Nice weekend at Snowshoe



Mary, her brother Eddie, and I spent the weekend at Snowshoe. The skiing was pretty good, with Sunday being a bit better than Saturday thanks to some fresh snow. On the other hand, the weather was nicer on Saturday; Mary's car thermometer read 12 degrees when we left the mountain yesterday afternoon. Eddie had never skied before, so he took a lesson Saturday and seemed to pick up some of the basics and enjoy himself even though his day inevitably involved a lot of falling, as everyone's first day of skiing does.

We stayed in a "Company House" for two nights at Cass Scenic Railroad State Park in Cass, WV, the first little town east of the resort. The place truly was a "house" which was incredible for only $280 for the weekend. It had a full kitchen, dining room, living room, and three bedrooms. The only downside was that the one bathroom was small and pretty crappy on a variety of levels.

Additionally, here are a couple good stories I collected this weekend:

1) We spoke to a guy from Chapel Hill, NC while riding a lift. He was a huge North Carolina fan, of course, but had a friend who was a diehard Maryland fan. He told us that she was at the recent Maryland/Duke game in Durham, NC (Duke's Senior Night this season) and that she somehow snuck in a Maryland flag. Here's the part that's awesome: when the game ended and Maryland had won by eight, she managed to get past security and single handedly rushed the court, waving her Maryland flag on the floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium!

2) I met a guy working at the equipment shop in Snowshoe, WV who was a Deadhead Steelers fan that used to live on Morrowfield Avenue in Squirrel Hill, a.k.a. a five or ten minute walk from where I grew up in Pittsburgh. He was basically an alternate version of me, working at a ski resort and a few years older.

3) While trying to make our way from Snowshoe, WV to I-81 during the drive home yesterday, I royally screwed up and drove 25 or so miles southwest when we generally needed to be heading northeast. This totally reminded me of the sequence from Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd (Jim Carrey) drove hundreds of miles in the wrong direction on I-70.



I had somehow lost eastbound US 33 in Franklin, WV and wound up on southbound US 220 instead. I suspected things weren't right when I noticed we were driving towards the late afternoon sun which obviously meant we weren't heading east. And I knew things were fouled up when we hit the WV/VA border on a totally flat stretch of road because the WV/VA border on US 33 (which I still thought I was driving on until that point) is right at the top of a pretty rugged route over a mountain.

Bartow, WV and Monterey, VA are 24 miles apart via US 250. As you can see when clicking on the map above, I managed to turn that into a 62 mile, 90 minute odyssey.