A quick breakfast at Tudor's (if you haven't had their biscuits, you must), then a drive to French Creek Wildlife Center, a zoological facility with WV wildlife. Sort of a natural habitat zoo. Since it was quite hot yesterday (90s), we did a quick half-hour walk-through. We've been there before and spent about an hour along the paved trail. This is a great place for a family outing. You can picnic, and there's a little gift shop.Our next stop was Helvetia, a Swiss historic village of about 200 folks, where we had lunch at The Hutte Restaurant, which features Swiss specialties. It's filled with American and Swiss antiques. The house has several rooms, with dining tables in each room. One of the dining rooms has an old switchboard and telephone from days gone by, and another has a parlor organ. They encourage you to wonder around while you wait if it isn't crowded. We took pictures of the dining room we were in. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few pictures that show The Hutte's quaintness.
A quick walk around the historic district after lunch didn't take long because they're restoring a couple of buildings and were closed, so we decided to take a little jaunt about five miles up the road to the smallest public school in WV--about 35 students K-12 in Pickens. But mind you, it's a WV School of Excellence. Big is not always better. Actually, I believe it seldom is.
We headed out of Helvetia, driving through timberland and past lumber mills, up over the mountain with beautiful vistas, where the temperature was 15 degrees cooler than we left at home. Our next stop was supper at Stonewall Resort. A nice finale to the birthday boy's road trip.
My Beloved
You are the love of my life,
my companion in pleasure,
my very best friend through this earthly journey.
You are my shelter when storms are surging,
my rock when all seems like shifting sand,
my sharer of dreams and dreamer of plans.
You are my encourager when I want to give up or give in,
my reminder that there's always hope,
my explainer of truth and thoughtful contemplation.
You are the one I want to grow gracefully old with,
and yours is the hand I want to hold at the end of the day and into the night...
for the rest of my life.
