken glass all over the sidewalk.  I walked on home, past the newly broken window of the AstroVan at the corner of Cherry and Clark - The owner is a customer at the shop, he has a little kid, he put cardboard over the window till he can afford to get it replaced.  It rains almost every day here... SUMMER IS OVER

I made a new necklace with fishing line and some beads.

It has been a rough summer for me, in my brain - maybe I could go get my meds adjusted but I think I need to go hike more instead.  My kid is asserting her independence beautifully, although she mostly speaks to me in monosyllables and when I touch her things she yells "No!" at me as if I were a dog.  When I sit on the couch next to her to watch TV, she turns off her show and goes upstairs.  I just offered to make pancakes for breakfast and she went into the kitchen and made herself a bowl of cereal.  She does well in school and everyone says she is polite and kind and a pleasure to be around but I feel like I have failed somehow in the only job I ever had that was really important. This summer felt like the Universe saying to me "you are not Mother Material, You got one and she survived, but in spite of you, You do not deserve another."  That's how it felt.  But now SUMMER IS OVER and there has to be peace in there somewhere if I can just accept it.

Three is a Magic Number

Our trip to Watoga

Idyllic Lake Watoga

Watoga State Park is located in the south eastern part of our fair state, or as my mother so eloquently put it "in the middle of nowhere." Not entirely true, in my experience visiting WV State Parks over the years (have you been to Twin Falls? THAT is as close to nowhere as I have been), but I can see from whence her sentiment comes. It took us something like 4 hours to get there from Morgantown. Hitting the road at 5 pm, we didn't have much daylight left, and the sun set on us somewhere after Weston, but not before giving us the gift of a fantastic double rainbow!

Rainbow, captured by Delia from the backseat of the car!

We took I-79 as far south as we could and then took Rt 19 to Summersville. It got a little hairy right around there, as the road signs directing us to Marlinton didn't jibe with what I had gleaned from Google Maps... and a recent iPhone update wiped out all my presets and data - ahh technology! We took out along State Road 55, which isn't particularly well marked, and ended up driving in a big circle around Muddlety WV. When I zoomed past the gas station where we filled up our tank 45 minutes prior, I almost cried. It was really quite lucky, because were it not for that neon landmark we might have driven on into the depths of the wilderness for hours before realizing our mistake. After a quick map check we were back on 19 and certain of our route once again.

About two hours later we found the lonely sign directing us into the park. Mom, Zoey and Seester were already there in spite of the harrowing journey they took down Rt 33. It was late but we made time for some sweet catching up around the fire that Trisha expertly kindled from coals the previous occupants of Cabin 7 left in the hearth for us.

The Park Office, Keith and Trisha

In the morning after a pancake and bacon breakfast we took a nice long walk up the park road to the office to officially check in. The building was quite breathtaking in it's State Park kind of way. It looked to be a lodge maybe at one point but now there are no rooms in it to rent, only a restaurant and gift shop that were both closed for the season. A fellow traveler we met in the office told us about a little cafe in Hilsborough just up the road, run by the very same woman who keeps the park restaurant in season. We made plans to visit the Pretty Penny later in the day.

"The C.C.C. Worker"

This statue commemorates the boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps, who built Watoga State Park and most of the other facilities of the West Virginia State Park System. There is a museum of C.C.C. history in the park too, which we never made it down to see.

First Hike at Canaan

Delia planning our hike over a cup of hot chocolate.

Even though the world was overcast for most of our stay up in the mountains, it didn't rain all the time so we got to go on several hikes. The first one we planned out took us from our cabin to the lodge, over about a mile of mildly hilly terrain along the Club Run Trail.

Delia inspecting some ruins we found along the trail. Are they from the railroad? We couldn't tell.

Club Run made a loop back to the cabin area, and since we wanted to go on to the lodge, we took the Ridge Top Trail connector to the Middle Ridge trail. I love watching my girl learn to use a trail map.

Our hike led us to a wide open area and the Balsam Swamp Overlook. Things were muddy and spare, as spring hadn't quite come to the Highlands, but the barren alien landscape was still strangely beautiful.

The Overlook is situated along one of the paved roads in the park, and we walked along it up the hill to the lodge. It was a terrific first hike of our trip!