Cass Scenic Railroad State Park

     Traveling down 219 near Slatyfork today (May 20), we stopped at Sharp’s Country Store.  Sadly, it was closed, but we looked in the windows and it was fun to walk around the outside.  There was a covered bridge dubbed “The Kissing Bridge” that was built in 2005, and a barn with an unfortunate fellow hanging from the hayloft.  The owner must be a colorful character with a good sense of humor:)

     At Cass Scenic Railroad State Park we had plans to take the 22-mile round-trip train excursion up the mountain to Bald Knob overlook, but missed the small print indicating that the trains don’t run on Mondays.  We enjoyed our visit to the park anyway.  Cass is an historic Company Town established in 1900 during the logging boom by the Luke family who owned West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company, and has remained virtually unchanged for over 100 years.  The Company Store was open and also a small museum. “Tammy” gave us a guided walk-around tour of the town which included (among others) the Cass Jail in the basement of a small building with the Mayor’s Office upstairs, the company doctor’s home and small hospital, and the Luke family’s house which is the largest home on the hill overlooking the town.  The only building we could enter at this time was the Mayor’s Office/Jail.  Tammy was a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide who shared her obvious love for the town and it’s history.  We were very blessed because she offered to give us the tour even though it was her day off and she happened to stop in the Company Store while we were there!  After our tour we enjoyed some delicious ice cream from the Soda Fountain while we took advantage of their free wifi.  There was also a group of fancy foreign sports cars arriving while we were there.  The owners seemed to be taking part in some sort of rally.

     In a guide book on this part of eastern West Virginia, it describes the area as isolated by rugged mountainous terrain with towns few and far between, and roadways as “twisted as tangled twine”.  That’s a pretty apt description of the country roads we’ve been traveling:)  After our visit to Cass we were going to drive up to the four story high lookout tower at the top of Bickle Knob for a panoramic 360 degree view of the surrounding area, but as we started up that portion of the mountain, we turned unto a narrow gravel road, and with 4 miles left to go, Mark reached his limit of challenging roads for the day and decided to abort.  Instead we drove to Canaan Valley Resort State Park and had our pick of campsites since the campground was empty after the weekend.

     We were hoping to take the chairlift to the summit of Weiss Knob,  but found it won’t be running until Labor Day Weekend.  Oh well, we enjoyed a quiet evening at the campground.  😊