Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Summer Road Trip - West Virginia

In front of the mine opening

Anyone dying to hear about China?
Tough for you.
Anyone who knows my OCD tendencies knows I've gotta do things in order, so the road trip pics need to come first. They're long overdue anyways.

To catch you up, my job was a contract position and ended the 2nd week of June. So on June 15, Mark and I took off on a nearly 3 week trip. I want to see all 50 States before I'm 35, so I planned a trip to help check a few off the list.
I picked Mark up from work around 4:00 and we spent the first night driving, around 7 hours, to Beckley, West Virginia. We got up the next morning and headed to our first attraction of the trip, the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
It actually turned out to be super cool. They have a small museum, and a "coal mine town" with a schoolhouse and miner's shanties (aka teeny houses) that you can tour, and the highlight of the visit is obviously the trip inside the mine. Our tour guide had been a miner for 40+ years and taught us tons about how the miners worked; it was actually fascinating to learn that many of their old-fashioned methods are still used, or have just changed in the last 20 years or so.

Our tour guide

Kettle bottoms = petrified wood stumps

Inside the mine


Exiting the mine

Inside the old schoolhouse
The miner's shanty

5 comments:

Megan said...

Oh my word. That old man whipping you may be the best thing I have ever seen.
You look real pretty, by the way. What a fun trip. Can't wait to see the rest of your adventures.

The Nowels said...

Noelle I love that an old man is spanking you and you almost seem to be enjoying it!!! I like this whole China thing, it is making you blog.

Megan said...

The picture of you being paddled by an old man...priceless. Ha ha.

carLy hart crandaLL said...

um. that old man spankin your behind is outstanding. i love it. keep the updates rollin. xo

Wendy said...

The picture of Mark outside the shanty is good...mainly I just had to say something other then the obvious old man picture. Glad you guys got to go on your adventure