During the past couple weeks I have been limiting my travels a bit due to a pinched nerve in my neck. While the trips I've taken had been enjoyable, I paid for them the next day.
My friend Frank had recently found a couple pictures from a trip we had taken down to West Virginia a while ago and shared them with me. We both remembered the trip but there were a couple questions we had about it.
We weren’t sure of when we went and we also were puzzled about the pictures themselves, since they were taken on film. We thought that we had both switched over to digital cameras when we had taken this trip.
We knew that we had been in West Virginia, that was one clue. We also remembered a geocache we had found while on it, one that had been hidden near a mine and a furnace of some type. Another clue was my Jeep. It sat on the edge of the picture, that fact helped narrow down the time period.
I started looking through my pictures trying to find some from that day. My collection of photos is organized by the date they were taken, not by subject or location, not much help for this! I checked through my furnace pictures, organized by name. In these photos I found a file titled “Unknowns”. Inside there was a folder titled “Unknown Furnace or kiln in WV 100702”. Ah ha! Inside I found 15 pictures of the furnace I was thinking of. Frank was in some of them also.
My labeling system is rather easy. The date is listed by year, (10) month (07) and the by day (02). This would mean that these pictures had been taken on July 2, 2010, about 15 years ago. So, now we had a date.
Another question was, where are the rest of the pictures taken that day? I went to my external hard drive but those photo files only went back 4-5 years. I needed to go further back. I dug into my older shots, saved on memory sticks, camera memories and CDs. Thankfully they are in order!
On a memory stick I found a folder entitled “100702 Trip to WV with Frank” Inside this folder was 127 pictures taken that day. Success!
It is always fun reliving the past, so let me take you along on a trip to West Virginia.
Stepping back into the past…
Sunrise
Frank and I always attempt to be on the road early. Should there be a nice sunrise, we would like to be able to catch it! A short distance past Friendsville, Maryland we pulled over on the side of the road to catch the sun coming up over the mountains. We were about a 100 miles into our trip, about two hours away from my home. It was 6:05 in the morning. We had left home at just the right time!
Moving towards the west we entered West Virginia. One of the places we wanted to visit was a section of RR track that we called West Virginia’s Horseshoe Curve. Now whether anyone else calls it this I don’t know. I’m not sure where this even is other than in WV. It gave us a spot to aim towards.
The “Curve”
We found the spot about an hour and a half after sunrise. We took some pictures, found an old cemetery and waited for a train to go by. After waiting for a while, we decided to call it quits and continue on.
House exploration
While exploring an old, deserted house, Frank realized that he had lost his hat. It had his fishing license on it so we headed back to the RR tracks to see if we could find it. There it was, sitting on the road. Just after he picked it up…we heard a train laboring up the hill.
The train!
Continuing up the
mountain
We caught some nice pictures of it as it passed us. There was a reason that the hat was left behind! The story of the “lost hat” is a story we tell often. We would have never gotten a picture of the train on the curve if it hadn’t been forgotten!
A cache
Outside the mine
Inside
Cache hidden inside a
mill
The Virginia Furnace
We did some caches as we continued south including one near a limestone mine and a kiln. We stopped at an old grist mill and an old iron furnace where other caches were hidden. There was lots of history that we visited on this trip!
The Grafton Rail Yard
Leaving the yard
We later ended up in Grafton where we took pictures of the rail yard and the turntable that sits on the edge of Three Fork Creek. We headed back towards home after that. It was almost 7 when we got back to Frank’s house, truly a long trip!
Bob and Frank’s camera
The pictures we found brought back some good memories and answered a couple questions. We found out the date, and on one of the last pictures, what camera Frank had been using, a Pentax ME Super. He got a digital camera soon after. (Now he is experimenting with film again I’m happy to say!)
It is always fun reliving the past by looking at old pictures. They help us (especially ME!) remember.
