Weekend Board Games

For the Martin Luther King weekend we drove 3 hours out to our cabin in Pendleton County, West Virginia, taking our granddaughter Vivian with us. The weather has been so dreary for the past week, with grey, drizzly skies and temperatures stuck in the 40’s that we figured we’d mostly stay inside and play games. We had been hoping for some snow to play in.  I usually prefer relaxing with a good book to board games but games geared to a six year old are easy enough to handle, in between chapters.

All day Saturday and then again on Sunday, we played board games; Community, Gathering the Garden, Snakes and Ladders, Quirkle, and Trouble. In between we all read or listened on our Kindles. I stoked the fire, tore out and rewound my old knitting,  cooked  and read a book but eventually the fog lifted, it stopped raining, and I had to get outside.

Wet  Dry Run and a Movie

Dry Run was full of water for a change, so Vivian and I headed down the hill to check out the dam we had built last year.  We had spent hours playing in the creek together, and our thrown up berm of rocks was still mostly intact. We can look forward to rebuilding the small breach when the weather turns nice in the spring. I wish the creek ran all the time but with all the limestone around here, it sinks into cave-y places pretty quick.

We kept walking down the paved road, past the big spring where the town of Franklin gets their water.  This spring never dries up and there is a cement holding pond for them to draw from. The county ran 5 miles of pipe to carry this spring water into Franklin back in the 1960’s when the Hanover Shoe Factory was built out on Thorn Spring Road, and in the flood of 1985, they had to replace 5000 feet of it, as well as dig all the rock debris out of the spring.

Our place is located uphill from this spring so we collect rain from our roof into an underground cistern for our water at the cabin. So close, yet so far away… No complaints, it works fine for our needs.

Continuing on our walk, we turned onto the  hardly ever used, dirt lane that leads to an old hilltop meadow. We branched off at a 4 wheel drive track , back towards our hill,  and then again onto the old logging road.  This scenic route is much longer, but not near as steep a climb, as our driveway.  Short legs only grumbled a little. It was a pretty long walk for her. We checked out lots of cool fossil rocks on the way as we followed the zig-zagging  log trails back down the steep hillside to home.

Saturday night we had introduced Vivian to the first Harry Potter Movie, which went over pretty well. She did not get too scared and we were looking forward to the second one tonight. There is no TV reception at the cabin but we enjoy watching DVD’s curled up on the couch by the wood stove. Wine and cookies work too.

Reeds Creek Fish Hatchery

Monday, after eating a yummy lunch at the Fireside Cafe in Franklin, we drove out to Reeds Creek Fish Hatchery. They grow trout to stock the lakes and rivers in West Virginia, using  (and reusing) water from a huge spring. There are long, open concrete tanks set in the ground with a constant supply of cold spring water flowing  through the thousands of  fish. The fish are grouped by size and some of them are huge. The Golden Trout are the most fun because they are the easiest to see.

The other trout we saw were  dark, with spots, but I am not sure if they were Brook, Rainbow or Brown trout. When they see you coming they all start moving fast and jumping, expecting to be fed. Notice the dark one in the above photo with his mouth wide open. Visitors are not allowed to feed or touch the fish, but the hatchery gate is open until 3:30 in the afternoon and it is fun to watch them.  When their fins breach the surface it looks like a whole bunch of little sharks.

It looks like a great place to find dinner if you are a Heron or an Eagle and I don’t know how they manage to keep them out. When we were there we didn’t see any dogs or anybody to ask. They were probably out stocking the rivers.

It is too bad that no one has built an Aquaponics greenhouse using the water from this hatchery. It would be a great way to make use of the nutrient rich water before it joins the creek. It is probably too far to a market where they could sell the produce, though. Someone would have to do a lot of driving.

-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewisewoods, Gardens and Critters