Our third stop on this Incredible Journey was to the wild, wonderful state of West Virginia.West Virginia is no stranger to me. I spent summers there as a teenager on mission trips with our church's youth group as we built houses for a poor community. I explored abandoned coal mines and didn't do the greatest job of staying out of trouble. I have gone skiing and whitewater rafting in West Virginia. I've jumped off of cliffs into the deep lake water. I've slept in a log cabin in bear country and drank illegal moonshine. I've seen incredible poverty and beautiful mountains there. As they say, it's wild and wonderful in West Virginia.
So it seemed quite fitting that our first stop was in a tiny town, nestled between the mountains along a river in West Virginia. After a shaky 5-mile trek down a one lane gravel road, we arrived in the middle of nowhere.
We watched the sun set over the fields of wildflowers. The kids were thrilled to finally be headed west and I just spent the night praying that we wouldn't eaten by a bear or abducted by aliens or kidnapped by hillbillies.Again, we survived.
In the morning, we awoke at dawn. The mountains were shrouded in a heavy veil of white fog. The wildflowers were wet with dew. Nobody stirred in the quiet of the cool morning as we broke camp and headed back down the long, gravel road.
We thought we had seen the last of West Virginia as we watched the sun rising behind us as we drove west. We were wrong.
