Girls Weekend 23. October 12, 2020. Charleston, West Virginia

 

Turns out that the West Virginia Capitol building is closed for public tours while it is under renovation and maybe because of COVID, too.  Because of this we went to the Capital Market, which is a lovely indoor/outdoor year round farmers market here in Charleston at the start of our day (after Kathi attended an on-line class).  There were LOTS of pumpkins and gourds at the market but there was also tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, eggplants, apples and plants, too.  I LOVE farmers markets and all of the colors one sees at them.  Inside there was a butcher, a wine shop, a restaurant amongst others.  All in all it was a delight to the eye!

Kathi made a couple of purchases here, an "ugly" yellow heirloom tomato, for our consumption with fresh mozzerella later this evening and a gigantic pear-shaped gourd that she intends to turn into a birdhouse once she gets it home.  Upon leaving the market we went in search of Capitol Street which is touted as an historic walking district in Charleston.  There was quite a bit of construction going on in this area as we walked around and, we discovered, that today is Columbus Day so not all of the shops and restaurants were open.  Kathi and I found it curious that the state capitol building is NOT located on Capitol street as in most capitol cities.  We came across a sign in this area that explained that.  Apparently the capitol of West Virginia has moved between Charleston and Wheeling a few times and the capitol building DID at one time sit on Capitol street, but the building burned down and construction was begun on the Capitol building as it stands today in 1924 and dedicated in 1932.

There was a charming, small bookstore in this area, Taylor Books, that we spent time browsing in, then purchased some coffee from the cafe inside before moving on.  The barista asked us about our day, what our plans were and where we were from while making our coffee.  This, of course, always leads to a conversation of our annual Girls Weekend trips and how we pick the states, which most people find fascinating and fun.  A woman sitting in a booth near the cashier overheard the conversation and offered up a couple of suggestions of places we should go while here.  From the conversation with her and the people we toured the Salt-works with, we have decided that we will make the road trip out to Hawk's Nest State Park in the New River gorge and to Fayetteville, a nearby small town.

Another area of Charleston mentioned when searching for "things to do in Charleston" is the Historic East End.  It took us a while to find the area, which is quite small, but we did find it and there are some charming and large homes there.

From here we went back to the house for a bathroom break and to decide where we wanted to go for an afternoon hike. While the weather forecast said it was not to rain today and we had not been rained on so far, the sky looked very dark in places so I wanted to be sure we headed toward the area where we could see blue skies.  This lead us to Coonskin park for our hike.  Kathi chose the Cougar trail and the Alice Knight Loop that was shown to be 2.7 miles long on Kathi's All Trails app and marked as easy.  Now I walk quite a bit and know that I walk at about a 3 mile per hour pace around my neighborhood at home, so I thought that we should be good walking this trail even though it was about 5pm when we started the trail and sunset was a little after 7.

It was a beautiful trail through the woods but it was a bit hilly and there were some muddy places because, of course, it had poured down rain the day before.  The "hilly" part is what slowed us down a bit along with the fact that there were a number of intersections on the trail and we would occasionally start down the wrong path before realizing that we had done so and had to turn around.  Sooooo, the sun was starting to go down and I was beginning to get a little concerned about being caught out on the trail in the dark.  

As we came to the bottom of the hill we came upon a young woman who was out hiking on her own who was from the area and was very familiar with the trail we were on.  We walked out of the woods and to where her car was parked, then walked the remainder of the way to our car on the park road.  While we were following her out of the woods we could hear an announcement being made over a loudspeaker stating that the park was closing.  I believe that by the time we got back to the car we had walked closer to 4 miles than 2.7 miles.  In addition, it got up to 79 degrees yesterday and we were both drenched in sweat at the end of this walk rather than drenched by rain like yesterday's walk!

We made our back home, where Kathi chopped up a bunch of vegetables to roast for dinner and cooked up a couple of chicken breasts.  While the veggies were cooking, she cut up those heirloom tomatoes, added some fresh provolone and served that up for an appetizer.  Yum!!  After dinner, Kathi worked on a letter of recommendation for a medical student who had worked with her at the Komen Tissue Bank and is applying for a family practice residency.  Once that was finished, which was about 11pm, I believe, we sat down to watch an episode of "Silent Witness".  I was so sleepy that I fell asleep before the episode finished.  In addition, we forgot to toss the states, so we will find out tomorrow where we will be going next year.