While home on the couch today, I read a memoir about turn-of-the-century Ohio farm life (as one does).

I didn’t anticipate that road taking me to West Virginia.

In Ohio Farm, Wheeler McMillen remembered his parents, though hard-working farmers, making time and money for occasional soul-nourishing vacations. Once, when he was about eleven, his mother surprised him by announcing that they would travel to Gauley Bridge to see the West Virginia mountains.

McMillen and his mother left at night, driving their horse to the nearby town, where they arranged for the horse to board at a livery barn. They took an overnight passenger train to West Virginia, chatting with the many other passengers and managing a little sleep in the uncomfortable seats.

Gauley Bridge, where the New and Gauley Rivers join to form the Kanawha River, had a population of 614 in 2010. A century earlier, it was “hardly more than a bare, sooty railroad station in the midst of the West Virginia Mountains.” McMillen and his mother watched the sun come up over the mountain, walked around, and ignored vendors selling balloons and popcorn.

After an hour they had “seen the sights.” They spent the rest of the day simply watching the people and the mountain. Neither mother nor son had ever seen mountains before.

They returned home on the next overnight train to a happy horse and a happy husband and father.