The Woods of West Virginia

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I slept like dogshit on the couch, and the shower was a puzzle I wasn’t keen to solve so early in the morning. My body needs a good night’s rest so badly, I think I’d sleep outside on the ground if it meant I could get more than an hour at a time. Might take a Benadryl before bed tonight just so I can muscle through and get some actual rest in before the long drive home tomorrow.

There’s next to nothing to see or do in Hedgesville, so we went one town over to Martinsburg—the largest city in the West Virginia panhandle. Even though it has an Amtrak service and hosts the end of MARC, Maryland’s commuter rail whose Brunswick Line ends in Martinsburg, the city still feels very sleepy.

We walked around its historic downtown to check out the shops and historic properties, such as the Martinsburg Roundhouse. The roundhouse is apparently the last of its kind and listed on the Register of Historic Places due to being heavily involved in a moment of the Civil War as well as the Railroad Strike of 1877.

While there was very little to do in the city, I got a kick out of photographing the oldest part of downtown. The city was founded in the early years of the American Revolution and has a load of old, historic buildings charged with character. There’s no shortage of small-town beauty embedded in all the various styles, and it reminded me of several small Kentucky towns I’ve been to over the last couple years.

The city sealed up an apple-shaped time capsule in 1990, so I gave that a look, too (pictured).

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