The bridge pictured here is one of those "extras" and is within a few hundred feet of Shepherd Hall. I ate dinner across the street from the motel and worked on these pictures as I ate. My waiter, Mario, noticed that some of the pictures were from places nearby. I asked him if he knew anything of the history of those places and was pleased (and maybe a little surprised) to learn that he did. Then he pointed to the patch of gravel on the picture's left side. "I used to spend four or five days a week fishing right there," he said. Mario's last name is Figaretti and his grandfather is one of five brothers who started Figaretti's Restaurant in 1949. The family opened Enzio's, where I ate, about four years ago. Good food. My night time pictures didn't turn out so well but here's a shot from the next morning.

I had a rather naive and simplistic view of West Virginia's birth but am learning that it wasn't as simple - or as pure - as I thought. I thought that slavery was the only issue and that abolitionists in the west had split from Virginia to avoid being part of the Confederacy. The story I got today was of separatists who used the Civil War as an opportunity to do to Virginia what the war as being fought to prevent Virginia from doing to the United States. Hmmmm.