<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Just one example to hammer it home. In 1955 we left the grandparents in Marietta, Ohio about 9 a.m. one day and pulled into a model in Wytheville, Virginia around 7 p.m. Wytheville is where US route 11 crossed US route 19. Took the whole freaking day and by then they had a modern convenience called the West Virginia Turnpike. Now the comparison. The end of April, this year, I left Ed Lybarger's home in Washington County, Pa in the morning, passed through Wytheville after lunch and holed up at Bruce Bente's home in Hendersonville, NC for dinner. That's close to 300 miles more than the long day in 1955 and I started the more recent trip on ice and snow! Now the admission … we did pause on the 1955 trip to photograph the Powhattan Arrow coming through Bluefield as well as the Virginian's day local. (Dad was easy to convince.)<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Gwen and I drove to Asheville 2 weekends ago. Left Pittsburgh at 5. Had to deal with outbound rush and an accident by Southpointe. Dinner (tasty pizza joint) just before 9 in Fayetteville WV ... thanks to the Appalachian Development Highway System, we didn't have to go out of our way to Charleston. Bedded down before midnight at a hotel in Wytheville. That was no big deal. The trip back from Chattanooga(*) several days later was straight through to Charleston for dinner via Kingsport and routes 23 and 119, then on home. Long, to be sure, but still nothing like the old days.<br>
<br></div><div>* We had dinner that Monday night by the Lookout Mountain incline. Closed already. Tuesday we rode it. Like the Duquesne Incline, you can walk beneath the boarding area and see the machinery... which was built in Pittsburgh! Very different than Pittsburgh or Johnstown survivors which are true planes, theirs follows the terrain. <br>
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